Lifeboat Foundation

Physicist Christian Schneider has been awarded a prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his groundbreaking research into two-dimensional materials and their optical properties. Schneider, a professor at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, will receive approximately two million euros in funding over the next five years to support his “Dual Twist” project.

This research focuses on a novel class of atomically thin materials and their remarkable properties, which hold significant promise for advancing optical technologies.

Together with his team, Schneider will develop experimental set-ups specially designed to study the unique properties of the materials under investigation using light, and pave the way for their application in novel quantum technologies. ERC Consolidator Grants aim to support excellent scientists conducting innovative research in Europe and help them to consolidate their scientific independence. Out of a total of 2,313 applications, the ERC has now selected 328 projects for funding, 67 of which are based in Germany.

Researchers at MIT have developed a design framework for controlling ultrasound wave propagation in microscale acoustic metamaterials, focusing on the precise positioning of microscale spheres within a lattice.

This approach enables tunable wave velocities and responses, and is applicable in fields like ultrasound imaging and mechanical computing.

Acoustic Metamaterials

’The world’s best’ graphene ink, which can be used for printed electronics—such as an intelligent t-shirt that measures your pulse—has been developed in collaboration with the Danish Technological Institute in a MADE demonstration project. The newly developed ink has already opened new markets for the company Danish Graphene.

Imagine a super-strong spider web that can bend and stretch without breaking.

Continue reading “New graphene ink enables the smart wearables of the future” »

Scientists have made a satisfying and intriguing physics discovery some 16 years after it was first predicted to be a possibility: a quasiparticle (a group of particles behaving as one) that only has an effective mass when moving in one direction.

In physics, mass generally refers to a property of particles that relates to things like their energy and resistance to movement. Yet not all mass is built the same – some describes the energy of a particle at rest, for example, while mass may also take into account the energy of a particle’s motion.

In this case, the effective mass describes the quasiparticle’s response to forces, which varies depending on whether the movement through the material is up and down, or back and forth.

University of Central Florida (UCF) researcher Debashis Chanda, a professor at UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, has developed a new technique to detect long wave infrared (LWIR) photons of different wavelengths or “colors.”

The research was recently published in Nano Letters.

The new detection and imaging technique will have applications in analyzing materials by their spectral properties, or spectroscopic imaging, as well as thermal imaging applications.

Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) have developed a surface material that repels water droplets almost completely. Using an entirely innovative process, they changed metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)—artificially designed materials with novel properties—by grafting hydrocarbon chains.

The resulting superhydrophobic (extremely water-repellent) properties are interesting for use as self-cleaning surfaces that need to be robust against environmental influences, such as on automobiles or in architecture. The study was published in the journal Materials Horizons.

MOFs (metal-organic frameworks) are composed of metals and organic linkers that form a network with empty pores resembling a sponge. Their volumetric properties—unfolding two grams of this material would yield the area of a football pitch—make them an interesting material in applications such as gas storage, carbon dioxide separation, or novel medical technologies.

A research team from NIMS and UTokyo has proposed and demonstrated that the transverse magneto-thermoelectric conversion in magnetic materials can be utilized with much higher performance than previously by developing artificial materials comprising alternately and obliquely stacked multilayers of a magnetic metal and semiconductor.

The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

When a temperature gradient is applied to a magnetic conductor, a charge current is generated in a direction orthogonal to the directions of both temperature gradient and magnetization of the magnetic conductor.

Copper-oxide (CuO₂) superconductors, such as Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ (Bi2212), have unusually high critical temperatures. Optical reflectivity measurements of Bi2212 have shown that it exhibits strong optical anisotropy. However, this has not been studied through optical transmittance measurements, which can offer more direct insights into bulk properties.

Now, researchers have elucidated the origin of this optical anisotropy through ultraviolet and visible light transmittance measurements of lead-doped Bi2212 single crystals, enabling a more precise investigation into its superconductivity mechanisms. Their research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Superconductors are materials which conduct electricity without any resistance when cooled down below a critical temperature. These materials have transformative applications in various fields, including electric motors, generators, high-speed maglev trains, and magnetic resonance imaging.

Photonic space-time crystals enhance light interaction and amplification, offering new applications in optical information processing.

Photonic space-time crystals are advanced materials designed to enhance the performance and efficiency of technologies like wireless communication and lasers. These crystals have a unique structure that is periodically arranged in three spatial dimensions and also changes over time, allowing precise control of light’s behavior. Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in collaboration with Aalto University, the University of Eastern Finland, and Harbin Engineering University in China, have demonstrated how these four-dimensional materials can be applied in real-world technologies. Their findings were published in Nature Photonics.

Photonic Time Crystals