Breakthroughs in modern microelectronics depend on understanding and manipulating the movement of electrons in metal. Reducing the thickness of metal sheets to the order of nanometers can enable exquisite control over how the metal’s electrons move. In so doing, one can impart properties that aren’t seen in bulk metals, such as ultrafast conduction of electricity. Now, researchers from Osaka University and collaborating partners have synthesized a novel class of nanostructured superlattices. This study enables an unusually high degree of control over the movement of electrons within metal semiconductors, which promises to enhance the functionality of everyday technologies.

Precisely tuning the architecture of metal nanosheets, and thus facilitating advanced microelectronics functio...

Research team uses laser flashes to simulate the interior of ice planets – and spurs a new process for producing miniscule diamonds...

Scientists at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus have discovered a new kind of synapse in the tiny hairs on the surface of neurons.

The commonly overlooked protrusions called primary cilia contain special junctions that act as a shortcut for sending signals quickly and directly to the cell’s nucleus, inducing changes to the cell’s chromatin that forms chromosomes.

“This special synapse represents a wa...

Universe’s coldest fermions open portal to high-symmetry quantum realm. Japanese and U.S. physicists have used atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space to open a portal to an unexplored realm of quantum magnetism.

“Unless an alien civilization is doing experiments like these right now, anytime this experiment is running at Kyoto University it is making the coldest fermions in the universe,” said Rice University’s Kaden Hazzard, corresponding theory author of a studypublished today in Nature Physics. “Fermions are not rare particles. They include things like electrons and are one of two types of particles that all matter is made of.”

A Kyoto team led by study author Yoshiro Takahashi used lasers to cool its fermions, atoms of ytterbium, within about one-billiont...