Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has, for the first time in the world, generated and controlled skyrmions at room temperature in a two-dimensional (2D) material. This achievement reduces power consumption compared to traditional three-dimensional (3D) systems while maximizing quantum effects, making...
Advanced light-control surface enables new optical encryption
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Light passing through most transparent materials, like glass lenses or windows, behaves the same way regardless of which direction it travels. This property, known as Lorentz reciprocity, governs most optical systems except special cases involving magneto-optic effects, nonlinear responses, or temporal modulation. Scientists can manipulate...
Quantum vortices confirm superfluidity in supersolid
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Matter that behaves like both a solid and a superfluid at the same time seems impossible. Yet, more than 50 years ago, physicists predicted that quantum mechanics allows such a state, where a collection of indistinguishable particles can simultaneously exhibit seemingly contradictory properties. “It is...
Self shocks turn crystal to glass at ultralow power density
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) In breakthrough collaborative work published today in Nature ("Electrically driven long-range solid-state amorphization in ferroic In2Se3"), researchers show that a material called indium selenide can “shock” itself to transform from a crystalline to glassy phase using very low power. This transformation lies at the heart...
Green techniques and 3D electron diffraction for new MOF
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are porous crystalline materials whose structure resembles a scaffold of beams around a large empty space; this internal space can be used to store gases like hydrogen and methane or to absorb impurities. The research team led by Mauro Gemmi at the...
Nanoparticles designed to trap and neutralise large amounts of SARS-CoV2
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from the IBB-UAB have developed a new class of nanostructures capable of trapping and neutralising large quantities of the SARS-CoV2 virus particles, both in liquid solutions and on the surface of materials. These novel nanoparticles could be used to manufacture antiviral materials such as...
A step closer to artificial photosynthesis
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Mimicking how plants convert sunlight into energy has long been a dream for scientists aiming to create renewable energy solutions. Artificial photosynthesis is a process that seeks to replicate nature’s method, using sunlight to drive chemical reactions that generate clean energy. However, creating synthetic systems...
Robotics enables cleaner interfaces in stacked sheets of layered 2D materials
Nov 06, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Researchers used a special robotic system to assemble very large pieces of atomically clean two-dimensional materials into stacks. The study, published in Small ("Mechanisms of Interface Cleaning in Heterostructures Made from Polymer-Contaminated Graphene"), involved materials called graphene heterostructures. These are sheets just atoms thick made...