Blog
- NEWS Flip battery sideways for NMR studies 17/02/2022 Researchers have recorded the first ever nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of unmodified, off-the-shelf button batteries as they are charged and discharged. The metal battery casing had so far prevented such studies as it blocks the NMR radiofrequency field. But a team from Sandia National Laboratories, US, has found a way around this – simply turn the battery by 90°.
- NEWS Dilanthanide complexes smash record for strongest single-molecule magnet 15/02/2022 Newly discovered dilanthanide complexes are the strongest single-molecule magnets ever made. It’s the first time that chemists have isolated complexes featuring lanthanide–lanthanide bonds, and could offer a way to make powerful new permanent magnets.
- Towards high-performance organic optoelectronics with better crystallinity at semiconductor interface 10/02/2022 Semiconductor electronic devices can be made of either inorganic crystals, formed by the strong bonding of atoms and ions, or organic crystals, which demonstrate weaker bonds held together by van der Waals forces (weak electric forces of attraction between neutral atoms or molecules that do not share a chemical bond). These weak bonds make organic semiconductors viable for flexible optoelectronics applications such as wearable electronic devices and flexible solar cells. However, this very characteristic also lends them a disadvantage: organic semiconductors typically exhibit poor charge carrier mobility and, therefore, do not conduct electricity well.
- Record-breaking molecular magnet 08/02/2022 Dilanthanide complexes could pave the way for a new breed of powerful permanent magnets
- Scientists Observe Quantum Spin Liquids: A State of Matter We've Never Seen Before 03/02/2022 An exotic and totally new state of matter called a quantum spin liquid has been hypothesized for decades, and now scientists have been able to observe it in a laboratory for the first time.
- A well-known iron-based magnet is also a potential quantum information material 01/02/2022 Scientists pursuing better performance in a well-known type of iron-based magnet also discovered wide-gap semiconducting behavior and a quantum state useful for quantum information processing—all in a single low-cost material that has been in existence for decades.
- Light could boost performance of fuel cells, lithium batteries and other devices 27/01/2022 Engineers from MIT and Kyushu University in Japan have demonstrated for the first time that light can be used to significantly improve the performance of fuel cells, lithium batteries and other devices that are based on the movement of charged atoms, or ions.
- In situ ion-exchange preparation methods developed for efficient electrocatalytic water oxidation 25/01/2022 Using a simple redox-precipitation approach, a research team has recently reported their synthesis of ultrathin NiCoFe-NDA (NDA=2,6-naphthalenedicarboxylic acid) nanosheets for high efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in anion exchange membrane electrolysis (AEMWE). Related results were published on Energy & Environmental Science.
- A room-temperature gate-tunable bipolar valley Hall effect in molybdenum disulfide/tungsten diselenide heterostructures 20/01/2022 Two-dimensional semiconductors have a valley degree of freedom that could be used as a platform for future optoelectronic devices. The valley Hall effect, caused by electrons in different valleys having opposite Berry curvatures, is important for making such devices, but has only been reported with plasmonic structures or at cryogenic temperatures, limiting practical application. Here we report the observation of the valley Hall effect at room temperature in a molybdenum disulfide/tungsten diselenide van der Waals heterostructure. We show that the magnitude and polarity of the valley Hall effect in the heterostructure are gate tunable, which can be attributed to the contribution of the opposite valley Hall effect from electrons and holes in different layers. We use this gate tunability to create a bipolar valleytronic transistor.
- Researchers probe the performance of high-temperature superconductor 18/01/2022 The next generation of superconducting magnets has the potential to revolutionize fields such as energy storage, particle accelerators and medicine. The magic behind these tools lies in the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires that power them.
- Changing the properties of ferroelectric materials by vacating a single oxygen atom 13/01/2022 Researchers in the Technion Department of Materials Science and Engineering have succeeded in changing a material's electrical properties by vacating an oxygen atom from the original structure. Possible applications include electronic-device miniaturization and radiation detection.