Gold membrane coaxes secrets out of surfaces

Thousand-fold signal amplification

26-Jun-2024 - Using a special wafer-thin gold membrane, ETH researchers have made it significantly easier to study surfaces. The membrane makes it possible to measure properties of surfaces that are inaccessible to conventional methods. “Surfaces were invented by the devil” - this quote is attributed to the ...

High-precision frequency measurement

03-Aug-2021 - Many scientific experiments require highly precise time measurements with the help of a clearly defined frequency. Now, a new approach allows the direct comparison of frequency measurements in the lab with the atomic clock in Bern, Switzerland. For many scientific experiments, today’s researchers ...

Mini-spectrometer: Smaller than a coin

09-Oct-2019 - ETH researchers have developed a compact infrared spectrometer. It’s small enough to fit on a computer chip but can still open up interesting possibilities – in space and in everyday life. Nowadays, a mobile phone can do almost anything: take photos or video, send messages, determine its present ...

Targeting individual atoms

Researchers have found a way to apply NMR spectroscopy to individual atoms

26-Jun-2019 - In recent decades, NMR spectroscopy has made it possible to capture the spatial structure of chemical and biochemical molecules. Now researchers at ETH have found a way to apply this measurement principle to individual atoms. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – NMR spectroscopy for short – ...

The world's shortest laser pulse

Observe the movement of electrons during chemical reactions in slow motion

02-Nov-2017 - ETH researchers succeeded in shortening the pulse duration of an X‑ray laser to only 43 attoseconds. With a time resolution in the range of a few quintillionths of a second, they are now able for the first time to observe the movement of electrons during chemical reactions in slow motion. In ...

High-precision magnetic field sensing

Highly sensitive sensor may find widespread use in medicine and other areas

05-Dec-2016 - Researchers from the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, which is operated jointly by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, have succeeded in measuring tiny changes in strong magnetic fields with unprecedented precision. In their experiments, the scientists magnetised a water droplet inside ...

An unlikely attraction

16-Mar-2015 - Like charges normally repel each other. That’s not the case at the interface between air and water. This is where ETH researchers observed an unusual phenomenon with nanoparticles, and found an explanation. The interface between air and water is negatively charged. Negatively charged ...

Almost as sensitive as a dog's nose

New sensor for SERS Raman spectroscopy

02-Sep-2013 - Scientists at ETH Zurich and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have developed an innovative sensor for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Thanks to its unique surface properties at nanoscale, the method can be used to perform analyses that are more reliable, ...