In the marvelous frame of the Italian Pavilion at Expo2020 in Dubai, on February 28^th  and March 1^st has been held the final phase of the Intellectual Property Award (IPA) 2021 competition, promoted by the Italian Patent and Trademark Office of the Ministry of Economic Development in collaboration with Netval (the Italian Network for the Valorization of the Public Research). An award dedicated to the excellence of Italian public research, characterized by expertise, competence and dynamism.

IPA 2021 has received a great response, with 217 patents submitted in the seven technological areas: 1- Agritech and Agrifood, 2- Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, 3- Green Technologies and Alternative Materials, 4- Life Science and Health Care, 5- Aerospace, 6- Renewable Sources, Alternative Energy and Water, 7- Future Mobility.

The OXiNEMS patent “Low-power magnetometer for improved sensors integration in future vehicles” has passed the severe selection by a panel of national experts and get access to the 35 finalists (5 per category) presented at Expo2020 Dubai.

Federico Maspero, team delegate of OXiNEMS, presented at IPA 2021 ceremony in the “Future Mobility” category the conceived MEMS magnetometer to ease the integration between magnetic sensors and inertial sensors, offering both high performance (e.g., sensors alignment), with low power consumption and possibility of integration into existing processes. At the ceremony was present also Silvia Cella as CNR - TTOffice representative. The IPA2021 prize in the Future Mobility category was won by the University of Bologna with the patent “Self-confident: online learning for detecting depth sensor failures”, a solution to increase the safety and efficacy of autonomous driving systems.

Notwithstanding, congratulation to Federico and all the OXiNEMS team working on this technology that led to the Italian patent application No. 102020000007969 and the International patent application No. WO2021209891 A1.

Illustration: Yen Strandqvist

The paper “Restored strange metal phase through suppression of charge density waves in underdoped YBa₂Cu₃O_7–δ” from the Chalmers University of Technology group is now available in Science Magazine. The research has been led by the Chalmers group, in collaboration with researchers from Politecnico di Milano, University La Sapienza, Brandenburg University of Technology and the European Synchrotron facility (ESRF). Congratulations to the Teams!

The presented research focuses on understanding and controlling the enigmatic state called ‘strange metal’, appearing in high temperature superconductors at temperatures above the superconducting transition.

The main result of the paper is new evidence of an intimate connection between the strange metal state and a “directional” local charge modulation in the conducting electrons called charge density waves (CDW). More specifically, the strange metal state is suppressed by the appearance of these charge modulations, providing valuable insights into the possible mechanism behind this enigmatic state. The experiment also shows that CDW can be controlled by applying strain to the material, leading to a novel technique of using strain to turn the strange metal state on or off. This is the first step towards a systematic study of ultra quantum matter in the lab, where strain control can be used to manipulate this new class of quantum materials.

Oxide nanoelectromechanical systems can be a potential tool to reversibly control strain and thus manipulate the ground state such (oxide) quantum materials.

Read more about our paper here.

Open Version

Here is the picture from iWOE27 (www.iwoe27.eu). The workshop counted 187 participants overall, 96 in person and 91 in remote. 102 posters and 49 talks. iWOE27 was hold in Genova, Italy, in the wonderful setting of Palazzo Ducale, October 13-15, 2021

The program of the “MEMS and membranes” session at the 27th International Workshop on Oxide Electronics is now ready! See you in Genova on October 13-15 !