How Silicon Can Improve the Performance of Solid-State Batteries

Researchers from Germany and Canada analyze the potential of silicon as an alternative electrode material

30-Jan-2024 - High-performance batteries are required for a wide range of applications and demand is growing rapidly. This is why the research and development of electrochemical energy storage systems, including for electromobility, is one of the most important areas of work in materials science worldwide. The ...

When electrons dress up in light

Light - the fifth element of materials science?

17-Apr-2023 - New material properties, at lightning speed and on demand – this vision moves a step closer thanks to recent findings from a pan-European physics research group. The team uses ultrashort and strong light fields to directly observe how exotic energetic states, known as Floquet bands, emerge in a ...

Metallic five-membered ring pushes the boundaries of aromaticity

Researchers succeed in synthesizing a molecule that should not actually exist

03-Jun-2022 - How many atoms can an aromatic ring have if it contains only two electrons? The answer has recently been changed: five! For the first time, a team from chemistry has succeeded in synthesizing and describing a five-membered aromatic compound - an important class of substances in chemistry - by ...

A new form of carbon

Not graphene: researchers in Germany and Finland discover new type of atomically thin carbon material

25-May-2021 - Carbon exists in various forms. In addition to diamond and graphite, there are recently discovered forms with astonishing properties. For example graphene, with a thickness of just one atomic layer, is the thinnest known material, and its unusual properties make it an extremely exciting candidate ...

Just a few atoms thick: New functional materials developed

Using the smallest "construction set" in the world, a research team is designing new materials for computer chips, light-emitting diodes and solar cells

10-May-2021 - They are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, and just a few atoms thick: two-dimensional materials are the thinnest substances it is possible to make today. They have completely new properties and are regarded as the next major step in modern semiconductor technology. In the future they could ...

Mapping quantum structures with light to unlock their capabilities

07-Dec-2020 - A new tool that uses light to map out the electronic structures of crystals could reveal the capabilities of emerging quantum materials and pave the way for advanced energy technologies and quantum computers, according to researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Regensburg and ...

Toxic and aggressive, but widely used

Investigations with neutrons settle scientific dispute about the structure of fluorine

29-Mar-2019 - In toothpaste, Teflon, LEDs and medications, it shows its sunny side – but elemental fluorine is extremely aggressive and highly toxic. Attempts to determine the crystal structure of solid fluorine using X-rays ended with explosions 50 years ago. A research team has now clarified the actual ...

It's Not an Illusion

Transforming Infrared into Visible Light

14-Jun-2016 - Researchers have developed a compound that can transform near-infrared light into broadband white-light, offering a cheap, efficient means to produce visible light. The emitted light is also exceedingly directional, a desirable quality for devices like microscopes that require high spatial ...

Schrödinger cats snatch many-particle quantum states

23-Sep-2011 - Scientists from University of Marburg and JILA (University of Colorado and NIST) establish a high-precision framework for laser spectroscopy to directly accesses quantum properties of matter. Quantum mechanics describes the complete information of any given system. Even though nanotechnology has ...

Milestone on a nanometre level

30-Jun-2010 - Physicists succeed in characterizing the quantum state of a complex system Physicists from Marburg and the US have succeeded in characterizing the quantum state of a system consisting of millions of particles by bringing experimental data and theoretical predictions into agreement. The team of ...