Workshop on "Materiali Nanostrutturati", Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Perugia.

April 20, 2012.

Pictures of the event available here: Pictures

Program and slides of the presentations available here: Slides

 

 

Maranello, Italy - April 5 2012

Wisepower srl, spin-off of the NiPS Laboratory met with the R&D Ferrari F1 team to present HAT (Hybrid Autonomous Transceiver).

 

 

Read the recently published Contemporary Physics introductory review:
 
There’s plenty of energy at the bottom (Micro and nano scale nonlinear noise harvesting)
Luca Gammaitoni
Contemporary Physics Vol  53 (2) Pages 119-135

Abstract:
The future of mobile Information and Communication Technology will be strongly affected by our success in solving the question of how to power very small devices. Ambient energy harvesting has been in recent years the recurring object of a number of research efforts aimed at providing an autonomous solution to the powering of small-scale electronic devices. Among the different solutions, micro scale vibration energy harvesting has played a major role due to the almost universal presence of mechanical vibrations mainly in the form of random fluctuations, i.e. noise. In this paper we briefly discuss the role of micro-energies and the possibility to harvest them by employing nonlinear dynamical systems.

 
If you do not have institutional access to Contemporary Physics, I am pleased to offer you this paper for free, go to www.tandfonline.com/r/noiseharvesting. If you do not have a TandFonline username and password, you can create a personal account simply by registering for free when prompted. Once signed in, you will have access to the paper for 7 days. Free access is only available by using the above URL. This free access offer expires on 31st March 2012.
 
Contemporary Physics presents authoritative, lucid, introductory review articles on important recent developments in physics that can be profitably read by all those who wish to keep abreast of the field, whether they be physicists, physical scientists, engineers, or biological scientists who are employed in higher education, teaching industry, and government. 
 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00107514.2011.647793

Energy dissipation in small-scale shape-change dynamics

L.Gammaitoni

Phys. Rev. E, Volume 85, p.020104 (2012)

Abstract:

Shape is an important feature of physical systems, although very seldom it is addressed in the framework of a quantitative description approach. In this paper we propose to interpret the shape of things as a physical manifestation of the content of information associated with each thing and show that a change of shape in a physical system is necessarily connected with a change of its entropy and thus involves energy. We estimate the amount of energy dissipated during a shape change and propose experimental tests to be performed in nanoscale systems to verify this prediction by measuring the expected dissipation in a few simple cases. Relevant implications in the design of future zero-power logic switches are discussed.

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.020104

file available at: arXiv:1109.3923v2

 

Il 17 Febbraio, 2012, nell’ambito della manifestazione nazionale "M'illumino di Meno", promossa dal programma di RAI2 Caterpillar, Il NiPS Laboratory, in collaborazione con il Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università di Perugia e l'Assessorato alle politiche energetiche del Comune di Perugia, promuove un Flash Mob: "illumina la fontana".

Inoltre, alle 18:30 presso la Sala della Vaccara in Piazza IV Novembre a Perugia,

il Direttore del Perugia Science Festival,

Leonardo Alfonsi, mette a confronto l’assessore alle Politiche energetiche e ambientali del Comune di Perugia

Lorena Pesaresi

con,

Massimiliano

Rinaldo Barchi,

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e

Fausto Elisei

Preside della Facoltà di Scienze, Università di Perugia

sul tema:

Verso il 2019: Perugia capitale delle energie sostenibili.

Gli orizzonti della città e della scienza.

Introduce l’incontro il Direttore del NiPS Laboratory,

Luca Gammaitoni.

 

Delft, Feb. 8, 2012

Luca Gammaitoni and Helios Vocca from NiPS met with Herre Van der Zant and Warner Venstra from MED at TU Delft (http://home.tudelft.nl). The MED group studies the electronic properties of molecular and mechanical systems at the  nanoscale.

The meeting was devoted to explore further coorperation betwwen the two groups that are already partners in the LANDAUER proposal.

 

Feb. 7, 2012

Helios Vocca and Luca Gammaitoni from NiPS visited the Holst Centre/Imec in Eindhoven, Nederlands.

During the visit, Rudd Vullers presented the activity of the energy harvesting group at IMEC. Helios Vocca presented a seminar on Nonlinear Energy Harvesting.

Future collaborations between the two laboratories have been discussed.

 

 

 

 

Febrary 2, 2012

Program of the day

9.30  Introduzione (L. Gammaitoni)
10.00  MEMS piezo harvesters (H. Vocca)
10.30  Energy budget for aut. sensors (F. Orfei)
11.00  Autonomous sensor networks (I. Neri)
11.30  coffe break
11.50  Numerics for thermal rectification (L. Bosi)
12.20  Monolitic suspensions (F. Travasso)
12.40  Stochastic Resonance EH (R. Mincigrucci)
13.00  Pranzo
14.30  I progetti europei in corso:
- NANOPOWER, (S. Lombardi)
- ZEROPOWER (S. Lombardi)
14.45 ! I progetti sottomessi:
- Millicube (Wisepower, H. Vocca)
- LANDAUER (L. Gammaitoni)
15:15  Il nuovo microscopio SEM (A. Di Michele)
15:30  Un anno di outreach al NiPS (L. Alfonsi)
16.00  coffe break

16:30! FAME LAB al NiPS*

18:00! conclusioni**

* Competizione tra giovani ricercatori o aspiranti tali:
Comunicare un contenuto scientifico che fa parte del vostro campo di
ricerca, o semplicemente un tema che vi appassiona e vi interessa ad un
pubblico di non esperti. Tutto in tre minuti e usando solo parole, niente
immagini niente suoni né apparecchiature. Per aiutarvi solo qualche piccolo
oggetto, giusto quelli che potete portarvi in tasca. Premio al migliore !!!

Partecipazione su invito / invitation participation only

 

Cristina Castellano interviews Luca Gammaitoni, NiPS Director, during the TV Show "Speciale Università" on Jan 12 2012.

Video interview (in italian).

 

 

Prof. Francesco Profumo (middle), Italian Minister for Research and Education, listen to NiPS Director, Prof. Luca Gammaitoni (right), during the presentation of the NANOPOWER exhibit at the EC Innovation Convention in Brussels, on Dec 6th, 2011. Right in the picture, Dr. Leonardo Alfonsi, NiPS Media advisor.

Pictures available here