Tiny movements, deep inside a battery

Apr 05, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have used a cutting-edge X-ray technique to view the movements of components inside an operating battery cell. The study (Journal of Power Sources, "Visualizing electrode assembly movement and lithiation heterogeneity in lithium-metal batteries using...

A new type of photonic time crystal gives light a boost

Apr 05, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have developed a way to create photonic time crystals and shown that these bizarre, artificial materials amplify the light that shines on them. These findings, described in a paper in Science Advances ("Metasurface-based realization of photonic time crystals"), could lead to more efficient and...

Hubble unexpectedly finds double quasar in distant universe

Apr 05, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The early universe was a rambunctious place where galaxies often bumped into each other and even merged together. Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based observatories, astronomers investigating these developments have made an unexpected and rare discovery: a pair of gravitationally bound...

Looking at nanomagnets in the right light

Apr 05, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Magnetic nanostructures have long permeated our daily lives, manifesting as swift and compact data storage devices or highly sensitive sensors. A crucial tool for understanding many relevant magnetic effects and functions is X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD), a sophisticated term that denotes a fundamental interaction...

Efficient nanostructuring of glass with elliptically polarized pulses

Apr 04, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Photoexcitation, particularly photoionization, represents a vital aspect of light-matter interactions in nature, with applications spanning photosynthesis in plants, vision in biology, photography, and laser processing of materials. Conventional wisdom posits that the transformation of a substance is weaker when less light is absorbed. However, our...

Novel electrospun nonwovens fuse exceptional electrical conductivity and remarkably low thermal conductivity

Apr 04, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A groundbreaking study by researchers at the University of Bayreuth, published in Science Advances ("Extremely low thermal conductivity and high electrical conductivity of sustainable carbonceramic electrospun nonwoven materials"), introduces innovative electrospun nonwovens with the rare fusion of exceptional electrical conductivity and remarkably low thermal conductivity....