The quantum avalanche

At the Vienna University of Technology, it was possible to keep a system that is actually very unstable, consisting of many quantum particles, stable and then release its energy in a targeted manner all at once

14-Aug-2023 - These are very special diamonds that are being worked with at TU Wien: Their crystal lattice is not perfectly regular, it contains numerous defects. In places where there would be two neighboring carbon atoms in a perfect diamond, there is a nitrogen atom, leaving the second place empty. ...

Bacteria as Blacksmiths

New Method to Assemble Unconventional Materials

07-Aug-2023 - A hot bath is a place to relax. For scientists, it is also where molecules or tiny building blocks meet to form materials. Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) take it to the next level and use the energy of swimming bacteria to forge materials. A recent study in ...

New catalysts for solar hydrogen production

Researchers at TU Wien are developing a layered photocatalyst that can be used to produce hydrogen very efficiently from water

20-Jul-2023 - Finding sustainable and clean fuels is crucial in today’s global energy and climate crisis. One promising candidate that is increasingly gaining relevance is hydrogen. However, today’s industrial hydrogen production still has a considerable CO2 footprint, especially considering processes like ...

Detecting nanoplastics – in fractions of a second

Basis for new measurement devices

19-Jul-2023 - Tiny plastic particles are an environmental problem. They can even penetrate living cells. A method has now been developed at TU Wien to detect such particles quickly and with high sensitivity. It is well known that microplastics are a problem: They are tiny, barely visible plastic particles that ...

Affordable and available technologies can curb rising nitrous oxide emissions

07-Jul-2023 - Researchers from IIASA and the University of Maryland in the US have found that nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and stratospheric ozone-depleting substance, could be readily abated with existing technology applied to industrial sources. When greenhouse gases are released into the ...

Nega­tively charged and yet pretty cold

This enables, for example, new investigations of chemical reactions in space

06-Jul-2023 - Anions, negatively charged ions, are reluctant to be cooled. Physicists led by Matthias Weidemüller from Heidelberg University and Roland Wester from the University of Innsbruck have now developed a method for cooling molecular anions to below 3 Kelvin in a remarkably short time. This enables, ...

Shining potential of missing atoms

Single-atom vacancies in atomically thin insulators created in ultra-high vacuum

15-Jun-2023 - Single photons have applications in quantum computation, information networks, and sensors, and these can be emitted by defects in the atomically thin insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Missing nitrogen atoms have been suggested to be the atomic structure responsible for this activity, but ...

More complex than expected: Catalysis under the microscope

Chemical analysis on the microscopic scale has shown that the catalyst composition can vary locally even more than expected

08-Jun-2023 - At TU Wien (Vienna), scientists use microscopy techniques to observe chemical reactions on catalysts more precisely than before yielding a wealth of detail. This made clear why some effects cannot be predicted. Catalysts composed from tiny metal particles play an important role in many areas of ...

Better superconductors with palladium

Is the “age of palladates" now dawning in superconductivity research?

26-Apr-2023 - A Goldilocks material that might be just right: the precious metal palladium could be used to make superconductors that remain superconducting even at relatively high temperatures, show calculations by TU Wien. It is one of the most exciting races in modern physics: How can we produce the best ...

Sustainable Batteries for the Future

Research groups at ISTA strive to make energy-saving greener

14-Apr-2023 - Batteries are indispensable for global efforts to reduce fossil fuel use. However, challenges remain: their production requires a lot of energy, the materials used are rare, and batteries are difficult to recycle. Several research groups at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) ...