NEWSROOM

Using a combination of spectromicroscopy at BESSY II and microscopic analyses at DESY's NanoLab, a team has gained new insights into the chemical behaviour of nanocatalysts during catalysis. The nanoparticles consisted of a platinum core with a rhodium shell. This configuration allows a better understanding of structural changes in, for example, rhodium-platinum catalysts for emission control. The results show that under typical catalytic conditions, some of the rhodium in th

Researchers at The City College of New York have shown how a quantum emitter, the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, interacts in unexpected ways with a specially engineered photonic structure when moved around with a scanning tip. The study, led by Carlos A. Meriles, Martin and Michele Cohen Professor of Physics in the Division of Science and entitled “Emission of Nitrogen–Vacancy Centres in Diamond Shaped by Topological Photonic Waveguide Modes,” appears in the journa

Addressing a major roadblock in next-generation photonic computing and signal processing systems, researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a device that can bridge digital electronic signals and analog light signals in one fluid step. Built on chips made out of lithium niobate, the workhorse material of optoelectronics, the new device offers a potential replacement for the ubiquitous but energy-intensive digital

Three nano glass spheres cling to one another. They form a tower-like cluster, similar to when you pile three scoops of ice cream on top of one another – only much smaller. The diameter of the nano cluster is ten times smaller than that of a human hair. With the help of an optical device and laser beams, researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in keeping such objects almost completely motionless in levitation. This is significant when it comes to the future development of qu

Gold is considered one of the most unreactive metals. However, under pressure conditions such as those found in the Earth's interior, something happens to the precious metal. Researchers at the High Energy Density (HED) experimental station at European XFEL compressed gold to over 40 gigapascals (GPa) using a diamond stamp cell and heated it to around 2,500 degrees Celsius with ultra-short flashes from the European XFEL X-ray laser. Under these conditions, the gold reacted wi

What are the limits of quantum physics? This is a question that has been researched around the world for decades. If we want to make the properties of the quantum world technically usable, we need to understand whether objects that are significantly larger than atoms and molecules can also exhibit quantum phenomena.For example, small glass spheres with a diameter of one hundred nanometres can be examined – still over a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand, but huge by