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Category: particle physics – Page 4

Organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs, are a type of photoluminescence device that utilizes organic compounds to produce light. Compared to traditional LEDs, OLEDs have shown to be more efficient, can be built into super-thin and flexible materials, and have higher dynamic range in image quality. To further develop better OLEDs, researchers around the world work to understand the fundamental chemistry and physics behind the technology.

Now, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a new analytical model that details the kinetics of the exciton dynamics in OLED materials. The findings, published in Nature Communications, have the potential to enhance the lifetime of OLED devices, and accelerate the development of more advanced and efficient materials.

Fluorescence devices like OLEDs light up because of , or excitons. When you add energy into atoms, their electrons get excited and jump to a higher energy state. When they come back down to their regular energy state, they produce .

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A research study led by Oxford University has developed a powerful new technique for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. This could end a decades-long search for inexpensive materials that can host unique quantum particles, ultimately facilitating the mass production of quantum computers.

The results have been published in the journal Science.

Quantum computers could unlock unprecedented computational power far beyond current supercomputers. However, the performance of quantum computers is currently limited, due to interactions with the environment degrading the quantum properties (known as quantum decoherence). Physicists have been searching for materials resistant to quantum decoherence for decades, but the search has proved experimentally challenging.

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Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That’s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.

Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity.

The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.

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Muons are elementary particles that resemble electrons, but they are heavier and decay very rapidly (i.e., in just a few microseconds). Studying muons can help to test and refine the standard of particle physics, while also potentially unveiling new phenomena or effects.

So far, the generation of muons in experimental settings has been primarily achieved using proton accelerators, which are large and expensive instruments. Muons can also originate from , rays of high-energy particles originating from outer space that can collide with atoms in the Earth’s atmosphere, producing muons and other secondary particles.

Researchers at the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Guangdong Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and other institutes recently introduced a new method to produce muons in experimental settings, using an ultra-short high-intensity laser.

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Nature categorizes particles into two fundamental types: fermions and bosons. While matter-building particles such as quarks and electrons belong to the fermion family, bosons typically serve as force carriers—examples include photons, which mediate electromagnetic interactions, and gluons, which govern nuclear forces.

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Solid-state batteries are seen as a game-changer for the future of energy storage. They can hold more power and are safer because they don’t rely on flammable materials like today’s lithium-ion batteries. Now, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUMint. Energy Research have made a major breakthrough that could bring this future closer.

They have created a new material made from lithium, antimony, and a small amount of scandium. This material allows lithium ions to move more than 30 percent faster than any known alternative. That means record-breaking conductivity, which could lead to faster charging and more efficient batteries.

Led by Professor Thomas F. Fässler, the team discovered that swapping some of the lithium atoms for scandium atoms changes the structure of the material. This creates specific gaps, so-called vacancies, in the crystal lattice of the conductor material. These gaps help the lithium ions to move more easily and faster, resulting in a new world record for ion conductivity.

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Some of the most promising materials for future technologies come in layers just one atom thick, such as graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, prized for its exceptional strength and conductivity. While hundreds of such materials exist, truly merging them into something new has remained a challenge. Most efforts simply stack these atom-thin sheets like a deck of cards, but the layers typically lack significant interaction between them.

An international team of researchers led by Rice University materials scientists has succeeded in creating a genuine 2D hybrid by chemically integrating two fundamentally different 2D materials—graphene and —into a single, stable compound called glaphene, according to a study published in Advanced Materials.

“The layers do not just rest on each other; electrons move and form new interactions and vibration states, giving rise to properties neither material has on its own,” said Sathvik Iyengar, a doctoral student at Rice and a first author on the study.

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Coherently controlling the motion of single atoms in optical tweezers would enable new applications in quantum information science. To demonstrate this, we first prepared atoms in their motional ground state using a species-agnostic cooling mechanism…

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