Nanotechnology World

Deciphering nuclear shapes has relevance to a wide range of physics questions, including which atoms are most likely to split in nuclear fission, how heavy atomic elements form in collisions of neutron stars, and which nuclei could point the way to exotic particle decay discoveries. Leveraging improved knowledge of nuclear shapes will also deepen scientists’ understanding of the initial conditions of a particle soup that mimics the early universe, which is created in RHIC’s energetic particle smashups. The method can be applied to analyzing additional data from RHIC as well as data collected from nuclear collisions at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It will also have relevance to future explorations of nuclei at the Electron-Ion Collider, a nuclear physics facility in the design stage at Brookhaven Lab.

Scientists observe record-setting electron mobility in a new crystal film

The team grew thin films of ternary tetradymite, each about 100 nanometers thin. They then tested the film’s electronic properties by looking for Shubnikov-de Haas quantum oscillations — a phenomenon that was discovered by physicists Lev Shubnikov and Wander de Haas, who found that a material’s electrical conductivity can oscillate when exposed to a strong magnetic field at low temperatures. This effect occurs because the material’s electrons fill up specific energy levels that shift as the magnetic field changes.

Nothing in science can be achieved or understood without measurement. Today, thanks to advances in quantum sensing, scientists can measure things that were once impossible to even imagine: vibrations of atoms, properties of individual photons, fluctuations associated with gravitational waves. A quantum mechanical trick called “spin squeezing” is widely recognized to hold promise for supercharging the capabilities of the world’s most precise quantum sensors, but it’s been notoriously difficult to achieve. In new research, Harvard physicists describe how they’ve put spin squeezing within closer reach.

According to the team, scientists generally believe that some 1.9% of interstellar carbon exists in the form of graphene, with its shape and structure determined by the process of its formation.

Two-dimensional materials are a breakthrough in nanotechnology, realizing materials with exotic electronic and physical properties which are specific to their sheet-like nature. While graphene is well known, there has also been a lot of focus on transition metal chalcogenides (TMCs), composed of a transition metal and a group 16 element like sulfur or selenium. For example, nanosheets of TMCs have been shown to be able to emit light and show excellent performance as transistors.

This study emphasizes the utility of quasi-racemates in constructing socially self-sorted supramolecular structures with two distinct functionalities. Furthermore, the methodology sets the stage for the generation of a novel class of dual-pore molecular crystals.

Using a sophisticated combination of several neutron measurements, the team at TU Wien was able to test the Leggett-Garg inequality – and the result was clear: the inequality is violated. The neutrons behave in a way that cannot be explained by any conceivable macroscopically realistic theory. They actually travel on two paths at the same time, they are simultaneously located at different places, centimetres apart. The idea that "maybe the neutron is only travelling on one of the two paths, we just don't know which one" has thus been refuted.

Quantum confinement gives QDs the capacity to confine electrons in three dimensions, making quantum phenomena more evident and characterizing them as intermediate materials between atoms, molecules and larger crystalline arrays.

ETH researchers developed a special gold membrane that is only 20 nanometres thick and contains elongated pores around a hundred nanometres in size. When such a membrane is transferred onto a surface to be investigated, two things happen: first, the membrane prevents the laser beam from penetrating into the volume of the material. Second, at the locations of the pores the laser light is concentrated and re-radiated only a few nanometres into the surface.

An experimental team from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich recently observed and manipulated the peculiar states emerging at topological boundaries – so-called edge modes. Key to the researchers’ breakthrough was the level of unprecedented control over the experimental parameters, which previously rendered the observation of these edge-modes elusive. The results are featured in Nature Physics.

RIKEN chemists have demonstrated a gold-nanocluster system that carries two components of a drug in a controlled ratio for maximum cancer-cell killing effect. The active drug remains safely masked until red light triggers its release, minimizing collateral damage to healthy cells near the tumor.

Theoretical physicists and experimentalists worked together to measure the mass of a rare isotope expected to form a rare proton halo, publishing the first results from FRIB’s Precision Measurement Program.

Carbon nanotube (CNT) yarns are thermoelectric materials that can be used to harvest waste heat. While “p-type” CNT yarns, which contain an excess of “holes” (positive charge carriers), have been produced, “n-type” CNT yarns containing an excess of negatively charged electrons are also in demand. Accordingly, researchers from Japan have developed a novel protocol for producing n-type CNT yarns with exceptional thermoelectric properties for harvesting energy from low-grade waste heat.

Caltech team's key discovery simplifies and accelerates calculations of electron behavior in new materials by 50x while maintaining accuracy, enabling modeling of complex materials/devices and previously impossible new calculations.

Most high-resolution sensors are made in an industrial cleanroom and require the use of toxic chemicals in a multi-step and energy-intensive fabrication process. The Cambridge-developed sensors can be made anywhere and use a tiny fraction of the energy that regular sensors require.The bioelectronic fibres, which are repairable, can be simply washed away when they have reached the end of their useful lifetime, and generate less than a single milligram of waste: by comparison, a typical single load of laundry produces between 600 and 1500 milligrams of fibre waste.

“What is life? How does a living cell emerge from lifeless molecules?” wondered a multidisciplinary team of Dutch scientists. To answer these questions the research team, led by the TU Delft, aims to build a living synthetic cell from lifeless biomolecules, using laboratory evolution and artificial intelligence for the first time. The ten-year research programme to do so, entitled “Evolving life from non-life” or simply “EVOLF”, was awarded 40 million euro by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) as part of the Summit grants scheme.

We would normally expect it to withstand one or two tesla, but it can withstand around 60. It is nearly 100 times stronger than any magnetic field you’d encounter in everyday life. That tells us there’s something weird, that maybe it’s one of those new flavors of superconductivity.