Phys.org May 18, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, Michigan Technological University) developed and demonstrated a mechanism that enhances the magnitude of the piezoelectric coefficient of a ceramic. Through extensive characterization conducted using high-resolution microscopy and diffraction techniques in conjunction with the computational models they found that chemical heterogeneity and anisotropy are the underlying mechanisms that govern the piezoelectric performance of ceramic materials. They showed that by aligning all the grains in a ceramic material along certain crystallographic axes they could get a very high piezoelectric response. They achieved close to 2,000 picocoulombs per Newton. […]
The way of water: Making advanced electronics with H2O
Science Daily May 16, 2022 The next generation of photovoltaics, semiconductors and LEDs could be made using perovskites. The presence of moisture can lead to defects in the materials, causing them to fall apart more quickly when they’re being used in a device. Researchers in Australia found a simple way to control the growth of phase-pure perovskite crystals by harnessing water as a positive factor by changing the ratio of water to solvent during the early stages of the process, they could choose to grow different types of perovskite crystals, with structures to suit various purposes. They identified that the […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of May 13, 2022
01. Energy researchers invent chameleon metal that acts like many others 02. Computational sleuthing confirms first 3D quantum spin liquid 03. Hidden distortions trigger promising thermoelectric property 04. It takes three to tangle: Long-range quantum entanglement needs three-way interaction 05. Laser bursts drive fastest-ever logic gates 06. On-chip circuit produces up to six microwave photons at the same time 07. Optical cavities could provide new technological possibilities 08. Physicists discover light-induced mechanism for controlling ferroelectric polarization 09. Quantum one-way street in topological insulator nanowires 10. Researchers find way to form diodes from superconductors And others… A New Age of Bioterror: […]
Computational sleuthing confirms first 3D quantum spin liquid
Phys.org May 10, 2022 Finding convincing evidence that quantum spin liquids exist in actual physical materials has been a decades-long challenge. In a 2019 study led by Rice university found the first evidence that cerium zirconium pyrochlore was a quantum spin liquid. To build a convincing case, an international team of researchers (USA – Florida State University, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, UCLA, Rice University, Germany) developed a model and tested it against thermodynamic, neutron-scattering and magnetization results from previously published experimental studies of cerium zirconium pyrochlore. They matched three different pieces of evidence: that a version of monopoles does […]
Energy researchers invent chameleon metal that acts like many others
Phys.org May 9, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (University of Minnesota, UMass Amherst, UC Santa Barbara) has invented a device called catalytic condenser that allowed them to tune the number of electrons at the surface of the catalyst converting one metal to behave like another. They fabricated the catalytic condenser by combining nano-scale film of alumina with graphene, which could be electronically tuned. The condenser uses a combination of nanometer films to move and stabilize electrons at the surface of the catalyst. The power of the device to stabilize electrons is tunable with varying composition of a […]
Hidden distortions trigger promising thermoelectric property
Science Daily May 9, 2022 Conventional structure transitions occur from a low symmetry state to a higher symmetry state upon warming. An international team of researchers (USA – Northwestern University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Germany) found an unexpected local symmetry breaking in the tetragonal diamondoid compound silver gallium telluride. Upon warming, it evolved continuously from an undistorted ground state to a locally distorted state while retaining average crystallographic symmetry. This is a rare phenomenon previously referred to as emphanisis. The distorted state, caused by the weak orbital hybridization of tetrahedral Ag atoms, resulted in their displacement of the tetrahedron center and […]
It takes three to tangle: Long-range quantum entanglement needs three-way interaction
Science Daily 6, 2022 Researchers in Japan provide simple theorems that show what kinds of long-range entanglement can survive at nonzero temperatures. At temperatures above absolute zero, quantum entanglement must contend with thermal jostling of particles, which is detrimental to long-range entanglement persisting at sufficiently high temperatures. Unlike high-temperature phases, however, there are relatively low temperatures in which not all long-range quantum effects are strictly prohibited, and long-range entanglement can survive even at room temperatures. They proved that entanglement between two subsystems has a finite characteristic length scale at arbitrary temperatures regardless of the system details and the spatial dimension. […]
Laser bursts drive fastest-ever logic gates
Phys.org May 11, 2022 Recently it was experimentally demonstrated that strong non-resonant few-cycle laser pulses can be used to induce phase-controllable currents along gold–silica–gold nanojunctions in the absence of a bias voltage. Since the effect depends on a highly non-equilibrium state of matter, its microscopic origin is unclear and the subject of recent controversy. An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Rochester, Georgia State University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Canada) has presented atomistically detailed electronic transport simulations that recover the main experimental observations and offered a simple intuitive picture of the effect. The […]
A New Age of Bioterror: Anticipating Exploitation of Tunable Viral Agents
CTC at West Point APRIL 2022, VOLUME 15, ISSUE 4 According to a team of researchers in the US (Boston College, US Military Academy, West Point, Brooke Army Medical Center) scientists are employing gene editing tools to cure genetic diseases, reduce the effects of climate change, and generate sustainable food sources. These same tools, however, can be used to modify pathogens to develop and deploy novel biological weapons. The nature of these tools and our understanding of specific viral genomes makes this process tunable. Components of a disease such as transmissibility, lethality, and the infectious window can potentially be modified […]
On-chip circuit produces up to six microwave photons at the same time
Phys.org May 10, 2022 An international team of researchers (France, Germany) built a on-chip circuit which is a simple battery-biased superconducting tunnel junction in series with a microwave resonator. At discrete values of the battery voltage, a dc current flows through the circuit, with the emission of several photons at the resonator frequency for each superconducting pair of electrons that tunnels across the junction. They measured the total microwave power emitted and characterized the granularity of the emission both of which were good agreement with a simple theoretical model. In particular, at a small transparency of the tunnel junction, they […]