NEWS

For the first time, physicists have observed excited states in the very neutron-deficient odd-odd nucleus, lanthanum-120. The study was published in Physics Letters B, and was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and their collaborators from France, Finland, South Africa and other countries.

When electronic devices like laptops or smartphones overheat, they are fundamentally suffering from a nanoscale heat transfer problem. Pinpointing the source of that problem can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

A newly developed X-ray imaging method can now visualize the internal structure of various samples, such as microchips or catalyst particles, with nanometer resolution over a large field of view without causing damage. This new technique, which was mainly developed at DESY´s high-brilliance X-ray source PETRA III, is of particular interest to the industry as a new characterization method for R&D, as the developer team led by DESY scientist Mikhail Lyubomirskiy writes in the journal Advanced Science.

Physicists in Konstanz (Germany) have discovered a way to imprint a previously unseen geometrical form of chirality onto electrons. The electrons are shaped into chiral coils of mass and charge.

By constructing hexagonal metallic-mean approximants of the honeycomb lattice, scientists from Tokyo Tech, Nagoya University, Toyota RIKEN, and Kindai University have linked incommensurately modulated structures and quasicrystals, two classes of aperiodic crystals. They found that a quasicrystal converges to a modulated honeycomb crystal on arranging tiles based on metallic means. This metallic-mean tiling pattern was also identified in polymer and colloidal systems in soft-matter self-assemblies, providing new insights into aperiodic crystals.

Chemists from Yokohama National University have successfully developed innovative catalysts containing two noble metals that demonstrate remarkable efficiency in ester-producing chemical reactions and utilize oxygen as the sole oxidant, making the process much more environmentally friendly and sustainable.