Chemical physicists quantitatively model electron interactions in real quantum materials
A team of scientists from Caltech and Yale University has shown for the first time how to accurately quantify an important quantum phenomenon in metals, called the Kondo effect, f…
The hidden chemistry behind glow-in-the-dark art
Some of the world's brightest colors don't just reflect light; they create it. Scientists and museum conservators are now uncovering why these luminous pigments fade and how to pr…
Bright ideas accelerate the hunt for quantum emitters
The search for materials that can power future quantum technologies is accelerating, but identifying the most promising candidates remains painfully slow. Evaluating whether a mat…
Process doubles the size of PFAS molecules, making them easy to destroy
Ask a chemist to name the strongest single bond in organic chemistry, and they'll likely say carbon-fluorine. It's that bond, repeated dozens of times over, that gives per- and po…
Blood-clotting protein may be SARS-CoV-2's hidden accomplice, helping it hide from antibodies and reach blood vessels
Fibrinogen, the abundant plasma protein best known for forming blood clots, may play a second and far less benign role during SARS-CoV-2 infection: acting as a molecular bridge th…
How fusion reactions can survive flaws—up to a point
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have found that implosions designed for inertial fusion energy (IFE) can tolerate significant imperfections before per…
Supersized quantum sensors make faint photons easier to catch
Our everyday life is flooded with photons, the quantum building blocks of light. For cutting-edge technology, from quantum computing to deep-tissue imaging, detecting every single…
Molecular trick opens the door to a new generation of glass
Researchers at TU Dortmund University, Paderborn University, the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the University of Oxford have developed a new method for selectively modifying t…
Deuterium enables chip waveguides to generate broadband light from infrared pulses
A research team from Singapore, led by Associate Professor Dawn Tan of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Dr. Luo Xianshu, head of the Silicon Photonics …
Metal ceramics under AI control: A new approach for calculating the mechanical properties of materials
Researchers from the Skoltech Materials Center have proposed a new approach to modeling the mechanical properties of heterogeneous materials, combining machine learning with activ…
Vacuum-fluctuation-enhanced superconductivity demonstrated for the first time
In a study published in Nature on Aug. 19, a research team has enhanced superconductivity through vacuum fluctuations for the first time. The achievement marks a significant advan…
Ball milling enhances the antiviral activity of inexpensive inorganic materials
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, developing surfaces that can inactivate viruses upon contact has become an important goal in public health care. Ideally, such surfaces would work on …
What happens inside a wildfire? A Ph.D. student is finding out
What happens during a wildfire? The short answer is: much more than we know. As wildfires burn through trees, grasses and other vegetation, heat from the flames sets off thousands…
Mapping thorium's preferred sites could pave the way for nuclear clocks
For decades, physicists have used a technique called Mössbauer spectroscopy to peer inside solid materials, revealing fine details of their surroundings by studying how their atom…
One step closer to the ideal glass—simulations reveal hidden order at absolute zero
In the physical sense, glass is not limited to familiar window glass; it forms whenever a liquid is cooled so quickly that it cannot crystallize. As a result, glass has an amorpho…
Corners in focus: Metasurface enables motion tracking without digital image processing
A research team at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) has developed a new optical corner-detection imaging method that uses azimuthal Hilbert transform metasurfaces and is des…
Scientists identify design rules for the best thermoelectric materials
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used a theoretical framework to derive design rules for creating new thermoelectric materials. The efficiency of converting the…
New free-space optical link adds a wireless component to the nation's longest quantum network
There's a new lighthouse on Long Island. But instead of shining light to guide ships through waterways, this one transmits and receives particles of light that carry quantum infor…
The superconducting gap of an ultrathin nickelate defies expectations
Superconductors are materials that carry electrical current with zero resistance below a specific critical temperature. In conventional superconductors, the transition to supercon…
Quantum computer microscope is set to significantly improve electron microscopy
Electron microscopes are used wherever particularly small details need to be imaged. But from a strictly physical point of view, every electron in a conventional electron microsco…
Blowing in the wind, humble balloon gets green makeover
A global symbol of parties and celebrations but an environmental headache, the humble balloon is undergoing a green revolution thanks to U.K. researchers.
Computer models pinpoint catalysts for replacing fossil-fueled ammonia production
Ammonia is one of the most important chemicals produced in the world, ranking second only to sulfuric acid in the total volume produced each year. It is used mostly to make fertil…
Complex odors prove easier to map than expected with machine learning
If you want to describe a particular color, you could look to the Pantone color wheel to find its exact hue, saturation and brightness, and how it compares with other colors. But …
Laser-cut aluminum foil could replace costly terahertz polarizers
When physicists at the ARC Centre for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) needed a key component for their terahertz experiments, they ran into a frustrating problem—they n…