ScienceDaily

Nanowires -- microscopic fibers that can be "grown" in the lab -- are a hot research topic today, with a variety of potential applications including light-emitting diodes and sensors. Now, researchers has found a way of precisely controlling the width and composition of these tiny strands as they grow, making it possible to grow complex structures that are optimally designed for particular applications.

Scientists have succeeded for the first time in simulating the dynamic behavior of strongly correlated individual atoms in solids. They were able to string atoms in so-called optical lattices and observe their dynamic behavior, which is determined by complex interactions with other atoms.

Pulsars, which already have produced two Nobel Prizes, are providing scientists with unique insights on topics from particle physics to General Relativity.

Researchers have produced technology capable of accurate measurements of Planck's constant, which is a significant step towards changing the international definition of the kilogram -- currently based on a lump of platinum-iridium metal kept in Paris, France.

The smallest transistor ever built -- in fact, the smallest transistor that can be built -- has been created using a single phosphorus atom by an international team of researchers.

In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, physicists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal. The tiny electronic device uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom.

While there have been major advances in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of tumors within the brain, brain cancer continues to have a very low survival rate in part to high levels of resistance to treatment. New research has used Sendai virus to transport Quantum Dots (Qdots) into brain cancer cells and to specifically bind Qdots to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) which is often over-expressed and up-regulated in tumors.

Researchers are pioneering the development of electron microscopes which will allow scientists to examine a greater variety of materials in new revolutionary ways.

The old saw that a watched pot never boils may not apply to pots given an ultra-thin layer of aluminum oxide, which researchers have reported can double the heat transfer from a hot surface to a liquid.

By using some of light's "spooky" quantum properties, researchers have created images of objects that might otherwise be hidden from view.

Using high-speed cameras to look at jets of plasma in the lab, researchers have made a discovery that may be important in understanding phenomena like solar flares and in developing nuclear fusion as a future energy source.

A new NASA satellite instrument that makes a quantum leap forward in detector technology has arrived at Orbital Sciences Corp. in Gilbert, Ariz. There it will be integrated into the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).

Carbon nanotubes and graphene consist of just a couple of layers of carbon atoms, but they are lighter than aluminium, stronger than steel and can bend like spring-coils. Physicists have been studying the unique properties of the materials, which in future may result in improved electronics and light, strong material.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will run with a beam energy of 4 TeV this year, 0.5 TeV higher than in 2010 and 2011.

At ETH Zurich in 1920, the chemist Hermann Staudinger postulated the existence of macromolecules consisting of many identical modules strung together like a chain. For this he was initially rewarded with mockery and incomprehension in professional circles. But Staudinger was to be proven right: today the macromolecules described as polymers are known as plastics, and by 1950 one kilogram of them was already being produced per capita worldwide.

Measurements from high-energy collision experiments lead to a better understanding of why meson particles disappear.

Researchers have built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste.

Microscopic channels of gold nanoparticles have the ability to transmit electromagnetic energy that starts as light and propagates via "dark plasmons," according to researchers.

Individual cells modified to act as sensors using fluorescence are already useful tools in biochemistry, but now they can add good timing to their resume.

By harnessing quantum dots, researchers have developed a new and vastly more targeted way to stimulate neurons in the brain. Being able to switch neurons on and off and monitor how they communicate with one another is crucial for understanding -- and, ultimately, treating -- a host of brain disorders.

At the high-brilliance synchrotron light source PETRA III, scientists have succeeded in making atomic nuclei transparent with the help of X-ray light. At the same time they have also discovered a new way to realize an optically controlled light switch that can be used to manipulate light with light, an important ingredient for efficient future quantum computers.

Researchers have learned how to improve the performance of sensors that use tiny vibrating microcantilevers to detect chemical and biological agents for applications from national security to food processing.

At the nano level, researchers have discovered a new way to weld together meshes of tiny wires. Their work could lead to exciting new electronics and solar applications. To succeed, they called upon plasmonics.

As the number of knee and hip joint replacements grows, nanodiamond coatings could answer problems related to metal surfaces.

Aerospace engineers have developed a prototype device that could power a pacemaker using a source that is surprisingly close to the heart of the matter: vibrations in the chest cavity that are due mainly to heartbeats.

Researchers have developed a relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods to self-assemble into aligned and ordered macroscopic structures. This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices and sensors, and boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.

Physicists have created the first "frequency comb" in the extreme ultraviolet band of the spectrum, high-energy light less than 100 nanometers in wavelength. Laser-generated frequency combs are the most accurate method available for precisely measuring frequencies, or colors, of light. The new tool can aid in the development of "nuclear clocks" based on ticks in the nuclei of atoms, and measurements of previously unexplored behavior in atoms and molecules.

Scientists from The Netherlands, Sweden and Ukraine claim a breakthrough in the theory of ultrafast magnetic phenomena.

Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices. With unique properties and potential applications in areas from electronics to biodevices, graphene, which consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms, has been hailed as a rising star in the materials world. Now, a new study suggests that point defects, composed of silicon atoms that replace individual carbon atoms in graphene, could aid attempts to transfer data on an atomic scale by coupling light with electrons.

Researchers are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems.

In a flash, the world changed for Tim Noe -- and for physicists who study what they call many-body problems. The graduate student was the first to see, in the summer of 2010, proof of a theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence.

Researchers have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem.

Using computer simulations, researchers have shown that the oxygen molecule (O₂) is stable up to pressures of 1.9 terapascal, which is about nineteen million times higher than atmosphere pressure. Above that, it polymerizes, i.e. builds larger molecules or structures.

A kitchen gadget that vacuum seals food in plastic inspired a physicist to improve the performance of organic transistors for potential use in video displays.

Does antimatter weigh more than matter? Physicists want to know. Their finding could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate. In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of positronium -- a bound state between a positron and an electron. They separated the positron from the electron long enough to measure gravity's effect on them.

Researchers in the US have, for the first time, cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, bringing the much-talked-about invisibility cloak one step closer to reality.

A quantum computer based on quantum particles instead of classical bits, can in principle outperform any classical computer. However, it still remains an open question, how fast and how efficient quantum computers really may be able to work. A critical limitation will be given by the velocity with which a quantum signal can spread within a processing unit. For the first time, a group of physicists has succeeded in observing such a process in a solid-state like system.

Scientists have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery. The researchers aimed SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world's first "atomic X-ray laser."

Researchers working at the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a 2-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat takes scientists a significant step forward in understanding the most extreme matter found in the hearts of stars and giant planets, and could help experiments aimed at recreating the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.

Scientists are reporting the first 3-D images of an individual protein ever obtained with enough clarity to determine its structure.

The planet Jupiter keeps asteroids on stable orbits -- and in a similar way, electrons can be stabilized in their orbit around the atomic nucleus. Calculations have now been verified in a new experiment.

Physicists have built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom. Scientists have shown that they could make an electron orbit the atomic nucleus in the same way that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids orbit the sun. The findings uphold a 1920 prediction by physicist Niels Bohr.

Physicists have identified a property of "bilayer graphene" that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics. The physicists found that when the number of electrons on the BLG sheet is close to 0, the material becomes insulating -- a finding that has implications for the use of graphene as an electronic material in the semiconductor and electronics industries.

Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn’t even know it’s there. Engineering researchers coated pieces of gold, copper, and silicon with a single layer of graphene, and then placed a drop of water on the coated surfaces. Surprisingly, the layer of graphene proved to have virtually no impact on the manner in which water spreads on the surfaces.

Physicists have observed a new kind of interaction that can arise between electrons in a single-atom silicon transistor, offering a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that govern electron conduction in nano-structures at the atomic scale.

Researchers have combined two fields -- quantum physics and nano physics -- and this has led to the discovery of a new method for laser cooling semiconductor membranes. Semiconductors are vital components in many electronics, and the efficient cooling of components is important for future quantum computers and ultrasensitive sensors. The new cooling method works quite paradoxically by heating the material. Using lasers, researchers cooled membrane fluctuations to minus 269 degrees C.

Scientists have investigated theoretically the mechanism of hyperthermic potentiation of cancers using magnetic nanoparticles, which enables selective heating of hidden micro cancer tissue, and clarified the fact that the nanoparticles under large magnetic fields form unique oriented states, depending respectively on subtle differences in their local environment in the cancer tissue and consequently affect the optimum heating conditions.

Scientists have selectively grown polymer nanowires using only irradiation with a pulsed laser, in a region limited to the area of irradiation. They also succeeded in imparting diverse functionalities to the nanowires by doping with various species of nanomaterials.

By tweaking the smallest of parts, engineers are hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.

Scientists have developed a new way to create Terahertz waves (T-rays) that may one day lead to biomedical detective devices similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek.

Researchers have discovered that changing the shape of a solar concentrator significantly increases its efficiency, bringing its use closer to reality.

Researchers have succeeded in combining the power of quantum computing with the security of quantum cryptography and have shown that perfectly secure cloud computing can be achieved using the principles of quantum mechanics. They have performed an experimental demonstration of quantum computation in which the input, the data processing, and the output remain unknown to the quantum computer.

Scientists determine the smallest possible cubic lead sulfide cluster that exhibits the same coordination (a key structural property) as bigger bulk crystals.

Scientists have achieved a 100-fold increase in the ability to maintain control the spins of electrons in a solid material, a key step in the development of ultrafast quantum computers.

How liquid can a fluid be? This is a question particle physicists have been working on. The “most perfect liquid” is nothing like water, but the extremely hot quark-gluon-plasma which is produced in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. New theoretical results show that this quark-gluon plasma could be even less viscous than was deemed possible by previous theories.

Researchers have devised a proposal for the first conclusive experimental test of a phenomenon known as 'Bell's nonlocality.' This test is designed to reveal correlations that are stronger than any classical correlations, and do so between high-energy particles that do not consist of ordinary matter and light. These results are relevant to the so-called 'CP violation' principle, which is used to explain the dominance of matter over antimatter.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is arguably one of the most famous foundations of quantum physics. It says that not all properties of a quantum particle can be measured with unlimited accuracy. Until now, this has often been justified by the notion that every measurement necessarily has to disturb the quantum particle, which distorts the results of any further measurements. This, however, turns out to be an oversimplification, researchers now say.

A terahertz transmitter has generated the highest frequency ever attained by a microelectronic device. The innovative device is also minuscule and operates at room temperature, which could lead to it paving the way for new applications in, e.g., nondestructive testing or medical diagnostics.

Scientists have developed a new method for optical manipulation of matter at the nanoscale. Using ‘plasmonic hotspots’ – regions with electric current that heat up very locally – gold nanostructures can be melted and made to produce the smallest nanojets ever observed. The tiny gold nanodroplets formed in the nanojets, are perfectly spherical, which makes them interesting for applications in medicine.

Using several massive supercomputers, a team of physicists has split a simulated electron perfectly in half. The results are another example of how tabletop experiments on ultra-cold atoms and other condensed-matter materials can provide clues about the behavior of fundamental particles.