UA physicists are making discoveries that may advance electronic circuit technology.
Graphite, more commonly known as pencil lead, could become the next big thing in the quest for smaller and less power-hungry electronics.
Resembling chicken wire on a nano scale, graphene – single sheets of graphite – is only one atom thick, making it the world’s thinnest material. Two million graphene sheets stacked up would not be as thick as a credit card. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab Researchers Show the Way Forward for Improving Organic and Molecular Electronic Devices*
Future prospects for superior new organic electronic devices are brighter now thanks to a new study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Working at the Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a DOE nanoscience center, the team has provided the first experimental determination of the pathways by which electrical charge is transported from molecule-to-molecule in an organic thin film. Their results also show how such organic films can be chemically modified to improve conductance.
“We have shown that when the molecules in organic thin films are aligned in particular directions, there is much better conductance,” says Miquel Salmeron, a leading authority on nanoscale surface imaging who directs Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and who led this study. “Chemists already know how to fabricate organic thin films in a way that can achieve such an alignment, which means they should be able to use the information provided by our methodology to determine the molecular alignment and its role on charge transport across and along the molecules. This will help improve the performances of future organic electronic devices.” (more…)
University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly unrelated natural systems of vastly different scales, offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology.
This ultracold state, called “quantum criticality,” hints at similarities between such diverse phenomena as the gravitational dynamics of black holes or the exotic conditions that prevailed at the birth of the universe, said Cheng Chin, associate professor in physics at UChicago. The results could even point to ways of simulating cosmological phenomena of the early universe by studying systems of atoms in states of quantum criticality. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab scientists helped build and operate the ALPHA antimatter trap at CERN, which has now probed the internal structure of the antihydrogen atom for the first time, taking the first step toward possible new insights into the difference between matter and antimatter*
The ALPHA collaboration at CERN in Geneva has scored another coup on the antimatter front by performing the first-ever spectroscopic measurements of the internal state of the antihydrogen atom. Their results are reported in a forthcoming issue of Nature and are now online.
Ordinary hydrogen atoms are the most plentiful in the universe, and also the simplest – so simple, in fact, that some of the most fundamental physical constants have been discovered by measuring the tiny energy shifts resulting from the magnetic and electric interactions of hydrogen’s proton nucleus with its single orbiting electron. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Using a new ultrafast camera, researchers have recorded the first real-time image of two atoms vibrating in a molecule.
Key to the experiment, which appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, is the researchers’ use of the energy of a molecule’s own electron as a kind of “flash bulb” to illuminate the molecular motion. (more…)
*Findings further efforts to better predict geomagnetic storms in space*
UCLA researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth’s outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.
In a paper published Jan. 29 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Physics, the team shows that the missing electrons are swept away from the planet by a tide of solar wind particles during periods of heightened solar activity. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab scientists push chemistry to the edge, testing plans for a new generation of light sources*
For Ali Belkacem of Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, “What is chemistry?” is not a rhetorical question.
“Chemistry is inherently dynamical,” he answers. “That means, to make inroads in understanding – and ultimately control – we have to understand how atoms combine to form molecules; how electrons and nuclei couple; how molecules interact, react, and transform; how electrical charges flow; and how different forms of energy move within a molecule or across molecular boundaries.” The list ends with a final and most important question: “How do all these things behave in a correlated way, ‘dynamically’ in time and space, both at the electron and atomic levels?” (more…)
*Berkeley Lab researchers are leaders in an international effort to close in on neutrino mass*
Some of the most intriguing questions in basic physics focus on neutrinos. How much do the different kinds weigh and which is the heaviest? The answers lie in how the three “flavors” of neutrinos – electron, muon, and tau neutrinos – oscillate or mix, changing from one to another as they race virtually without interruption through unbounded reaches of matter and space.
Three mathematical terms known as “mixing angles” described the process, and the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has just begun taking data to establish the last, least-known mixing angle to unprecedented precision. China and the United States lead the international Daya Bay Collaboration, including participants from Russia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. U.S. participation is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). (more…)
