The air around us may be carrying vastly more microscopic plastic than scientists ever realized.
Category: materials – Page 10
‘Pocket-type’ high-temperature superconducting coil achieves 44.86 tesla combined magnetic field
A research team led by Kuang Guangli and Jiang Donghui at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL), has developed a “pocket-type” high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil, achieving a record combined magnetic field of 44.86 tesla.
The coil, wound using domestically produced REBa₂Cu₃O₇₋ₓ (REBCO) tapes, generated 28.20 T at zero field in a liquid helium bath and produced an additional 10.36 T inside the 34.5 T steady-state magnetic field of the WM5 water-cooled magnet.
Steady high magnetic fields are critical for frontier research in materials science, physics, and biology, enabling scientists to observe new phenomena and explore new laws of matter. REBCO high-temperature superconducting material has become one of the optimal choices for developing devices that generate higher magnetic fields, owing to its high current-carrying capacity and favorable mechanical properties.
Discoveries rewrite how some minerals form and dissolve
Two related discoveries detailing nanocrystalline mineral formation and dynamics have broad implications for managing nuclear waste, predicting soil weathering, designing advanced bioproducts and materials and optimizing commercial alumina production.
The two recently published studies combine detailed molecular imaging and molecular modeling to sort out how gibbsite, a common aluminum-containing mineral, forms and dissolves in exquisite detail.
Cosmic rays from a nearby supernova may help explain Earth-like planets
How common are Earth-like planets in the universe? When I started working on supernova explosions, I never imagined that my research would eventually lead me to ask a question about the origin of Earth-like planets. Yet that is exactly where it brought me.
For decades, planetary scientists have believed that the early solar system was enriched with short-lived radioactive elements—such as aluminum-26—by a nearby supernova. These radioactive elements played a crucial role in forming water-depleted rocky planets such as Earth. Their decay heated young planetesimals, causing them to lose much of their originally accreted water and other volatile materials.
There was just one problem that kept bothering me.
New generator uses carbon fiber to turn raindrops into rooftop electricity
A research team affiliated with UNIST has introduced a technology that generates electricity from raindrops striking rooftops, offering a self-powered approach to automated drainage control and flood warning during heavy rainfall.
Led by Professor Young-Bin Park of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST, the team developed a droplet-based electricity generator (DEG) using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP). This device, called the superhydrophobic fiber-reinforced polymer (S-FRP-DEG), converts the impact of falling rain into electrical signals capable of operating stormwater management systems without an external power source. The findings are published in Advanced Functional Materials.
CFRP composites are lightweight, yet durable, and are used in a variety of applications, such as aerospace and construction because of their strength and resistance to corrosion. Such characteristics make it well suited for long-term outdoor installation on rooftops and other exposed urban structures.
Optical system uses diffractive processors to achieve large-scale nonlinear computation
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed an optical computing framework that performs large-scale nonlinear computations using linear materials.
Reported in eLight, the study demonstrates that diffractive optical processors—thin, passive material structures composed of phase-only layers—can compute numerous nonlinear functions simultaneously, executed rapidly at extreme parallelism and spatial density, bound by the diffraction limit of light.
Nonlinear operations underpin nearly all modern information-processing tasks, from machine learning and pattern recognition to general-purpose computing. Yet, implementing such operations optically has remained a challenge, as most nonlinear optical effects are weak, power-hungry, or slow.
A 30-Year Superconductivity Mystery Just Took a Sharp Turn
Superconductors are materials that allow electrical current to flow without any resistance, a property that typically appears only at extremely low temperatures. While most known superconductors follow established theoretical frameworks, strontium ruthenate, Sr₂RuO₄, has remained difficult to explain since researchers first identified its superconducting behavior in 1994.
The material is widely regarded as one of the purest and most thoroughly examined examples of unconventional superconductivity. Even so, scientists have not reached agreement on the exact nature of the electron pairing within Sr₂RuO₄, including its symmetry and internal structure, which are central to understanding how its superconductivity arises.
Sharp Diffraction Pattern Produced by Atoms Passing Through Graphene
Researchers have generated high-quality atom diffraction data from graphene, which could lead to new ways to measure surface interactions.
A beam of neutral atoms striking a material can produce a diffraction pattern that is sensitive to short-range interactions between the atoms and the surface. Building on recent developments, Pierre Guichard from the University of Strasbourg in France and collaborators have now used a fast hydrogen beam to probe single-layer graphene, producing the sharpest graphene diffraction patterns to date [1].
Early atom diffraction experiments predominantly looked at reflection, because atoms transmitted through a material tend to lose their wave-like coherence. Recently, however, transmitted atoms were shown to produce a diffraction pattern from single-layer graphene [2]. The trick was to use fast atoms that traverse the target quickly, minimizing coherence-destroying interactions.