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Category: particle physics

How plastics grip metals at the atomic scale: Molecular insights pave way for better transportation materials

What makes some plastics stick to metal without any glue? Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have peered into the invisible adhesive zone that forms between certain plastics and metals—one atom at a time—to uncover how chemistry and molecular structure determine whether such bonds bend or break.

Their insights clarify metal–plastic bonding mechanisms and offer guidelines for designing durable, lightweight, and more sustainable hybrid materials for use in transportation.

Combining the strength of metal with the lightness and flexibility of plastic, polymer–metal hybrid structures are emerging as key elements for building lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The technology relies on bonding metals with plastics directly, without adhesives. The success of these hybrids, however, hinges on how well the two materials stick together.

Machine learning automates material analysis and design using X-ray spectroscopy data

Understanding the properties of different materials is an important step in material design. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is an important technique for this, as it reveals detailed insights about a material’s composition, structure, and functional characteristics. The technique works by directing a beam of high-energy X-rays at a sample and recording how X-rays of different energy levels are absorbed.

Similar to how splits into a rainbow after passing through a prism, XAS produces a spectrum of X-rays with different energies. This spectrum is called as , which acts like a unique fingerprint of a material, helping scientists to identify the elements present in the material and see how the atoms are arranged. This information, known as the “electronic state,” determines the functional properties of materials.

Boron compounds have significant applications in semiconductors, Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, and energy storage. In these materials, atomic modifications, structural defects, impurities, and doped elements, each produce unique, complex variations in spectral data. Detailed analyses of these variations provides key insights into their electronic state and is crucial for rational material design. Traditionally, however, such analyses required extensive expertise and manual labor, especially when large datasets have to be examined visually.

Climate intervention may lower protein content in major global food crops

A new study in Environmental Research Letters reports that cooling the planet by injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, a proposed climate intervention technique, could reduce the nutritional value of the world’s crops.

Scientists at Rutgers University used and crop models to estimate how stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI), one type of solar geoengineering, would impact the protein level of the world’s four major food crops: maize, rice, wheat, and soybeans. The SAI approach, inspired by volcanic eruptions, would involve releasing into the stratosphere. This gas would transform into sulfuric acid particles, forming a persistent cloud in the upper atmosphere that reflects a small part of the sun’s radiation, thereby cooling Earth.

While these are primarily sources of carbohydrates, they also provide a substantial share of dietary protein for large portions of the global population. Model simulations suggested that increased CO2 concentrations tended to reduce the protein content of all four crops, while increased temperatures tended to increase the protein content of crops. Because SAI would stop temperatures from increasing, the CO2 effect would not be countered by warming, and protein would decrease relative to a warmer world without SAI.

Physicists Take the Imaginary Numbers Out of Quantum Mechanics

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth with accurate calculations of hydrogen’s emission and absorption of light. There was, however, a snag. The central equation of quantum mechanics featured the imaginary number i, the square root of −1.

Physicists knew i was a mathematical fiction. Real physical quantities like mass and momentum never yield a negative amount when squared. Yet this unreal number that behaves as i2 = −1 seemed to sit at the heart of the quantum world.

After deriving the i-riddled equation — essentially the law of motion for quantum entities — Erwin Schrödinger expressed the hope that it would be replaced by an entirely real version. (“There is undoubtedly a certain crudeness at the moment” in the equation’s form, he wrote in 1926.) Schrödinger’s distaste notwithstanding, i stuck around, and new generations of physicists took up his equation without much concern.

Spins influence solid oxygen’s crystal structure under extreme magnetic fields, study finds

Placing materials under extremely strong magnetic fields can give rise to unusual and fascinating physical phenomena or behavior. Specifically, studies show that under magnetic fields above 100 tesla (T), spins (i.e., intrinsic magnetic orientations of electrons) and atoms start forming new arrangements, promoting new phases of matter or stretching a crystal lattice.

One physical effect that can take place under these is known as magnetostriction. This effect essentially prompts a material’s crystal structure to stretch out, shrink or deform.

When magnetic fields above 100 T are produced experimentally, they can only be maintained for a very short time, typically for only a few microseconds. This is because their generation poses great stress on the wires used to produce the fields (i.e., coils), causing them to break almost immediately.

New holography-inspired reconfigurable surface developed for wireless communication

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are engineered structures comprised of several elements known as ‘meta-atoms,’ which can reshape and control electromagnetic waves in real-time. These surfaces could contribute to the further advancement of wireless communications and localization systems, as they could be used to reliably redirect, strengthen and suppress signals.

In conventional applications of RIS for , each meta-atom is controlled by a system known as the ‘,’ which is connected to the surface via electrical cables. While surfaces following this design can attain good results, their reliance on wires and a base station could prevent or limit their real-world deployment.

Researchers at Tsinghua University and Southeast University recently developed a new RIS that controls itself and does not need to be connected to a base station. This new surface, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, draws inspiration from holography, a well-known method to record and reconstruct an object’s light pattern to produce a 3D image of it.

Table salt enables new metallic nanotubes with potential for faster electronics

For the first time, researchers have made niobium sulfide metallic nanotubes with stable, predictable properties, a long-sought goal in advanced materials science. According to the international team, including a researcher at Penn State, that made the accomplishment, the new nanomaterial that could open the door to faster electronics, efficient electricity transport via superconductor wires and even future quantum computers was made possible with a surprising ingredient: table salt.

They published their research in ACS Nano.

Nanotubes are structures so small that thousands of them could fit across the width of a human hair. The tiny hollow cylinders are made by rolling up sheets of atoms; nanotubes have an unusual size and shape that can cause them to behave very differently from 3D, or bulk, materials.

Single organic molecule triggers Kondo effect in molecular-scale ‘Kondo box’

A research group led by Prof. Li Xiangyang from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made a new discovery: a single organic molecule can induce the Kondo effect in a magnetic atom, challenging the long-standing belief that this quantum phenomenon requires a vast sea of metallic electrons.

The research results were published in Physical Review Letters.

The Kondo effect is a quantum many-body phenomenon where conduction electrons in a metal collectively screen the magnetic moment of a localized impurity atom. It has been helping to explain strongly correlated electron behavior and inspiring advances in nanoscience, , and quantum information research.

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