The demonstration of electroluminescence at terahertz frequencies from a silicon and germanium-based device represents a significant step towards the coveted milestone of a silicon-based laser. An international team comprising scientists from Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics (IHP) has demonstrated for the first time THz light emission from n-type quantum structures made of germanium and silicon, the materials that are the basis of most commonly used electronic devices. The result of demonstration was published in the Applied Physics Letters in…
… high-altitude pseudo-satellites in Action A flight planning system to ensure nationwide coverage with information from high altitudes. High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) are unmanned aerial vehicles that fly in the stratosphere. They provide for instance earth observation data and can be used for telecommunications applications such as 5G. The goal of project OBeLiSk is to develop, for the first time, an operational concept for safe and efficient airspace integration of HAPS. To ensure safety in the airspace, Technische Universität…
A new study shows how microplastics found in our daily personal care products can also host pathogens and boost antibiotic-resistant bacteria by up to 30 times once they wash down household drains and enter municipal wastewater treatment plants. It’s estimated that an average-sized wastewater treatment plant serving roughly 400,000 residents will discharge up to 2,000,000 microplastic particles into the environment each day. Yet, researchers are still learning the environmental and human health impact of these ultra-fine plastic particles, less than…
Radio observations of a cold, dense cloud of molecular gas reveal more than a dozen unexpected molecules. Scientists have discovered a vast, previously unknown reservoir of new aromatic material in a cold, dark molecular cloud by detecting individual polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules in the interstellar medium for the first time, and in doing so are beginning to answer a three-decades-old scientific mystery: how and where are these molecules formed in space? “We had always thought polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were primarily…
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, a team of astronomers have directly measured winds in Jupiter’s middle atmosphere for the first time. By analysing the aftermath of a comet collision from the 1990s, the researchers have revealed incredibly powerful winds, with speeds of up to 1450 kilometres an hour, near Jupiter’s poles. They could represent what the team have described as a “unique meteorological beast in our Solar System”….
A Russian-German research team has created a quantum sensor that grants access to measurement and manipulation of individual two-level defects in qubits. The study by NUST MISIS, Russian Quantum Center and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, published in npj Quantum Information, may pave the way for quantum computing. In quantum computing the information is encoded in qubits. Qubits (or quantum bits), the quantum mechanical analogue of a classical bit, are coherent two-level systems. A leading qubit modality today superconducting qubits…
Smart glass can change its color quickly through electricity. A new material developed by chemists of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich has now set a speed record for such a change. On the highway at night. It rains, the bright headlights of the car behind you are blinding. How convenient to have an automatically dimming rearview mirror in such a case. Technically, this helpful extra is based on electrochromic materials. When a voltage is applied, their light absorption and color change….
In 2018, physicists showed that something interesting happens when two sheets of the nanomaterial graphene are placed on top of each other. When one layer is rotated to a “magic angle” of around 1.1 degrees with respect to the other, the system becomes a superconductor — meaning it conducts electricity with zero resistance. Even more exciting, there was evidence that it was an unconventional form of superconductivity — a type that can happen at temperatures well above absolute zero, where…
Researchers analyse data from the last millennium In the future, droughts could be even more severe than those that struck parts of Germany in 2018. An analysis of climate data from the last millennium shows that several factors have to coincide to produce a megadrought: not only rising temperatures, but also the amount of solar radiation, as well as certain meteorological and ocean-circulation conditions in the North Atlantic, like those expected to arise in the future. A group of researchers…
Researchers demonstrate a novel photonic interference effect that could pave the way to large-scale controllable quantum systems It’s another step on the road to developing quantum information processing applications. A key experiment succeeded in going beyond the previously defined limits for photon applications. Anahita Khodadad Kashi and Prof. Dr. Michael Kues from the Institute of Photonics and the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) have demonstrated a novel interference effect. The scientists have thus shown that new…
MINSTED resolves fluorescent molecules with resolution at the nanometer scale Scientists working with Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and the Heidelberg-based MPI for Medical Research have developed another light microscopy method, called MINSTED, which resolves fluorescently labeled details with molecular sharpness. With MINSTED, Nobel laureate Hell has come full circle. “A good 20 years ago, we fundamentally broke the diffraction resolution limit of fluorescence microscopy with STED. Until then, that was considered…
Physicists in Regensburg and Marburg have tailored the mutual interaction of electrons in an atomically thin solid by simply covering it with a crystal featuring hand-picked lattice dynamics. In a cubic centimeter of a solid there are typically 10²³ electrons. In this massive many-body system, seemingly simple pairwise electron-electron interaction can cause extremely complex correlations and exotic behavior, such as superconductivity. This quantum phenomenon turns a solid into a perfect conductor, which carries dissipationless electric currents. Usually, such coveted behavior…
Cryo-EM study show how structural alterations in G614 variants stabilize the spike. The fast-spreading UK, South Africa, and Brazil coronavirus variants are raising both concerns and questions about whether COVID-19 vaccines will protect against them. New work led by Bing Chen, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital analyzed how the structure of the coronavirus spike proteins changes with the D614G mutation — carried by all three variants — and showed why these variants are able to spread more quickly. The team…
The uptake of CO₂ from the air is an essential process of plant photosynthesis. In dry areas, some plants shift this process to the night so that they can keep their stomata closed during the day and thus reduce the evaporation of water. To do this, they possess a special photosynthesis mechanism (Crassulacean acid metabolism, CAM). The extent to which plants use this mechanism for their energy balance depends, in part, on the unpredictability of precipitation. Scientists from the University…
The study results are based on investigations of repeated mass movements and are expected to benefit planning, maintenance, and development of transportation infrastructure in affected areas. Mass movements such as landslides and hill-slope debris flows cause billions of euros in economic damage around the world every year. Between 20 and 80 million euros are spent annually from the disaster fund to repair disaster damage in Austria, 15 to 50 percent of which is attributable to mud flows and landslides. Now,…
Interdisciplinary research team in RTG “Materials for Brain” produces extremely conductive hydrogel for medical applications. Due to their tissue-like mechanical properties, hydrogels are being increasingly used for biomedical applications; a well-known example are soft contact lenses. These gel-like polymers consist of 90 percent water, are elastic and particularly biocompatible. Hydrogels that are also electrically conductive allow additional fields of application, for example in the transmission of electrical signals in the body or as sensors. An interdisciplinary research team of the…
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