Nanowerk April 30, 2024 Electronically conductive protein-based materials can enable the creation of bioelectronic components and devices from sustainable and nontoxic materials, while also being well-suited to interface with biological systems for biosensor applications. However, as proteins are generally electrical insulators, the ability to render protein assemblies electroactive in a tailorable manner can usher in a plethora of useful materials. An international team of researchers (Australia, USA – UC Berkeley) developed a process to fabricate electronically conductive protein nanowires by aligning heme molecules in proximity along protein filaments, with the nanowires also possessing charge transfer abilities that enabled energy harvesting […]
Groundbreaking microcapacitors could power chips of the future
Nanowerk May 6, 2024 Currently state-of-the-art miniaturized electrochemical energy storage systems face safety, packaging, materials, and microfabrication challenges preventing on-chip technological readiness. A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkeley, MIT, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) demonstrated record-high electrostatic energy storage density (ESD) and power density (PD) in HfO2- ZrO2-based thin film microcapacitors integrated on silicon, through a three-pronged approach. To increase intrinsic energy storage, they engineered atomic-layer-deposited antiferroelectric HfO2-ZrO2 films near a field-driven ferroelectric phase transition; antiferroelectric superlattice engineering scaled the total energy storage performance; and the superlattices were conformally integrated into three-dimensional capacitors to increase storage-per-footprint. Integration of […]
A leap toward carbon neutrality: New catalyst converts carbon dioxide to methanol
Phys.org May 6, 2024 In gas-fed flow electrolyzers equipped with gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs), the reduction of CO2 by Cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) selectively produces CO with minimal CH3OH formation. Researchers at the University of Michigan showed that the limited performance of the CO2–CO–CH3OH cascade reactions by CoPc was primarily due to the competitive binding between the CO2 and CO species. They determined that the effective equilibrium constant for CO2 binding was three times higher than that for CO binding. The stronger CO2 binding suppresses the CO-to-CH3OH reaction even at moderate local CO2 concentrations. CH3OH formation was observed when the local […]
Marriage of synthetic biology and 3D printing produces programmable living materials
Phys.org May 1, 2024 An international team of researchers (UK, China) integrated biocompatible hydrogel microparticles (HMPs) primed for 3D bioprinting with Agrobacterium tumefaciens capable of plant cell transfection, serving as the backbone for the simultaneous growth and transformation of tobacco BY-2 cells. The system facilitated the concurrent growth and genetic modification of tobacco BY-2 cells within their specially designed scaffolds which enabled the cells to develop into predefined patterns while remaining conducive to the uptake of exogenous DNA. The patterns developed through the integration of the betalain biosynthetic pathway into tobacco BY-2 cells. According to the researchers their work opens […]
New quantum sensing scheme could lead to enhanced high-precision nanoscopic techniques
Phys.org May 4, 2024 Researchers in the UK developed a high sensitivity quantum sensing scheme for transverse displacement between two photons interfering at a balanced beam splitter. It is based on transverse-momentum sampling measurements at the output. They showed that their interferometric technique achieved the ultimate spatial precision in nature irrespective of the overlap of the two displaced photonic wave packets. The precision of the technique was marginally reduced when dealing with photons differing in nonspatial degrees of freedom. Their work could lead to enhanced high-precision nanoscopic techniques, such as super-resolved single-molecule localization microscopy with quantum dots, by circumventing the […]
Physicists arrange atoms in extremely close proximity
MIT News May 2, 2024 The wavelength of light sets a typical length scale for most experiments to the order of 500 nanometers (nm) or greater. Researchers at MIT implemented a super-resolution technique that localizes and arranges atoms on a sub–50-nm scale, without any fundamental limit in resolution. They demonstrated this technique by creating a bilayer of dysprosium atoms and observing dipolar interactions between two physically separated layers through interlayer sympathetic cooling and coupled collective excitations. At 50-nm distance, dipolar interactions were 1000 times stronger than at 500 nm. According to the researchers for two atoms in optical tweezers, this […]
Research team discovers new property of light
Phys.org May 7, 2024 The nature of enhanced photoemission in disordered and amorphous solids is an intriguing question. An international team of researchers (Russia, USA – UC Irvine) studied structural photoemission in heterogeneous cross-linked silicon glass, a material that represents an intermediate state between the amorphous and crystalline phases, characterized by a narrow distribution of structure sizes. The model system showed a clear dependence of photoemission on size and disorder across a broad range of energies. While phonon-assisted indirect optical transitions are insufficient to describe observable emissions, their experiments suggested these could be understood through electronic Raman scattering. They attributed […]
Researcher: Climate models can run for months on supercomputers—but my new algorithm can make them ten times faster
Phys.org May 4, 2024 Marine and terrestrial biogeochemical models are key components of the Earth System Models (ESMs) used to project future environmental changes, but their slow adjustment time also hinders effective use of ESMs because of the enormous computational resources required to integrate them to a pre-industrial equilibrium. Researchers in the UK developed a process based on “sequence acceleration” to accelerate equilibration of state-of-the-art marine biogeochemical models by over an order of magnitude. The technique could be applied in a “black box” fashion to existing models. Even under the challenging spin-up protocols used for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change […]
Researchers unveil single-shot and complete polarization imaging system using metasurfaces
Phys.org May 2, 2024 When light scatters off an object, its polarization, in general, changes—a transformation described by the object’s Mueller matrix. Mueller matrix imaging is an important technique in science and technology to image the spatially varying polarization response of an object of interest, to reveal rich information otherwise invisible to traditional imaging. An international team of researchers (USA – UC San Diego, Germany) conceptualized, implemented, and demonstrated a compact Mueller matrix imaging system—composed of a metasurface to produce structured polarization illumination and a metasurface for polarization analysis—that could, in a single shot, acquire all 16 components of an […]
Scientists test for quantum nature of gravity
Science Daily May 2, 2024 If the metric of spacetime has a quantum mechanical description, its fluctuations at the Planck scale are expected to introduce non-unitary effects that are inconsistent with the standard unitary time evolution of quantum mechanics. Neutrinos interacting with such fluctuations would lose their quantum coherence, deviating from the expected oscillatory flavour composition at long distances and high energies. A team of researchers from several countries used atmospheric neutrinos detected by the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory in the energy range of 0.5–10.0 TeV to search for coherence loss in neutrino propagation. They found no evidence of anomalous […]