NEWSROOM

Until now, physicists have struggled to provide a theoretical framework explaining why cracks often branch out and deviate from their expected path, slowing down as a result. Two recent studies from the Weizmann Institute of Science bring order to the disorderly propagation of cracks and show that, although each crack may seem unique, there are quantitative physical parameters that shape the propagation process and explain the formation of asymmetrical crack patterns.

In a new study, an international team led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids have created three dimensional superconducting nanostructures using a technique similar to a nano-3D printer. They achieved local control of the superconducting state in a 3D bridge-like superconductor, and could even demonstrate the motion of superconducting vortices – nanoscale defects in the superconducting state – in three dimensions.

RIKEN chemists have hit upon a fast and easy way to combine so-called nanobelts of carbon with sulfur-containing functional groups. This new material has intriguing properties that make it promising for use in novel optoelectronic devices.

To date, superlubricity has always been isotropic: the friction is cancelled in all directions equally. Now, with this new discovery, a new form of superlubricity is achieved, where the friction is zero in one direction only, and has conventional friction in other directions.

Using a worldwide unique method physicists at the University of Vienna led by Jani Kotakoski have for the first time made graphene drastically more stretchable by rippling it like an accordion. This paves the way for new applications in which certain stretchability is required (e.g. wearable electronics).

This work was a big step toward sustainable computing, because encoding data via spin waves (whose quasiparticles are called magnons) could eliminate the energy loss, or Joule heating, associated with electron-based devices. But at the time, the spin wave signals could not be used to reset the magnetic bits to overwrite existing data.