Lifeboat Foundation

A new technique employing monochromatic light improves the study of internal structures in materials affected by light scattering, enabling detailed observation of particle concentrations.

When driving through a bank of fog, car headlights are only moderately helpful since the light is scattered by the water particles suspended in the air. A similar situation occurs when trying to observe the inside of a drop of milk in water or the internal structure of an opal gem with white light. In these cases, multiple light scattering effects prevent examination of the interior.

Continue reading “Revealing Hidden Worlds: Monochromatic Light Unveils the Secrets of Crystalline Drops” »

Researchers reveal a way to use antiferromagnets to create data-storage devices without moving parts.

Scientists have transformed memory device technology by utilizing antiferromagnetic materials and magnetic octupoles, achieving high speeds and low power consumption, paving the way for smaller, more efficient devices.

Advanced Magnetic Memory

In a chilling Italian lab, scientists utilize extreme cold and ancient materials to challenge existing physics laws.

Their research, aiming to detect phenomena like neutrinoless double beta decay, could redefine understanding of matter and antimatter in the universe, involving students in groundbreaking experiments.

Exploring the universe’s mysteries: the italian lab.

The Chinese military claims it has developed a new radar-defeating coating that can hide targets from anti-stealth radar.

According to the Chinese researchers, their new technology provides exceptional ultra-wideband low-frequency stealth capabilities without relying on heavy and costly magnetic materials.

Continue reading “China develops new stealth coating to blind anti-stealth radars” »

Paving the way for personalised 3D-printed implants.

Scientists 3D-print EPLM using bioink and living cells.

Using a 3D printer and a bioink, scientists create an “engineered plant living material” (EPLM) that harnesses the power of cells.

MIT physicists have taken a key step toward solving the puzzle of what leads electrons to split into fractions of themselves. Their solution sheds light on the conditions that give rise to exotic electronic states in graphene and other two-dimensional systems.

The new work is an effort to make sense of a discovery that was reported earlier this year by a different group of physicists at MIT, led by Assistant Professor Long Ju. Ju’s team found that electrons appear to exhibit “fractional charge” in pentalayer graphene — a configuration of five graphene layers that are stacked atop a similarly structured sheet of boron nitride.

Ju discovered that when he sent an electric current through the pentalayer structure, the electrons seemed to pass through as fractions of their total charge, even in the absence of a magnetic field. Scientists had already shown that electrons can split into fractions under a very strong magnetic field, in what is known as the fractional quantum Hall effect. Ju’s work was the first to find that this effect was possible in graphene without a magnetic field — which until recently was not expected to exhibit such an effect.

A new durable, biodegradable plastic breaks down in seawater, offering a potential solution to microplastic pollution.

This material, based on supramolecular structures, can be tailored for different uses and is fully recyclable, enhancing its environmental benefits.

New Sustainable Plastic

A new framework that embeds electrons in a surrounding bath captures nonlocal correlation effects that are relevant to metals, semiconductors, and correlated insulators.

Searching for new types of superconductors, magnets, and other useful materials is a bit like weaving a tapestry with threads of many different colors. The weaver selects a short-range (local) pattern for how the individual threads intertwine and at the same time chooses colors that will give an overall (nonlocal) mood. A materials scientist works in a similar way, mixing atoms instead of threads, trying to match the motion of their electrons—their correlations—on both local and nonlocal scales. Doing so by trial-and-error synthesis is time intensive and costly, and therefore numerical simulations can be of huge help. To contribute to bridging computations to material discovery, Jiachen Li and Tianyu Zhu from Yale University have developed a new approach that treats local and nonlocal electronic correlations on an equal footing [1] (Fig. 1). They demonstrated their method by accurately predicting the photoemission spectra of several representative materials.