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Private donors pledge $1 billion for world’s largest particle accelerator

Europe’s physics lab CERN on Thursday said private donors had pledged $1 billion toward the construction of a new particle accelerator that would be by far the world’s biggest.

In a first, private individuals and philanthropic foundations have backed a flagship research project at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.

The donors include the Breakthrough Prize Foundation of billionaire Silicon Valley investor Yuri Milner; the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation of former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; plus Italian Agnelli family heir John Elkann, and French telecoms tycoon Xavier Niel.

Research reinvents MXene synthesis at a fraction of the cost

MXenes (pronounced like the name “Maxine”) are a class of two-dimensional materials, first identified just 14 years ago, with remarkable potential for energy storage, catalysts, ultrastrong lightweight composites, and a variety of other purposes ranging from electromagnetic shielding to ink that can carry a current.

But manufacturing MXenes has been expensive, difficult and crude.

“MXenes have been made by a very elaborate, multi-step process that involved days of high-temperature work, followed by using dangerous chemicals like hydrofluoric acid and creating a lot of waste,” said Prof. Dmitri Talapin of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Department of Chemistry. “That may have been okay for early-stage research and lab exploration, but became a big roadblock for taking the next step to large-scale applications.”

Hybrid excitons: Combining the best of both worlds

Faster, more efficient, and more versatile—these are the expectations for the technology that will produce our energy and handle information in the future. But how can these expectations be met? A major breakthrough in physics has now been made by an international team of researchers from the Universities of Göttingen, Marburg, the Berlin Humboldt in Germany, and Graz in Austria.

The scientists combined two highly promising types of material—organic semiconductors and two-dimensional semiconductors—and studied their combined response to light using photoelectron spectroscopy and many-body perturbation theory.

This enabled them to observe and describe fundamental microscopic processes, such as energy transfer, at the 2D-organic interface with ultrafast time resolution, meaning one quadrillionth of a second. The combination of these properties holds promise for developing new technology such as the next generation of solar cells. The results are published in Nature Physics.

Batteries lose charge when they ‘breathe’: Understanding deterioration is a step toward longer-lasting batteries

Researchers have identified a key reason why the batteries used to power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles deteriorate over time, a critical step toward building faster, more reliable and longer-lasting batteries.

The research team from The University of Texas at Austin, Northeastern University, Stanford University and Argonne National Laboratory found that every cycle of charge and discharge causes batteries to expand and contract, similar to human breathing. This action causes battery components to warp just a tiny amount, putting strain on the battery and weakening it over time. This phenomenon, known as chemomechanical degradation, leads to reduced performance and lifespan.

The findings are published in the journal Science.

Putting the squeeze on dendrites: New strategy addresses persistent problem in next-generation solid-state batteries

New research by Brown University engineers identifies a simple strategy for combating a major stumbling block in the development of next-generation solid-state lithium batteries.

Solid-state batteries are considered the next frontier in energy storage, particularly for electric vehicles. Compared to current liquid electrolyte batteries, solid-state batteries have the potential for faster charging, longer range and safer operation due to decreased flammability. But there’s been a consistent problem holding back their commercialization: lithium dendrites.

Dendrites are filaments of lithium metal that can grow inside a battery’s electrolyte (the part of the battery that separates the anode from the cathode) during charging at high current. When they grow across the electrolyte, dendrites cause circuits between the battery’s anode and cathode, which destroy the battery. So while solid electrolytes can—in theory—enable faster charging than liquid electrolytes, the dendrite problem is one of the primary limitations that has to date prevented them from reaching that potential.

‘AI advisor’ helps self-driving labs share control in creation of next-generation materials

“Self-driving” or “autonomous” labs are an emerging technology in which artificial intelligence guides the discovery process, helping design experiments or perfecting decision strategies.

While these labs have generated heated debate about whether humans or machines should lead scientific research, a new paper from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) has proposed a novel answer: Both.

In the paper published in Nature Chemical Engineering, the team led by UChicago PME Asst. Prof. Jie Xu, who has a joint appointment at Argonne, outlined an “AI advisor” model that helps humans and machines share the driver’s seat in self-driving labs.

Archimedean screw inspires new way to encode chirality into magnetic materials

In physics and materials science, the term “spin chirality” refers to an asymmetry in the arrangement of spins (i.e., the intrinsic angular momentum of particles) in magnetic materials. This asymmetry can give rise to unique electronic and magnetic behaviors that are desirable for the development of spintronics, devices that leverage the spin of electrons and electric charge to process or store information.

The creation of materials that exhibit desired spin chirality and associated physical effects on a large scale has so far proved challenging. In a recent paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and other institutes introduced a new approach to encode chirality directly into materials by engineering their geometry at a nanoscale.

“Dirk and myself were initially inspired by the elegance of the Archimedean screw and began wondering whether we could build a magnonic analog, something that could ‘pump’ magnons (i.e., collective electron spin excitations) in a similarly directional way,” Dr. Mingran Xu, first author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.

SPHEREx telescope completes first full-sky infrared map in 102 colors

Launched in March, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope has completed its first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors.

While not visible to the human eye, these 102 infrared wavelengths of light are prevalent in the cosmos, and observing the entire sky this way enables scientists to answer big questions, including how a dramatic event that occurred in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang influenced the 3D distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies in our universe.

In addition, scientists will use the data to study how galaxies have changed over the universe’s nearly 14 billion-year history and learn about the distribution of key ingredients for life in our own galaxy.

Improved tracer labeling expands PET imaging possibilities

Imagine being able to watch organs and tissues work in real time. That’s the power of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging, a technology that gives physicians and researchers a window into cellular processes.

In research recently published in Science, Virginia Tech chemist Wei Liu and his graduate student Chao Wang have found a new way to tag molecules to aid in PET scans—leading to improved processes, better imaging, and possibly more effective treatments.

Physicists bring unruly molecules to the quantum party

Scientists have made leaps and bounds in bending atoms to their will, making them into everything from ultraprecise clocks to bits of quantum data. Translating these quantum technologies from obedient atoms to unruly molecules could offer greater possibilities. Molecules can rotate and vibrate. That makes molecules more sensitive to certain changes in the environment, like temperature.

“If you’re sensitive to something, it can be a curse, because you would like to not be sensitive, or it can be a blessing,” said NIST physicist Dietrich Leibfried. “You can use that sensitivity to your advantage.”

But that same sensitivity has made molecules difficult to control. Recently, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) achieved new levels of control over molecules. In a study published in Physical Review Letters, they were able to manipulate a calcium hydride molecular ion—made up of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of calcium, with one electron removed to make it a charged molecule—with almost perfect success. And this control opens possibilities for quantum technology, chemical research and exploring new physics.

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