Blog
- “Exotic magnetic states in miniature dimensions” published in Nature 26/10/2021 Led by scientists at Empa, INL - International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory and an international team of researchers from Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, and Spain have succeeded in building carbon-based quantum spin chains, where they captured the emergence of one of the cornerstone models of quantum magnetism first proposed by the 2016 Nobel laureate F. D. M. Haldane in 1983.
- Induced flaws in quantum materials could enhance superconducting properties 21/10/2021 In a surprising discovery, an international team of researchers, led by scientists in the University of Minnesota Center for Quantum Materials, found that deformations in quantum materials that cause imperfections in the crystal structure can actually improve the material's superconducting and electrical properties.
- Nobel prize in physics goes to research on complex physical systems 19/10/2021 The 2021 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who improved our understanding of the complexity of systems that range in scale from atoms to our planet’s climate. Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi’s research provided fundamental insights that underpin much of our knowledge of climate change.
- Novel quantum effect discovered in naturally occurring graphene 14/10/2021 Usually, the electrical resistance of a material depends very much on its physical dimensions and fundamental properties. Under special circumstances, however, this resistance can adopt a fixed value that is independent of the basic material properties and "quantised" (meaning that it changes in discrete steps rather than continuously). This quantisation of electrical resistance normally occurs within strong magnetic fields and at very low temperatures when electrons move in a two-dimensional fashion. Now, a research team led by the University of Göttingen has succeeded in demonstrating this effect at low temperatures in the almost complete absence of a magnetic field in naturally occurring double-layer graphene, which is just two atoms thick. The results of the study have been published in Nature.
- 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry rewards game-changing work on molecular manipulation 12/10/2021 The Swedish Academy awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry to two chemists who independently but simultaneously discovered a new way to catalyze chemical reactions. This process, called asymmetric organocatalysis, uses organic molecules like carbohydrates and amino acids instead of metals and enzymes. Compared to metal and enzymes, organocatalysis is easier, cheaper, and much safer for both people and environment alike.
- Study unveils the quantum nature of the interaction between photons and free electrons 07/10/2021 For several decades, physicists have known that light can be described simultaneously as a wave and a particle. This fascinating 'duality' of light is due to the classical and quantum nature of electromagnetic excitations, the processes through which electromagnetic fields are produced.
- New way to simulate hydrogen storage efficiency of materials 05/10/2021 Hydrogen energy has the potential to be a key measure to meet the United Nations net zero emissions target, but its industrial use has been hindered by the difficulty in its storage and handling. Hydrogen becomes a gas at a very low temperature (-252°C), which makes its storage at room temperature challenging. The interaction between hydrogen and its storage material is simply too weak to persist at room temperature. This makes the design of storage materials crucial to achieving the goal of bringing hydrogen energy into daily use.
- Graphene valleytronics: Paving the way to small-sized room-temperature quantum computers 30/09/2021 Valleytronics is an emerging field in which valleys—local minima in the energy band structure of solids—are used to encode, process, and store quantum information. Though graphene was thought to be unsuitable for valleytronics due to its symmetrical structure, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, have recently shown that this is not the case. Their findings may pave the way to small-sized quantum computers that can operate at room temperature.
- Scientists achieved triple qubit entanglement 28/09/2021 Quantum entanglement of three spin qubits demonstrated in silicon.
- Developing better nanopore technology 23/09/2021 At the simplest of levels, nanopores are (nanometre-sized) holes in an insulating membrane. The hole allows ions to pass through the membrane when a voltage is applied, resulting in a measurable current. When a molecule passes through a nanopore it causes a change in the current, this can be used to characterize and even identify individual molecules. Nanopores are extremely powerful single-molecule biosensing devices and can be used to detect and sequence DNA, RNA, and even proteins. Recently, it has been used in the SARS-CoV-2 virus sequencing.
- Ultrafast electron microscopy leads to pivotal discovery 21/09/2021 Researchers used ultrafast electron microscopy to study a nanoscale phenomenon that occurs in less than a few hundred quadrillionths of a second. Insights from the study could aid in the development of new sensors and quantum devices.