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Sapphire-grown semiconductor film sets bandgap record

Semiconductors with wider bandgaps could pave the way for smaller, more efficient electronics that can handle far higher voltages, but the wider this gap becomes, the harder it is to control how well a material conducts electricity. Now, a team led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University has shown that adding silicon to thin films of aluminum gallium oxide can keep this control intact at bandgaps wider than any semiconductor before it. Their research has been published in Nature.

In a semiconductor, electrons occupy two distinct ranges of energy. In the lower “valence band,” they are bound tightly to their atoms and can’t carry a current. If they gain enough energy, however, they can jump into the higher “conduction band,” where they move freely.

A semiconductor’s bandgap describes the energy required for an electron to make this leap and allows semiconductors to be switched between insulating and conducting states. Since wider bandgaps let materials withstand stronger electric fields, wide-bandgap semiconductors like gallium nitride and silicon carbide are already used in everything from fast phone chargers to electric vehicles.

Public health programs can ‘rewire’ social networks, study finds

An educational program intended to improve maternal and child health fundamentally altered the social fabric of the rural Honduran villages where it was implemented, a new Yale-led study finds. The findings, researchers say, have implications for interventions anywhere that seek to improve people’s well-being by disseminating information or changing behaviors through social contagion.

A prior study involving the same program in Honduras showed that exploiting social networks can enhance the effectiveness of public health and other interventions. This new study suggests that such initiatives also rewire existing social connections within the communities that receive them.

The study, based on a randomized controlled trial involving 8,331 people in 110 remote Honduran villages, found that the educational intervention not only changed whom people engaged with for health-related advice but also affected their friend and financial networks.

Clustering changes how charged polymers separate in water, challenging old assumptions

A polymer science revelation about how liquid mixtures separate could have major implications for human health, metabolism and disease, new research indicates. In a brief report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) Professor Matthew Tirrell and Freie Universität Berlin Professor Matthias Ballauff revealed previously overlooked factors at play in the separation of charged polyelectrolyte polymers in water, challenging assumptions that have dominated the field since the 1950s.

Research into this liquid-liquid phase separation has been “given new urgency,” Tirrell said, by recent work highlighting the process’s role in creating biomolecular condensates. These membraneless cellular structures, straddling the gap between biomolecules and cells in both size and function, perform many tasks necessary for life.

“Biomolecular condensates play important roles in stress response, signal transduction, metabolism, gene regulation and many human diseases,” said Tirrell, director of UChicago PME’s Institute for Materials and Sustainability. “Understanding the mechanisms that help them form makes understanding phase separation as important to biology as it is to physics or chemistry.”

Quantum interference traps electron waves in metal for first time

Ever since quantum mechanics first described particles, like electrons, as rippling waves, researchers have wondered if those waves could be trapped in place. Writing today in Science a century later, a team of Columbia University researchers reports waves of electrons becoming trapped for the first time in a metal called Pd₅AlI₂

“Quantum mechanics predicts that an electron wave can, theoretically, remain trapped even when there are infinitely many paths for it to escape. This effect is known from light waves, but it has never been seen before for electrons,” said Raquel Queiroz, a theoretical physicist at Columbia. It was a surprising discovery, and one that opens new possibilities for manipulating quantum states in metals.

Diamond laser system achieves 100% optical contrast in magnetic-field readout

Researchers at Fraunhofer IAF have developed a laser-enhanced quantum sensor that combines high magnetic-field sensitivity with a large dynamic range. Using laser threshold magnetometry, they improved the ratio of sensitivity and dynamic range by a factor of up to 590 compared with state-of-the-art approaches. The breakthrough is enabled by the first demonstration of 100% optical contrast, combined with strong laser readout signals. The results, published in Nature Communications, open up new prospects for medical diagnostics, navigation, and resource exploration.

Magnetic-field sensors based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are among the leading solid-state quantum sensors. They operate at room temperature, can be integrated into compact devices and enable vector magnetometry—the measurement of both the magnitude and direction of a magnetic field. Recent advances have improved their sensitivity into the sub-pT/√Hz range, a regime relevant for detecting cardiac signals.

Until now, however, researchers have had to make a trade-off: sensors with very high sensitivity offer only a very limited dynamic range, while more robust variants with a large dynamic range were considerably less sensitive.

Nontoxic ‘light-activated’ compound shows promise for safer 3D printing of advanced biomaterials

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a new class of light-activated compounds that could lead to safer and more versatile applications in 3D printing, cosmetics and medicine.

These compounds, known as aryl diazirine photoinitiators, are used to solidify liquid resins into hard plastics with speed and precision using light. The current industry-standard photoinitiators often face issues of toxicity and poor solubility in water.

The NTU study, published in NPG Asia Materials, demonstrates that the new aryl diazirine photoinitiators are not only nontoxic to human cells but also offer superior performance, including reduced material shrinkage and compatibility with water-based sustainable resins. The paper is titled “Non-toxic aryl diazirine photoinitiators.”

Scientists Turn Major Crude Oil Problem Into an Unexpected Energy Breakthrough

A simple membrane uses crude oil’s own deposits to separate lighter components at room temperature, with simulations suggesting nearly one-third less energy use when paired with distillation.

Refineries heat crude oil above 350°C (662°F) to separate a mixture that supplies transportation fuels and raw materials for plastics, packaging, textiles, and other consumer products. This century-old process, called distillation, vaporizes the oil and then cools the vapor to recover different fractions. Worldwide, crude oil distillation consumes approximately 1,100 terawatt-hours of energy each year, roughly the annual output of 130 gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants operating continuously.

An international research team has demonstrated a simple, inexpensive membrane that could handle part of this separation at room temperature, without heating. As crude oil flows through it, components of the oil create the narrow channels that allow the membrane to distinguish between lighter and heavier molecules.

Forgotten Material From the 1960s Is Hiding Something Unexpected

A long-overlooked material has revealed a hidden atomic pattern that challenges conventional expectations about magnetism.

A uranium compound that has received little scientific attention for decades has been found to contain a previously unknown atomic structure with unusual magnetic properties. The discovery could help researchers identify materials capable of supporting faster, more resilient computer memory.

Scientists discovered a repeating, twisted arrangement of atoms known as a chiral superlattice inside uranium oxytelluride (UOTe). The structure appears to play a central role in how electrons move through the crystal, which exhibits an uncommon combination of two different types of magnetism. The findings were published online October 7 in Nature.

Arista Warns of Critical VeloCloud SQL Injection Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks

Attackers are exploiting a zero-day SQL injection flaw in Arista’s VeloCloud Orchestrator (VCO), the central management system for VeloCloud SD-WAN networks, the company said in an advisory on October 22.

The flaw lets anyone who can log in to the orchestrator, even with a read-only customer account, gain operator privileges, the top level of control over it.

For on-premises orchestrators, the fix is in VCO 5.2.3.18, 6.1.3.10, and 6.4.2.12, while Hosted and Dedicated orchestrators have already been patched.