Blog
- Prolonged photostability in hexagonal boron nitride quantum emitters 08/05/2023 Single-photon emitters are crucial building materials suited for optical quantum technologies. Among them, hexagonal boron nitride is a promising two-dimensional material that retains bright, room-temperature single-photon emitters. However, photo-instability is an existing challenge to facilitate applications of these properties in practice.
- Alloy takes on improbable 'negative pressure' structure 04/05/2023 A central feature of physical chemistry is materials’ tendency to adopt different structures at different pressures – including negative ones. But the idea of using negative pressure to reshape a material sounds experimentally impossible. But US researchers have developed a technique to drive alloys into structures that, in a pure material, would be stable only at negative pressures. The technique could allow the synthesis of a variety of new, potentially-useful materials previously thought almost inaccessible.
- Highly charged ions melt nano gold nuggets 02/05/2023 Normally, we have to make a choice in physics: Either we deal with big things—such as a metal plate and its material properties, or with tiny things—such as individual atoms. But there is also a world in between: The world of small but not yet tiny things, in which both effects of the macroscopic world and effects of the microscopic world play a role.
- Researchers fabricate mechanical metamaterials with ultra-high energy absorption capacity 27/04/2023 Chinese researchers have successfully fabricated mechanical metamaterials with ultra-high energy absorption capacity using ion track technology. The results were published in Nature Communications as an Editor's Highlight.
- Organometallic boost pushes perovskite solar cells to new record for efficiency and stability 25/04/2023 Adding an organometallic compound to a perovskite solar cell can enhance their efficiency and their stability spectacularly, enabling them to run for 1000 hours with only a minimal drop in performance. The researchers believe the cells can now take the first steps towards commercialisation.
- Team develops the world's smallest and fastest nano-excitonic transistor 20/04/2023 How can Marvel movie character Ant-Man produce such strong energy out of his small body? The secret lies in the transistors on his suit that amplify weak signals for processing. Transistors that amplify electrical signals in the conventional way lose heat energy and limit the speed of signal transfer, which degrades performance. What if it were possible to overcome such limitations and make a high-performance suit that is light and small but without the loss of heat energy?
- Study reveals origin of superconductivity in nickelates 18/04/2023 Nickelates are a material class that has excited scientists because of its recently discovered superconducting ability, and now a new study led by Cornell has changed where scientists thought this ability might originate, providing a blueprint for how more functional versions might be engineered in the future.
- Fully recyclable printed electronics ditch toxic chemicals for water 13/04/2023 Engineers at Duke University have produced the world's first fully recyclable printed electronics that replace the use of chemicals with water in the fabrication process. By bypassing the need for hazardous chemicals, the demonstration points down a path industry could follow to reduce its environmental footprint and human health risks.
- Discovery of ferroelectricity in an elementary substance 11/04/2023 National University of Singapore (NUS) physicists have discovered a novel form of ferroelectricity in a single-element bismuth monolayer that can produce regular and reversible dipole moments for future applications of non-volatile memories and electronic sensors.
- Using operando Raman spectroscopy to investigate converting carbon dioxide to ethanol on Ag nanowires 07/04/2023 In a study, published in the journal Science China Chemistry and led by Prof. Pingping Fang (School of Chemistry, Zhejiang University) and Prof. Jianfeng Li (College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University), experiments were performed by using an Xplora Raman spectrometer with a 50x microscope objective and an excitation wavelength of 638 nm from a He–Ne laser.
- Discovery of a new topological phase could lead to exciting developments in nanotechnology 05/04/2023 Cambridge researchers have discovered a new topological phase in a two-dimensional system, which could be used as a new platform for exploring topological physics in nanoscale devices.