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Category: particle physics – Page 2

Dust-resilient perovskite solar cells could cut manufacturing costs and expand green energy worldwide

Research appearing in Communications Materials has shown that perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are remarkably resilient to dust during production, challenging the industry belief that high-performance solar technology must be manufactured in sterile and expensive cleanrooms. This discovery could reduce the need for ultra-clean factories, making solar cell production cheaper and more accessible worldwide.

PSCs are a new type of technology that uses a unique crystal structure to harvest light. They are thinner, lighter, and potentially much cheaper to produce than the traditional silicon panels found on roofs today. However, traditional silicon cells are incredibly fragile during the making process; even a single microscopic dust particle can ruin a cell. This forces manufacturers to use expensive, energy-hungry cleanrooms, creating a massive barrier to production in developing nations.

Researchers at Swansea University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering have now found that perovskite technology has a unique tolerance to common dust and debris.

Now you see it, now you don’t: Material can transition between quantum states

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has identified a rare, switchable quantum property in a new type of nickel sulfide material. The discovery could have applications in high-speed transistors, adaptive sensors and other devices that require a material’s electronic structure to be controlled on the fly. The research is published in the journal Matter.

The compound, KxNi4S2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1), contains nickel and sulfur sandwiched between layers of potassium. The “(0 ≤ x ≤ 1)” in the name means that the amount of potassium in the material can vary from no potassium at all to a full potassium atom, depending on the sample.

First detailed in a 2021 paper, it was created as part of an ongoing quest to develop more superconductors. As researchers examined the layered material’s characteristics, they happened upon a remarkable feature: applying an electrical current could drive the potassium layers out, collapsing the sandwich and changing the material’s structure.

New ultra-fast particle detector could help unmask dark matter

The CMS experiment at CERN is building a new detector that will unravel the chaotic particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, helping scientists identify particles based on their speeds.

What if Olympic officials could record sprinters’ times only to the nearest minute? “We would know who started the race, and who finished the race, but that’s it,” said Bryan Cardwell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Virginia. “There’s no way to know who arrived first and who arrived last.”

Cardwell and his colleagues on the CMS experiment are currently tackling a similar problem. The CMS experiment records the tracks and properties of subatomic particles created by the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. As it stands, physicists get a picture of all the particles produced in a collision, but they have insufficiently detailed information about when the particles were produced or how fast they were traveling, making it difficult to tell them apart.

Microsoft-backed start-up raises $40 million for helium atom beam lithography that could print chips at atomic resolution — 0.1nm beam is 135 times narrower than ASML’s EUV light

Lace Lithography, a Norwegian start-up backed by Microsoft, raised $40 million in Series A funding on Monday to develop a chipmaking tool that uses a helium atom beam instead of light to pattern silicon wafers, Reuters reported. The company claims its technology can create chip features 10 times smaller than current lithography systems, with a beam width of just 0.1 nanometers compared to the 13.5nm wavelength used by ASML’s EUV scanners. Lace aims to have a test tool running in a pilot fab by 2029.

The advantage of Lace’s system is that atoms don’t have a diffraction limit, whereas photon-based lithography, including ASML’s EUV systems, is constrained by the wavelength of the light it uses. As chipmakers push features smaller, they rely on increasingly complex multi-patterning techniques to work around that limit, but Lace sidesteps the problem entirely by replacing photons with neutral helium atoms and a beam measuring roughly the width of a single hydrogen atom.

Teleportation is no longer just science fiction—at the quantum level

(Science fiction’s “warp drive” is speeding closer to reality.)

Inspired by science fiction, they landed on “quantum teleportation.” Since then, the idea has gone from theoretical concept to an experimentally verified reality. The first experiments in the late 1990s showed that quantum states could be transmitted across short distances, while subsequent research proved it works across increasingly longer distances—even to and from low Earth orbit, as Chinese scientists demonstrated in 2017. They’ve achieved quantum teleportation by taking advantage of quantum entanglement, a natural phenomenon in which tiny particles can become linked with each other across infinite distances.

Quantum teleportation is very different from the teleportation of matter we see in fiction. It involves transferring a quantum state without moving any matter. And while experts say it won’t lead to Star Trek-esque beaming, it could help bring about a new era of computing that revolutionizes our understanding of the subatomic world—and by extension, of the nature of the universe and everything within it.

Boron arsenide semiconductor sets record in quantum vibrations

You may not be able to hear it, but all solid materials make a sound. In fact, atoms—bound in lattices of chemical bonds—are never silent nor still: Under the placid surface of each and every object in our surroundings, a low hum hovers or a high-energy squeak titters.

As atoms vibrate in their lattices, they do so by either all moving in the same direction, in which case their collective vibration shows up as a low humming sound, or by moving in opposite directions from one another, giving rise to an energetic vibration that registers as a bright squeak or titter.

New NMR method allows the observation of chalcogen bonds

Toward the right side of the periodic table below oxygen, are the chalcogens, or “ore-forming” elements. The chalcogens that occur naturally, including sulfur, selenium and tellurium, are all somehow involved in biological processes. Molecules containing sulfur, like the antioxidant glutathione, play a central role in redox regulation, the balance between oxidation and reduction that is essential for maintaining cellular health.

Recent studies have suggested that the heavier selenium and tellurium are active in biological redox systems as well, but the instability of molecules containing chains of different chalcogen atoms has made structural analysis difficult.

Traditional methods have largely relied on mass spectrometry, which cannot be used to directly observe molecular bonds. This limitation motivated a team of researchers at Kyoto University to develop a method that would allow them to more clearly observe chains of chalcogens. The paper is published in the journal ACS Measurement Science Au.

CERN hails delicate test on transporting antimatter as a scientific success

Scientists in Geneva took some antiprotons out for a spin—a very delicate one—in a truck, in a never-tried-before test drive that has been deemed a success.

If this so-called antimatter had come into contact with actual matter, even for a fraction of an instant, it would have been annihilated in a quick flash of energy. So experts at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, had to be extra careful when they took 92 antiprotons on the road for a short ride on Tuesday.

The antiprotons were suspended in a vacuum inside a specially designed box and held in place by supercooled magnets.

New light trap design supercharges atom-thin semiconductors

Scientists have found a clever way to supercharge ultra-thin semiconductors by reshaping the space beneath them rather than altering the material itself. By placing a single-atom-thick layer of tungsten disulfide over tiny air cavities carved into a crystal, they created miniature “light traps” that dramatically boost brightness and optical effects—up to 20 times stronger emission and 25 times stronger nonlinear signals. These hollow structures, called Mie voids, concentrate light exactly where the material sits, overcoming a major limitation of atomically thin devices.

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