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Category: particle physics – Page 142

The challenge of regulating the electronic structures of metal single-atoms (M-SAs) with metal nanoparticles (M-NPs) lies in the synthesis of a definite architecture. Such a structure has strong electronic metal-support interactions and maintains electron transport channels to facilitate carbon dioxide photoreduction (CO2PR).

In a study published in Advanced Powder Materials, a group of researchers from Zhejiang Normal University, Zhejiang A&F University and Dalian University of Technology, revealed the engineering of the of Pd single atoms with twinned Pd nanoparticles assisted by strong electronic interaction of the atomic metal with the support and unveiled the underlying mechanism for expedited CO2PR.

“As one of the most promising CO2PR semiconductors, polymeric graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) featured with sp2 π-conjugated lamellar structures can offer electronegative nitrogen atoms to anchor M-SAs, forming active metal-nitrogen moieties (M–Nx),” explained Lei Li, lead author of the study. “However, stable M–Nx configurations forbid tunability of electronic structures of M-SA sites.”

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The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge hosted a research programme on one of the most pressing problems in modern physics: to build a theory that can explain all the fundamental forces and particles of nature in one unifying mathematical framework. Such a theory of quantum gravity would combine two hugely successful frameworks on theoretical physics, which have so far eluded unification: quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity.

The Black holes: bridges between number theory and holographic quantum information programme focusses on black holes, which play a hugely important part in this area, on something called the holographic principle, and on surprising connections to pure mathematics. This collection of articles explores the central concepts involved and gives you a gist of the cutting edge research covered by the INI programme.

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Argonne’s Science 101 series takes you back to the basics, with plain-language explanations of the scientific concepts behind our pivotal discoveries and our biggest innovations.

In this Science 101 video, postdoctoral researchers Gillian Beltz-Mohrmann and Florian Kéruzoré explore two of the biggest mysteries in science: dark matter and dark energy. These strange influences seem to be stretching the universe apart and clumping stuff together in unexpected ways. Together, they make up a whopping 95% of the universe, but because we can’t see or touch them, we don’t know what they are.

Researchers around the globe, including scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, are investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy through large cosmological surveys, particle physics experiments and advanced computing and simulation.

Find out more about Argonne Science 101 ►► https://www.anl.gov/science-101

Continue reading “Science 101: What are Dark Matter and Dark Energy?” | >

‘Opposites charges attract; like charges repel’ is a fundamental principle of basic physics. But a new study from Oxford University, published in Nature Nanotechnology (“A charge-dependent long-ranged force drives tailored assembly of matter in solution”), has demonstrated that similarly charged particles in solution can, in fact, attract each other over long distances. Just as surprisingly, the team found that the effect is different for positively and negatively charged particles, depending on the solvent.

The study found that negatively charged silica microparticles suspended in water attracted each other to form hexagonally arranged clusters. (Image: Zhang Kang)

Besides overturning long-held beliefs, these results have immediate implications for a range of processes that involve interparticle and intermolecular interactions across various length-scales, including self-assembly, crystallisation, and phase separation.

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Experiments demonstrate some of the unusual features of molecular reactions that occur in the deep cold of interstellar space.

Many common small molecules are formed in interstellar space, and their low temperatures are expected to have profound effects on their chemical reactions because of quantum-mechanical effects that are masked at higher temperatures. Researchers have now demonstrated some of these cold chemistry phenomena—such as the effects of molecular rotation and collision energy on reaction rates—in a reaction between a hydrogen ion and an ammonia molecule in the lab. The results, while intuitively surprising at first glance, can be explained by a careful theoretical analysis of the quantum chemistry.

Measuring reaction rates at low temperatures is useful for testing quantum-chemical theory because in those conditions molecules may occupy only a few well-defined quantum states. Such experiments could also offer insights into chemical processes in the cold clouds of gas in star-forming regions of interstellar space, where many of the simple molecules that make up solar systems are formed. But low-temperature experiments are difficult, especially for charged atoms and molecules (ions), because they are very sensitive to stray electric fields in the environment, which accelerate and heat up the ions.

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You may never have heard of magnetars, but they are, in a nutshell an exotic type of neutron star whose magnetic field is around a trillion times stronger than the Earth’s.

To illustrate their strength, if you were to get any closer to a magnetar than about 1,000km (600 miles) away, your body would be totally destroyed.

Its unimaginably powerful field would tear electrons away from your atoms, converting you into a cloud of monatomic ions – single atoms without electrons– as EarthSkynotes.

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As silicon-based computer chips approach their physical limitations in the quest for faster and smaller designs, the search for alternative materials that remain functional at atomic scales is one of science’s biggest challenges.

In a groundbreaking development, researchers at the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence have engineered a protective film that shields quantum semiconductor layers just one atom thick from environmental influences without compromising their revolutionary quantum properties. This puts the application of these delicate atomic layers in ultrathin within realistic reach. The findings have been published in Nature Communications.

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A small combined team of material scientists from Sun Yat-sen University and Dalian University of Technology, both in China, has found that it is possible to make a single drop of water hop in desired ways by putting a magnetic particle inside of it and turning an electromagnet on and off. The research published in the journal ACS Nano.

The research team was investigating on-demand droplet transportation as part of a larger effort. To learn more about the possibility of inciting drops of liquid, in this case water, to move in desired ways, they set up several structures.

The researchers carved small grooves on a . The surface was then covered with a varnish known to prevent water absorption, thereby allowing droplets to form when splashed onto the surface. Once the droplets formed, the team placed a tiny piece of metal into each drop, where it was held in place by the forces that held the bubble shape. The entire surface was then placed over a set of electromagnets.

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Hydrogen (like many of us) acts weird under pressure. Theory predicts that when crushed by the weight of more than a million times our atmosphere, this light, abundant, normally gaseous element first becomes a metal, and even more strangely, a superconductor—a material that conducts electricity with no resistance.

Scientists have been eager to understand and eventually harness superconducting hydrogen-rich compounds, called hydrides, for practical applications—from levitating trains to particle detectors. But studying the behavior of these and other materials under enormous, sustained pressures is anything but practical, and accurately measuring those behaviors ranges somewhere between a nightmare and impossible.

Like the calculator did for arithmetic, and ChatGPT has done for writing five-paragraph essays, Harvard researchers think they have a foundational tool for the thorny problem of how to measure and image the behavior of superconductors at high pressure.

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