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Category: materials – Page 35

How did life on Earth begin, and were the ingredients for life already on Earth or were they brought here from space? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as a team of researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge investigated how ancient meteorites could have deposited large amounts of zinc on Earth, resulting in the development of volatile elements to form the building blocks of life. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the conditions for life to have emerged on the Earth long ago, and potentially worlds throughout the solar system and beyond.

“One of the most fundamental questions on the origin of life is where the materials we need for life to evolve came from,” said Dr. Rayssa Martins, who is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study. “If we can understand how these materials came to be on Earth, it might give us clues to how life originated here, and how it might emerge elsewhere.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed zinc obtained from several meteorites to ascertain how the Earth got its zinc during its formation, which is estimated to have lasted tens of millions of years. In the end, the researchers estimate that while “melted” planetesimals contributed to approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s overall mass, they only contributed approximately 10 percent of the Earth’s zinc, which came from “unmelted” planetesimals. As noted, zinc contains volatile elements, which include oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, or the essential building blocks of life as we know it. Along with helping researchers better understand how life formed and evolved on Earth, this could also lead to greater insight into how life might form and evolve on other worlds, as well.

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Research on superconductivity has taken a significant leap with Princeton Universitys exploration of edge supercurrents in topological superconductors like molybdenum telluride.

Initially elusive, these supercurrents have been observed and enhanced through experiments with niobium, leading to intriguing phenomena such as stochastic switching and anti-hysteresis, altering the understanding of electron behavior in superconductors.

Superconductivity and Topological Materials.

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Researchers have succeeded in developing a framework for organic thermoelectric power generation from ambient temperature and without a temperature gradient. Thermoelectric devices are devices that can convert heat into electrical energy. Researchers have now developed a thermoelectric device composed of organic materials that can generate electricity from ambient temperature alone. The device is made from copper phthalocyanine and copper hexadecafluoro phthalocyanine as charge $transfer materials and was combined with fullerenes and BCP as electron transport layers.

Researchers have developed a new organic thermoelectric device that can harvest energy from ambient temperature. While thermoelectric devices have several uses today, hurdles still exist to their full utilization. By combining the unique abilities of organic materials, the team succeeded in developing a framework for thermoelectric power generation at room temperature without any temperature gradient. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Thermoelectric devices, or thermoelectric generators, are a series of energy-generating materials that can convert heat into electricity so long as there is a temperature gradient — where one side of the device is hot and the other side is cool. Such devices have been a significant focus of research and development for their potential utility in harvesting waste heat from other energy-generating methods.

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Researchers at the Quantum Machines Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) are studying levitating materials – substances that can remain suspended in a stable position without any physical contact or mechanical support. The most common type of levitation occurs through magnetic fields. Objects such as superconductors or diamagnetic materials (materials repelled by a magnetic field) can be made to float above magnets to develop advanced sensors for various scientific and everyday uses.

Prof. Jason Twamley, head of the unit, and his team of OIST researchers and international collaborators, have designed a floating platform within a vacuum using graphite and magnets. Remarkably, this levitating platform operates without relying on external power sources and can assist in the development of ultra-sensitive sensors for highly precise and efficient measurements. Their results have been published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

When an external magnetic field is applied to diamagnetic materials, these materials generate a magnetic field in the opposite direction, resulting in a repulsive force – they push away from the field. Therefore, objects made of diamagnetic materials can float above strong magnetic fields. For instance, in maglev trains, powerful superconducting magnets create a strong magnetic field with diamagnetic materials to achieve levitation, seemingly defying gravity.

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When something draws us in like a magnet, we take a closer look. When magnets draw in physicists, they take a quantum look. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University and the University of Tokyo have successfully used light to visualize tiny magnetic regions, known as magnetic domains, in a specialized quantum material. Their study was published in Physical Review Letters.

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UC Santa Barbara researchers have achieved the first-ever “movie” of electric charges traveling across the interface of two different semiconductor materials. Using scanning ultrafast electron (SUEM) techniques developed in the Bolin Liao lab, the research team has directly visualized the fleeting phenomenon for the first time.

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Researchers have developed a novel graphene-germanium hot-emitter transistor using a new hot carrier generation mechanism, achieving unprecedented performance. This advancement opens new possibilities for low-power, high-performance multifunctional devices.

Transistors, the fundamental components of integrated circuits, encounter increasing difficulties as their size continues to shrink. To boost circuit performance, it has become essential to develop transistors that operate on innovative principles. Hot carrier transistors, which harness the extra kinetic energy of charge carriers, offer the potential to enhance transistor speed and functionality. However, their effectiveness has been constrained by conventional methods of generating hot carriers.

A team of researchers led by Prof. Chi Liu, Prof. Dongming Sun, and Prof. Huiming Cheng from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a novel hot carrier generation mechanism called “stimulated emission of heated carriers (SEHC).” The team has also developed an innovative hot-emitter transistor (HOET), achieving an ultralow sub-threshold swing of less than 1 mV/dec and a peak-to-valley current ratio exceeding 100. The study provides a prototype of a low-power, multifunctional device for the post-Moore era.

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The team of chemists and composite materials researchers discovered a broadly applicable method of bonding plastics and synthetic fibers at the molecular level in a procedure called cross-linking. The cross-linking takes effect when the adhesive is exposed to heat or long-wave UV light making strong connections that are both impact-resistant and corrosion-resistant. Even with a minimal amount of cross-linking, the materials are tightly bonded.

“It turns out the adhesive is particularly effective in high-density polyethylene, which is an important plastic used in bottles, piping, geomembranes, plastic lumber, and many other applications,” says Professor Abbas Milani, director of UBC’s Materials and Manufacturing Research Institute, and the lead researcher at the Okanagan node of the Composite Research Network. “In fact, commercially available glues didn’t work at all on these materials, making our discovery an impressive foundation for a wide range of important uses.”

UVic Organic Chemistry Professor Jeremy Wulff, whose team led the design of the new class of cross-linking materials, collaborated with the UBC Survive and Thrive Applied Research to explore how it performed in real-world applications.

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