Science Daily February 21, 2022 Unlike hydrogel ionic liquids don’t evaporate like water, they are electrically and thermally stable and conduct electricity well, raising interesting opportunities for future applications. An international team of researchers (USA – North Carolina State University, University Nebraska, Australia) has developed a simple one step method for making ionogel. They copolymerized monomers of polyacrylic acid in a solution of ionic liquid using ultraviolet light resulting in a copolymer that incorporates both monomers and the ionic liquid itself. The resulting gel has the stretchability of polyacrylic acid, stronger than the polyacrylamide, and better than cartilage in toughness. […]
A new platform for customizable quantum devices
Phys.org February 24, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Columbia University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University) focused on a group of molecules with a central chromium atom surrounded by four hydrocarbon molecules to demonstrate how a particular molecular family of qubits can be finely tuned over a broad spectrum. They used synthetic chemistry to modify the physics of the qubits. Using the ligand field strength, they demonstrated remarkable fine tuning and showed that the ligand field strengths are adjustable over a relatively broad spectrum, and that it also controls the molecule’s electronic properties. The light emitted by […]
Physicists harness electrons to make ‘synthetic dimensions’
Phys.org February 21, 2022 To push spatial boundaries researchers at Rice University developed a technique to engineer the Rydberg states of ultracold strontium atoms by applying resonant microwave electric fields to couple many states together, making the levels look like particles that just move around between locations in space. Rydberg atoms possess many regularly spaced quantum energy levels, which can be coupled by microwaves that allow the highly excited electron to move from level to level. They demonstrated their techniques by making a 1D lattice using lasers to cool strontium atoms and applied microwaves with alternating weak and strong couplings […]
Scientists greatly expand the frequencies generated by a miniature optical ruler
Phys.org February 23, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (NIST, University of Maryland) has produced a microcomb using two lasers, each generating a different frequency of light, instead of just one. They found that through a complex series of interactions with the soliton light circulating in the microring resonator, the second laser induced two new sets of teeth, or evenly spaced frequencies, that are replicas of the original set of teeth but shifted to higher and lower frequencies. The lower frequency set lies in the infrared part of the spectrum, while the other is at much high frequencies, […]
Self-healing materials for robotics made from ‘jelly’ and salt
Science Daily February 18, 2022 There are numerous challenges in the deployment of wearable devices with soft sensing technologies due to their poor resilience, high energy consumption, and omnidirectional strain responsivity. Researchers in the UK have developed a versatile ionic gelatin-glycerol hydrogel for soft sensing applications. The device is inexpensive and easy to manufacture, self-healable at room temperature, can undergo strains of up to 454%, presents stability over long periods of time, and is biocompatible and biodegradable. The material is ideal for strain sensing applications, with a linear correlation coefficient R2 = 0.9971 and a pressure-insensitive conduction mechanism. The experimental results show […]
Tongan volcano eruption leaves scientists with unanswered questions [24 minutes]
Nature Podcast February 16, 2022 On the 15th of January, a volcano in the South Pacific Ocean erupted, sending ash into the upper atmosphere, and unleashing a devastating tsunami that destroyed homes on Tonga’s nearby islands. Now scientists are trying to work out exactly what happened during the eruption — and what it means for future volcanic risks. Podcast
Versatile ‘nanocrystal gel’ could enable advances in energy, defense, and telecommunications
Science Daily February 18, 2022 By using reversibly bonded molecular linkers, gelation can be realized in nanocrystal gels that can be made into responsive and tunable materials. However, there is no experimental means to monitor linking leading to gelation. Researchers at UT Austin developed a metal coordination linkage with a distinct optical signature that allowed them to quantify linking in situ and establish structural and thermodynamic bases for assembly. Because of coupling between linked indium tin oxide nanocrystals, their infrared absorption shifted abruptly at a chemically tunable gelation temperature. They quantified bonding spectroscopically and used molecular simulation to understand temperature-dependent […]
Wallet-sized device focuses terahertz energy to generate high-resolution images
EurekAlert February 18, 2022 Researchers at MIT have built the most precise, electronically steerable, terahertz antenna array, called “reflectarray” which contains nearly 10,000 antennas onto a device the size of a credit card. It can precisely focus a beam of terahertz energy on a tiny area and control it rapidly with no moving parts. The researchers demonstrated the device by generating 3D depth images with military-grade resolution and twice the angular resolution of those produced by a large radars. The new phase shifter design consumes no power at all. The reflectarray uses one main source of energy to fire terahertz […]
Why the Tongan eruption will go down in the history of volcanology
Nature.com February 19, 2022 The eruption that devastated Tonga on 15 January lasted just 11 hours, but it will take years for scientists to work out exactly what happened during the cataclysmic explosion — and what it means for future volcanic risks. Geochemical analysis of that material, described in a paper found that the 2009 and 2014–15 eruptions involved molten rock that had not risen recently from the great depths of Earth’s mantle. Instead, it had spent some time in a magma chamber located 5–8 kilometres deep in Earth’s crust and gone through some tell-tale chemical changes before ultimately erupting […]
World’s smallest battery can power dust-sized computer
Nanowerk February 19, 2022 The size and adequate energy storage mismatch between microbatteries and microelectronics has emerged as a fundamental barrier against the take-off of tiny intelligent systems requiring power anytime anywhere. The on-chip self-assembly process known as micro-origami is capable of winding stacked thin films into Swiss-roll structures to reduce the footprint area, which exactly mimics the manufacture of the most successful full-sized batteries—cylinder batteries. In addition to discussing in detail the technical difficulties of reducing the size of on-chip microbatteries with various structures and potential solutions, researchers in Germany highlight the following two basic requirements for eventual integration […]