[Image above] Credit: NIST
Phenomenon that fights with superconductivity universal across both flavors of cuprates
Researchers have spotted charge ordering—a phenomenon that interferes with superconductivity—in electron-doped copper-oxide crystals for the first time. The new study reveals that charge ordering is universal across both flavours of cuprates, despite most scientific evidence to date suggesting otherwise. The discovery is a critical step towards achieving zero electrical resistance at room temperature.
Workshop for new researchers in glass science and surface and thin film technology
The Summer School 2015 will be organized as two parallel streams, one following a glass science theme, focused more on academic topics, and the second looking at glass surface and thin film technologies both from an industrial and academic perspective. The lectures will be given by world leading experts in their fields. The course is designed for new PhD students or for young researchers who have recently started research in the glass industry.
Does glass ever stop flowing? Researchers at the University of Bristol and Kyoto University have combined computer simulation and information theory, originally invented for telephone communication and cryptography, to answer this puzzling question. The researchers discovered that the size of the solid-like regions of the material increases over time and that atoms in the solid-like regions organize into geometrical shapes, such as icosahedra.
Researchers identify materials to improve biofuel and petroleum processing
Using one of the largest supercomputers in the world, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Rice University developed a complex computational screening process that can look at thousands of zeolites in the virtual world and identify their performance for specific applications. This reduces the need for trial and error experimentation in the lab, and the team’s efforts have identified potential materials that could improve the production of ethanol and petroleum products.
Multi-institution team advances semiconducting graphene
A team of researchers has achieved a proof-of-principle in making the fundamental building blocks of semiconductor devices using 2D graphene. The team has demonstrated a new way to change the amount of electrons that reside in a given region within a piece of graphene. The method enables this value to be tuned through the application of an electric field, meaning graphene circuit elements made in this way could one day be dynamically “rewired” without physically altering the device.