(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy)
Researchers from Penn State; Columbia University; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO; TUD Dresden University of Technology in Germany; King’s College London; Radboud University in the Netherlands; the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague in the Czech Republic; and the University of Regensburg in Germany have identified a surface exciton – an excited electron and the hole it leaves behind – in chromium sulfide bromide, a layered magnetic semiconductor. Cooling chromium sulfide bromide down to around –223 degrees Fahrenheit brings it to a ground state, or the state of lowest energy. This transforms it into an antiferromagnetic system, in which the magnetic moments – referred to as “spin” – of the system’s particles align in a regular, repeating pattern. This antiferromagnetic ordering ensures that each layer alternates its magnetic alignment. As a result, excitons tend to stay in the layer with the same spin. Like cars on alternating one-way streets, these established boundaries keep excitons confined to the layer with which they share the same spin directions.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from Oregon State University, The Ohio State University, and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, have helped characterize a novel electrocatalyst developed by collaborators at Yale University and helped explain its improved efficiency for deriving methanol from carbon dioxide. The researchers’ dual-site catalyst is the result of combining two different catalytic sites at adjacent locations, separated by about 2 nanometers, on carbon nanotubes. The new design increases the methanol production rate, and less of the electricity used to catalyze the reaction is wasted. “The hybrid catalyst was found to exhibit unprecedented high catalytic efficiencies, nearly 1.5 times higher than observed before,” said Zhenxing Feng, one of the scientists involved in this study.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Villanova University; Northwest Missouri State University; Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Germany; the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany; the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, Germany; the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies in Milano, Italy; and Politecnico di Milano in Italy have observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around fullerene (C60) molecules. Researchers measured this dance with unprecedented precision, achieving the first measurement of its kind at the sub-nanometer scale. The synchronized dance of electrons, known as plasmonic resonance, can confine light for brief periods of time. While they’ve been studied extensively in systems from several centimeters across to those just 10 nanometers wide, this is the first time researchers were able to break the field’s “nanometer barrier.”

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have unveiled a new technique that could help advance the development of quantum technology. Their innovation provides an unprecedented look at how quantum materials behave at interfaces. “This technique allows us to study surface phonons — the collective vibrations of atoms at a material’s surface or interface between materials,” said Zhaodong Chu, one of the scientists involved in this study. ​“Our findings reveal striking differences between surface phonons and those in the bulk material, opening new avenues for research and applications.” Some of the research activities were performed at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a lipid nanoparticle system that can deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) to the brain via intravenous injection – a challenge that has long been limited by the protective nature of the blood-brain barrier. The system takes advantage of natural transport mechanisms within the blood-brain barrier that move nanoparticles across the blood-brain barrier. The findings, in mouse models and isolated human brain tissue, show the potential of this system for future treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, brain cancer, and drug addiction.