{"id":118877,"date":"2021-01-25T20:23:44","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T04:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/physicists-succeed-in-filming-phase-transition-with-extremely-high-spatial-and-temporal-resolution"},"modified":"2021-01-25T20:23:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T04:23:44","slug":"physicists-succeed-in-filming-phase-transition-with-extremely-high-spatial-and-temporal-resolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/physicists-succeed-in-filming-phase-transition-with-extremely-high-spatial-and-temporal-resolution","title":{"rendered":"Physicists succeed in filming phase transition with extremely high spatial and temporal resolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Laser beams can be used to change the properties of materials in an extremely precise way. This principle is already widely used in technologies such as rewritable DVDs. However, the underlying processes generally take place at such unimaginably fast speeds and at such a small scale that they have so far eluded direct observation. Researchers at the University of G\u00f6ttingen and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in G\u00f6ttingen have now managed to film, for the first time, the laser transformation of a crystal structure with nanometre resolution and in slow motion in an electron microscope. The results have been published in the journal Science.<\/p>\n

The team, which includes Thomas Danz and Professor Claus Ropers, took advantage of an unusual property of a material made up of atomically thin layers of sulfur and tantalum atoms. At room temperature<\/a>, its crystal structure<\/a> is distorted into tiny wavelike structures\u2014a \u201ccharge-density wave\u201d is formed. At higher temperatures, a phase transition occurs in which the original microscopic waves suddenly disappear. The electrical conductivity also changes drastically, an interesting effect for nano-electronics.<\/p>\n

In their experiments, the researchers induced this phase transition with short laser pulses and recorded a film of the charge-density wave reaction. \u201cWhat we observe is the rapid formation and growth of tiny regions where the material was switched to the next phase,\u201d explains first author Thomas Danz from G\u00f6ttingen University. \u201cThe ultrafast transmission electron microscope<\/a> developed in G\u00f6ttingen offers the highest time resolution for such imaging in the world today.\u201d The special feature of the experiment lies in a newly developed imaging technique, which is particularly sensitive to the specific changes observed in this phase transition. The G\u00f6ttingen physicists use it to take images that are composed exclusively of electrons that have been scattered by the crystal\u2019s waviness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laser beams can be used to change the properties of materials in an extremely precise way. This principle is already widely used in technologies such as rewritable DVDs. However, the underlying processes generally take place at such unimaginably fast speeds and at such a small scale that they have so far eluded direct observation. Researchers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}