Nanotechnology World

In this study, researchers developed an ultrafast infrared near-field optical microscopy technique that combines nanoscale spatial resolution and an approximately 150-femtosecond temporal resolution with a spectral resolution of about 10 cm⁻¹.

A team led by Haitao Wang and Jia Wang at the Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS), Nagoya University, has come up with a new way of lowering the resistance of p-type GaN contacts.

A line of orange atoms is depicted in blue laser tweezers. @ California Institute of Technology Physicists use advanced quantum technologies to test decades-old theory predictions When different materials transition from one phase to another, such as water coming to a boil or a magnet losing its ability to attract metals, something remarkable can happen: They begin to behave identically, followin…

In this illustration, photons hit a strip of superconducting wire, disrupting the electric current and registering an electric pulse. Each pulse tells researchers about the light that has hit the detector, which is beneficial for applications like biomedical imaging and astronomy. Credit: Natasha Hanacek/NIST Our everyday life is flooded with photons, the quantum building blocks of light. For cut…

Credit: Caltech Three years after a team of Caltech scientists showed that pairs of entangled photons could double the resolution of a light microscope, the same lab has figured out a way to double down on that improvement. They have now achieved a fourfold resolution boost compared to a classical microscope, using a new optical design that sends one of the entangled photons through the microscop…

In a swap gate, neighbouring qubit states (blue and beige) are exchanged. The qubits are made of cold atoms trapped inside an artificial crystal created by laser light. (Image: Mika Blackmore-Esslinger / ETH Zurich) Quantum bits, or qubits, which are required for building quantum computers, come in different kinds. In recent years, many research institutes and companies have focused on supercondu…

An AI-generated illustration depciting the Kondo effect. Conducting electrons in a metal are shown interacting with the spin of an embedded magnetic atom impurity. Credit: AI-generated artwork by Linqing Peng A team of scientists from Caltech and Yale University has shown for the first time how to accurately quantify an important quantum phenomenon in metals, called the Kondo effect, for specific…

Courtesy of the National Science Foundation The NSF's Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are taking on some of the hardest scientific hurdles in the global race to create powerful quantum-based technologies. Two UCLA computer scientists will help lead major national efforts to address some of quantum computing’s biggest challenges, serving as co-principal investigators for separate research instit…

Atomic nuclei colliding at high energy causing scattering (Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University) Researchers perform a full Glauber-theory calculation that overcomes long-standing computational challenges Every high energy nuclear collision leaves behind a trail of clues about the structure of atomic nuclei. Deciphering those clues, however, depends on the accuracy of the underlying theory. Phys…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have identified a stricter criterion for when quantum computers can outperform classical machines. Magic states, special qubit configurations required for universal quantum computation, are necessary but not always sufficient. Many states previously regarded as useful magic can still be simulated efficiently on classical computers. The team used the Kirk…

Researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Texas at Austin have developed a holographic 3D printing method that forms complete objects in a single laser exposure. A nanopatterned mask diffracts the beam into a volumetric intensity pattern that crosslinks a specially formulated resin only in the intended solid regions. Because exposure occurs much faster than curing, computational…

Thermodynamics was built for steam engines; quantum mechanics for atoms. The two meet again in a driven cavity, where an atom absorbs and emits photons while a laser continuously supplies energy and light leaks through the mirrors. Patrick Potts and colleagues at the University of Basel treat this textbook open system as a miniature light engine. Their key step is not to count every escaping phot…

Electrons are indivisible, yet in a strong magnetic field they can move as if they carried only a fraction of their charge. Mitali Banerjee’s group at EPFL has built a bilayer-graphene antidot—a small electrically defined energy hill—that measures those fractions directly. Quasiparticles circle the hill and tunnel at regular intervals as the magnetic field or gate voltage is swept. The spacing of…

Rice University researchers have shown that sub-nanometer wrinkles in graphene generate flexoelectric charge separation, reshaping local electrical behavior through curvature alone. Extreme bending produces polarization far stronger than in larger systems and may enable geometry-controlled electronics without chemical doping. Published in Advanced Materials.

Researchers at the University of Basel and Technical University of Munich have used light to probe the collective motion of electrons in a Wigner crystal formed in monolayer tungsten diselenide. Optical signatures of Wigner crystal polarons reveal internal dynamics of this fragile quantum state, opening a new window into strongly correlated electronic systems. Published in Nature Physics.

Researchers have observed a three-dimensional woven structure of interlaced nano-dipole ensembles forming spontaneously inside a ferroelectric crystal. The fabric-like network emerges during cooling through a phase transition and can be locally untangled with focused laser light. The discovery reveals a new form of material organization with potential topological implications. Published in Light:…

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have demonstrated skin mode tunability in photonic Floquet lattices. A potential applied at one boundary isolates a skin mode at the opposite boundary, turning it into a self-healing state that recovers its profile after disturbance. The approach enables control of non-Hermitian wave dynamics for mode routing and optical switching. …

A joint team from SNU, KAIST, and KBSI has identified the distinct reaction sites of silver nanocatalysts in solid oxide cells. During electricity generation the catalyst–electrode interface dominates, while during hydrogen production the nanoparticle surface is key. The finding enables new design principles for higher-efficiency green hydrogen and clean power systems. Published in Energy & E…

Nanoparticles are found in many everyday products, from cosmetics and textiles to air pollution. While they offer many benefits, scientists still need better ways to understand how long-term exposure may affect our skin. Researchers from Alfaro-Moreno group at INL have developed a new skin-on-a-chip platform that closely mimics human skin, providing a more realistic way to study how nanoparticles…

MIT and Broad Institute researchers have developed U-STORM, a super-resolution microscopy platform using engineered upconverting nanoparticles that blink spontaneously and indefinitely. The method achieves 0.6-angstrom localization precision with a single near-infrared laser, enabling multicolor imaging without complex buffers or multiple lasers. This simplifies high-precision molecular imaging f…