Blog
- 02/11/2021 NEWS Flip battery sideways for NMR studies 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°.
- 28/10/2021 An easier, greener way to build molecules wins the chemistry Nobel Prize Making molecules is hard work. Atoms must be stitched together into specific arrangements through a series of chemical reactions that are often slow, convoluted and wasteful. The 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognizes two scientists who developed a tool at the turn of the century that revolutionized how chemists construct new molecules, making the process faster and more environmentally friendly.
- 26/10/2021 “Exotic magnetic states in miniature dimensions” published in Nature 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.
- 21/10/2021 Induced flaws in quantum materials could enhance superconducting properties 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.
- 19/10/2021 Nobel prize in physics goes to research on complex physical systems 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.
- 14/10/2021 Novel quantum effect discovered in naturally occurring graphene 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.
- 12/10/2021 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry rewards game-changing work on molecular manipulation 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.
- 07/10/2021 Study unveils the quantum nature of the interaction between photons and free electrons 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.
- 05/10/2021 New way to simulate hydrogen storage efficiency of materials 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.
- 30/09/2021 Graphene valleytronics: Paving the way to small-sized room-temperature quantum computers 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.