Category Physics

An artist’s representation of the nanoparticle removal chip developed by researchers in Professor Michael Heller’s lab at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. An oscillating electric field (purple arcs) separates drug-delivery nanoparticles (yellow spheres) from blood (red spheres) and pulls them towards rings surrounding the chip’s electrodes. The image is featured as the inside cover of the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Small. Credit: Stuart Ibsen and Steven Ibsen.

a) Maximum magnetic field Bc2 (normalized) at which superconductivity can survive versus temperature T. Filled circles are data taken from MoS2 thin films. Without taking into account internal magnetic fields generated by the lattice structure of MoS2, Bc2 cannot exceed 1. b) Taking into account the internal magnetic fields, the experimental data can be well explained theoretically. Credit: The Physics Department, HKUST

This schematic shows the concept behind the team’s plant-inspired microrobot. Credit: Image courtesy of American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics

Atoms (shown in green and blue) are held in a trap of laser light (red) in which they can move in one dimension only. The atoms can point either up (green) or down (blue), similar to a needle in a compass. When the atoms do not interact, they can move freely in the trap (top picture); they have no discernible order. When repulsive interactions between the atoms are strong (bottom picture), they arrange themselves in the trap, with each atom pointing in the opposite direction of its neighbour.