/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A rare and bewildering intermediate between crystal and glass can be the most stable arrangement for some combinations of atoms, according to a study from the University of Michigan. /news/2025-06-quantum-mechanical-quasicrystals-reveals.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 13 Jun 2025 12:10:01 EDT news669034497 Rutgers University–New Brunswick researchers have discovered a new class of materials—called intercrystals—with unique electronic properties that could power future technologies. /news/2025-05-intercrystals-pave-greener-electronics-quantum.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Wed, 21 May 2025 17:17:04 EDT news667066621 Quasicrystals, exotic states of matter characterized by an ordered structure with non-repeating spatial patterns, have been the focus of numerous recent physics studies due to their unique organization and resulting symmetries. Among the quasicrystals that have sparked significant interest among the physics community are so-called quantum quasicrystals, which are comprised of bosons (i.e., subatomic particles that have spin in integer values, such as 0, 1, 2, and so on, and can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously). /news/2025-04-physics-theory-energy-quantum-quasicrystals.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 25 Apr 2025 06:50:01 EDT news664708518 Quasicrystals (QCs) are fascinating solid materials that exhibit an intriguing atomic arrangement. Unlike regular crystals, in which atomic arrangements have an ordered repeating pattern, QCs display long-range atomic order that is not periodic. Due to this 'quasiperiodic' nature, QCs have unconventional symmetries that are absent in conventional crystals. /news/2025-04-frontier-spintronics-antiferromagnetic-quasicrystals-unveiled.html Condensed Matter Fri, 11 Apr 2025 05:00:10 EDT news663500101 In their ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of quantum possibilities, physicists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have created a new type of "time crystal," a novel phase of matter that defies common perceptions of motion and time. /news/2025-03-qa-crystallizing-physicists-phase-center.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:51:39 EDT news661434694 In April 1982, Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology made the discovery that would later earn him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: the quasiperiodic crystal. According to diffraction measurements made with an electron microscope, the new material appeared "disorganized" at smaller scales, yet with a distinct order and symmetry apparent at a larger scale. /news/2025-02-fourth-dimension-scientists-glimpse-4d.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:00:35 EST news658684830 A new vortex electric field with the potential to enhance future electronic, magnetic and optical devices has been observed by researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and local partners. /news/2024-12-vortex-electric-field-discovery-impact.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Sun, 08 Dec 2024 01:00:01 EST news652453976 Quasicrystals are materials with unique, non-periodic symmetry that distinguishes them from conventional crystals. Approximant crystals, often regarded as precursor materials closely related to quasicrystals, share similar compositional and structural features but retain periodic atomic arrangements. /news/2024-11-comprehensive-database-advance-driven-field.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:51:03 EST news650893861 Much of modern life depends on the coding of information into means of delivering it. A common method is to encode data in laser light and send it through optic cables. The increasing demand for more information capacity demands that we constantly find better ways of encoding it. /news/2024-11-physicists-tiny-hurricanes-huge-amounts.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 11 Nov 2024 13:20:42 EST news650553633 Â鶹ÒùÔºicists from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge have created the first two-dimensional version of the Bose glass, a novel phase of matter that challenges statistical mechanics. The details of the study have been published in Nature. /news/2024-09-discovery-phase-2d-defies-statistical.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 11 Sep 2024 11:00:01 EDT news645264781 For a long time, scientists associated crystal structures with an ordered arrangement of atoms in a repeating lattice-like pattern, believing it to be the most stable configuration. However, by the 1960s, advancements in crystallography revealed materials that did not fit the traditional model. These structures exhibit a non-periodic or non-repeating pattern and are called aperiodic crystals. /news/2024-07-hexagonal-metallic-approximants-bridge-gap.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 11 Jul 2024 05:00:01 EDT news639846480 In new research, physicists have wielded the power of chess to design a group of intricate mazes, which could ultimately be used to tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges. /news/2024-07-scientists-world-amazingly-difficult-maze.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Tue, 02 Jul 2024 11:27:18 EDT news639138432 Scientists have advanced metasurface technology by developing a new design that simultaneously projects holographic images and creates special diffraction patterns with ten-fold rotation symmetry of quasicrystal. This ultra-thin material merges the unique properties of quasicrystals with light manipulation techniques. /news/2024-06-scientists-quasicrystal-metasurface-holographic-images.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:42:44 EDT news637587762 Crystal symmetry is a fundamental concept in materials science, playing a crucial role in determining structure-property relationships. Typically, a crystal is a solid composed of structural units that periodically repeat in three-dimensional space, forming a system that exhibits both translational and rotational symmetry. /news/2024-05-successfully-fabricate-nis-ultrafine-nanorods.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 28 May 2024 16:58:02 EDT news636134281 Quasicrystals are intermetallic materials that have garnered significant attention from researchers aiming to advance condensed matter physics understanding. Unlike normal crystals, in which atoms are arranged in an ordered repeating pattern, quasicrystals have non-repeating ordered patterns of atoms. /news/2024-01-secrets-quasicrystal-magnetism-revealing-magnetic.html Condensed Matter Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:37:03 EST news624800222 Crystalline materials are made up of atoms, ions, or molecules arranged in an ordered, three-dimensional structure. They are widely used for the development of semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, photovoltaics, and catalysts. /news/2023-11-deep-previously-unknown-quasicrystalline-phase.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Fri, 17 Nov 2023 10:34:07 EST news619439641 A team of researchers from the Mirkin Group at Northwestern University's International Institute for Nanotechnology in collaboration with the University of Michigan and the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials- CIC biomaGUNE, unveils a novel methodology to engineer colloidal quasicrystals using DNA-modified building blocks. Their study is published in the journal Nature Materials under the title "Colloidal Quasicrystals Engineered with DNA." /news/2023-11-colloidal-quasicrystals-dna-modified-blocks.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Thu, 02 Nov 2023 12:00:01 EDT news618135650 Two-photon polymerization is a potential method for nanofabrication to integrate nanomaterials based on femtosecond laser-based methods. Challenges in the field of 3D nanoprinting include slow layer-by-layer printing and limited material options as a result of laser-matter interactions. /news/2023-10-free-space-nanoprinting-optical-limits-4d.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Sat, 07 Oct 2023 09:20:02 EDT news615809799 In research that could jumpstart interest into an enigmatic class of materials known as quasicrystals, MIT scientists and colleagues have discovered a relatively simple, flexible way to create new atomically thin versions that can be tuned for important phenomena. In work reported in Nature they describe doing just that to make the materials exhibit superconductivity and more. /news/2023-09-physicists-coax-superconductivity-quasicrystals.html Condensed Matter Superconductivity Fri, 29 Sep 2023 05:49:27 EDT news615185359 Many molecules assemble into crystalline or disordered glassy structures on surface. With certain assembly approaches, specific molecules can be made to form ordered yet aperiodic structures, such as fractals and quasicrystals. SierpiÅ„ski triangles (STs) have been prepared on surfaces and in solutions through halogen bonding, metal-organic coordination, hydrogen bonding, and covalent bonding interactions. /news/2023-06-scientists-gas-molecules-transition-sierpiski.html Analytical Chemistry Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:13:36 EDT news607349614 An unusual quasicrystal has been discovered by a team from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the University of Sheffield and Xi'an Jiaotong University. It has a dodecagonal honeycomb structure that has never been seen before. Until now, similar quasicrystals were only known to come in a solid—not liquid—form. The team presents its results in the journal Nature Chemistry. /news/2023-05-liquid-quasicrystal-dodecagonal-tiling-pattern.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 10 May 2023 10:20:02 EDT news602932801 Quasicrystals (QCs) have peculiar structures with interesting atomic arrangements. Although they are similar to crystals from the exterior, at the atomic scale, they lack periodicity despite being ordered. Such structural arrangements confer quasicrystals with symmetries and other special properties that are missing in crystals. In particular, icosahedral QCs (i QCs), which have a special geometric structure, show interesting magnetic properties. /news/2023-04-tunable-ferromagnetic-quasicrystal-high-phase.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 26 Apr 2023 11:00:03 EDT news601725601 Research using a quantum computer as the physical platform for quantum experiments has found a way to design and characterize tailor-made magnetic objects using quantum bits, or qubits. That opens up a new approach to develop new materials and robust quantum computing. /news/2023-03-qubits-magnetism-boosting-applications-quantum.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 17 Mar 2023 14:00:10 EDT news598264560 The structure of two-dimensional titanium oxide breaks up at high temperatures when one adds barium; instead of regular hexagons, rings of four, seven and ten atoms are created that order aperiodically. /news/2023-01-physicists-riddle-two-dimensional-quasicrystal-formation.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 26 Jan 2023 11:21:50 EST news593954508 A team of researchers from Università di Firenze, the University of South Florida, California Institute of Technology and Princeton University has found an incidence of a quasicrystal formed during an accidental electrical discharge. /news/2022-12-quasicrystal-accidental-electrical-discharge.html Earth Sciences Fri, 30 Dec 2022 10:11:45 EST news591617502 By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time, the physicists report July 20 in Nature. /news/2022-07-strange-phase-quantum-dimensions.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 20 Jul 2022 11:00:03 EDT news577524748 Together with their colleague Professor Stefano Longhi (Polytechnic Institute of Milan), physicists from the group of Professor Alexander Szameit (University of Rostock) have discovered a triple phase transition. At the critical moment, three fundamental properties of an intricate artificial material change abruptly: Topology, conductivity, and energy exchange with the environment. These results challenge the established view that these three major material properties would be largely independent from one another. The discovery was recently published in the journal Nature and could pave the way toward a holistic understanding of the inner workings of complex materials. /news/2022-01-triple-phase-transition-photonic-quasicrystal.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Jan 2022 09:42:03 EST news561894120 Since the discovery of quasicrystals (QCs), solids that mimic crystals in their long-range order but lack periodicity, scientists have sought physical properties related to their peculiar structure. Now, an international group of researchers led by Tokyo University of Science, have reported a long-range magnetic order in QCs with icosahedral symmetry that turns ferromagnetism below certain temperatures. /news/2021-11-scientists-ferromagnetic-quasicrystals.html Condensed Matter Mon, 22 Nov 2021 09:34:55 EST news556796092 A class of materials that once looked as if it might revolutionize everything from solar cells to frying pans—but fell out of favor in the early 2000s—could be poised for commercial resurrection, findings from a University of Michigan-led research team suggest. /news/2021-10-resurrecting-quasicrystals-exotic-material-commercially.html Materials Science Mon, 11 Oct 2021 05:00:01 EDT news553140384 Searching for lead materials with specific properties, researchers have developed a workflow that incorporates artificial intelligence to guide discovery of a new ceramic structure with particularly low thermal conductivity. As they explain in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the material has an unusual quasicrystalline structure, potentially paving the way for novel heat-insulating and thermoelectric materials. /news/2021-06-functional-materials-artificial-intelligence.html Materials Science Fri, 18 Jun 2021 10:28:53 EDT news543230929