Researchers integrated synthetic DNA — nature’s most efficient storage mechanism, capable of storing about 215 million gigabytes of data per gram — into a semiconducting material in a technological leap toward advanced, large-capacity and low-power memory storage devices.

Highly detailed 3D scans of dense tropical rain forest plots are enabling precise estimates of tree structure, volume and stored carbon, as part of a first-of-its-kind pilot initiative, led by UCL researchers. 

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have made a major breakthrough in producing perovskite solar cells.

A team in Belgium led by Professor Dries Van Thourhout reports on a novel type of surface emitting laser, directly integrated on standard 300 mm silicon wafers.  It is based on a one-dimensional array of nano-ridges that forms a photonic crystal cavity, enabling strong in-plane confinement while emitting light vertically. The GaAs photonic crystal is directly grown on the silicon substrate, using a combination of aspect ratio trapping and nano-ridge engineering. By varying the array period and nano-ridge dimensions, the emission wavelength can be controlled.  This is a first step towards a cost-effective alternative for traditional VCSELs, which are today widely used in optical interconnects and consumer products such as mobile phones and optical mice.

Industrial inspection systems often miss subtle defects or fail when sensors are slightly misaligned. To address this, researchers have developed MambaAlign, a new multimodal framework that efficiently fuses Red, Green, Blue images with auxiliary sensors such as thermal or depth data. It captures long-range, orientation-aware features, and is more robust to modest misalignment. It significantly improves localization accuracy while sustaining real-time performance, making it suitable for practical, high-throughput inspection environments.