Holograms are a ubiquitous part of our lives. They are in our wallets — protecting credit cards, cash and driver’s licenses from fraud — in grocery store scanners and biomedical devices.   

Researchers combine the warm look of traditional light bulbs with 21st-century energy efficiency. Traditional light bulbs, thought to be well on their way to oblivion, may receive a reprieve thanks to a technological breakthrough. Incandescent lighting and its warm, familiar glow is well over a century old yet survives virtually unchanged in homes around the world. That is changing fast, however, as regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency are phasing out the old bulbs in favor of more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) and newer light-emitting diode bulbs (LEDs).

Princeton University researchers have developed a new method to increase the brightness, efficiency and clarity of LEDs, which are widely used on smartphones and portable electronics as well as becoming increasingly common in lighting.

AIXTRON AG announced an order from ETH Zurich for a Black Magic Plasma Enhanced CVD system to be installed at the Nanotechnology Center in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. The Nanotechnology Center is a unique, public private partnership between IBM Research and ETH Zurich. The new system, used for single wall carbon nanotube deposition, is 6-inch in configuration and will be commissioned by the local AIXTRON support team in the first quarter of 2011.

Evident Technologies Inc. announced the commercial availability of its Evidot LED products based on semiconductor nanocrystal technology. Whereas traditional LEDs are available in a limited set of standard colors (blue, green, red, etc.), Evident’s new products enable LEDs to emit any color, including high-quality white light (see video).