Category Physics

Scientists from Boson College and Harvard turned to copper to create a first-of-its-kind iridate – Cu2IrO3 – where the natural magnetic order is disrupted, a state known as geometric frustration. Credit: Boston College

Honeycomb lattice meets elusive standards of the Kitaev model. Researchers from Boston College and Harvard have created an elusive honeycomb-structured material capable of frustrating the magnetic properties within it in order to produce a chemical entity known as “spin liquid,” long theorized as a gateway to the free-flowing properties of quantum computing, according to a new report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The first-of-its-kind copper iridate metal oxide – Cu2IrO3 – is one where the natural magnetic order is disrupted, a state known as geometric fru...

A single crystal of CaFe2As2 (scale bar 1 mm). Right: a micropillar of CaFe2As2, used to test its elasticity (scale bar 1 ?m). Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Ames Laboratory

Scientists have discovered super-elastic shape-memory properties in a material that could be applied for use as an actuator in the harshest of conditions, such as outer space, and might be the first in a whole new class of shape memory materials. These materials “remember” their original shape and return to it after they are deformed. They are commonly metallic alloys that make possible “unbreakable” eyeglass frames and quieter jet engines.

But the material in this research, CaFe2As2, is not a metallic alloy but an intermetallic more well-known for its novel superconducting properties...

CUORE was assembled in this specially designed clean room to help protect it from contaminants. (Credit: CUORE collaboration)

Why does the universe favor matter over antimatter? The first glimpse of data from the full array of a deeply chilled particle detector operating beneath a mountain in Italy sets the most precise limits yet on where scientists might find a theorized process to help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. This new result is based on two months of data from the full detector of the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN’s) Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) in Italy. CUORE means “heart” in Italian.

CUORE is considered one of the most promising effo...

Gas molecules widening the gaps between rows of the team’s graphene nano-ribbons. Nebraska’s Alexander Sinitskii and his colleagues have proposed that this phenomenon partly explains how the nano-ribbons grant sensors an unprecedented boost in sensitivity. Credit: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Pinning DNA-sized ribbons of carbon to a gas sensor can boost its sensitivity far better than any other known carbon material, says a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. When the researchers integrated a film of graphene nano-ribbons into the circuitry of a gas sensor, it responded about 100X more sensitively to molecules than did sensors featuring even the best-performing carbon-based materials...