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The gas turbines powering aircraft engines rely on ceramic coatings that ensure structural stability at high temperatures. But these coatings don’t control heat radiation, limiting the performance of the engine. Researchers at Purdue University have engineered ceramic “nanotubes” that behave as thermal antennas, offering control over the spectrum and direction of high-temperature heat radiation.

When in relative motion, plates of a Fabry-Perot interferometer generate a unique resonance with negative frequency if separated by a gap of critical size.

The field of topology or the study of how surfaces behave in different dimensions has profoundly influenced the current understanding of matter. The prime example is the topological insulator, which conducts electricity only on the surface while being completely insulating inside the bulk. Topological insulators behave like a metal, i.e., silver on the surface, but inside, it would behave like glass. These properties are defined using the conductivity or flow of electrons depicting whether there is a highway or a road-block for their motion. One major driver of future applications for topological insulators is in the field of spin-electronic devices since these electrons spin in unison, all aligned with each other while flowing on the surface.

An international research team has used a "thermal metamaterial" to control the emission of radiation at high temperatures, an advance that could bring devices able to efficiently harvest waste heat from power plants and factories.