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Record-breaking photodetector captures light in just 125 picoseconds

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 Record-breaking photodetector captures light in just 125 picoseconds A new ultrathin photodetector from Duke University can sense light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and generate a signal in just 125 picoseconds, making it the fastest pyroelectric detector ever built. The breakthrough could power next-generation multispectral cameras used in medicine, agriculture, and space-based sensing. An artistic rendition of how the new ultrafast metasurface works. Mikkelsen’s lab’s approach, called a “metasurface,” uses precisely tailored silver nanocubes placed on a transparent film only 10 nanometers above a thin layer of gold. When light strikes the surface of a nanocube, it excites the silver’s electrons, trapping the light’s energy through a phenomenon known as plasmonics—but only at a specific frequency controlled by the nanocubes’ sizes and spacings. Credit: Duke University Electrical engineers at Duke University have created the fastest pyroelectric photodetector ever de...
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This paper-thin chip turns invisible light into a steerable beam

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 This paper-thin chip turns invisible light into a steerable beam Researchers have built a paper-thin chip that converts infrared light into visible light and directs it precisely, all without mechanical motion. The design overcomes a long-standing efficiency-versus-control problem in light-shaping materials. This opens the door to tiny, highly efficient light sources integrated directly onto chips. A rendering of the metasurface chip in action. When hit with an infrared laser, the microscopic chip converts the incoming light to a higher frequency and sends it out as a narrow beam that can be precisely directed.  Creating extremely small devices that can precisely guide and control light is a key challenge for many emerging technologies. Scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have now made an important advance by developing a metasurface that can convert invisible infrared light into visible light and direct it in specific di...
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Scientists unlock a 100-year-old quantum secret to supercharge solar power

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Scientists unlock a 100-year-old quantum secret to supercharge solar power Scientists at the University of Cambridge have uncovered a surprising quantum effect inside an organic material, something once thought impossible outside metals. The team found that a special molecule can turn light into electricity with incredible efficiency, using a hidden quantum behavior unseen in such materials before. This breakthrough could lead to simpler, lighter, and cheaper solar panels. Researchers discovered a new way organic molecules can mimic the quantum mechanics of inorganic materials, turning light into electricity with extraordinary efficiency. This finding could revolutionize solar power by allowing single-material, ultra-light panels.  In a breakthrough that connects modern science with ideas first explored a century ago, researchers have witnessed a surprising phenomenon once thought possible only in inorganic metal oxides appearing inside a glowing organic semiconductor molecule. Led...
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How a Molecule's Twist Spins Electrons! 🌀

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 How a Molecule's Twist Spins Electrons! 🌀 Scientists have found a way to significantly boost “blue energy,” which generates electricity from the mixing of saltwater and freshwater. By coating nanopores with lipid molecules that create a friction-reducing water layer, they enabled ions to pass through much more efficiently while keeping the process highly selective. Their prototype membrane produced about two to three times more power than current technologies. The discovery could help bring osmotic energy closer to becoming a practical renewable power source. A new advance in “blue energy” could turn the natural mixing of seawater and freshwater into a much more powerful source of renewable electricity. Credit: AI/ScienceDaily.com Osmotic energy, often referred to as blue energy, is an emerging method for producing renewable electricity by harnessing the natural mixing of saltwater and freshwater. When these two types of water meet, ions from the saltwater move through a speciali...
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Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time

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Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time When molecules fall apart, their electric charge doesn't stay put—it rearranges as bonds stretch and break. An international team of scientists has now tracked these ultrafast changes in the small molecule fluoromethane (CH₃F). It was the first time that the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument at European XFEL could deliver detailed insights into transient states during chemical reactions. These intermediate states, that only exist temporarily while the reaction is ongoing, are often the key drivers of chemistry and therefore crucial to understand. Over the long term, that kind of insight can support progress in areas such as atmospheric science (where sunlight-driven reactions and fragmentation pathways shape air chemistry), as well as the study of complex molecular systems including biomolecules and proteins, where local excitation and charge transfer can trigger structural change. In the experiment, the research...
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Physicists finally see strange magnetic vortices predicted 50 years ago

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 Physicists finally see strange magnetic vortices predicted 50 years ago A team of physicists has experimentally confirmed a long-predicted sequence of exotic magnetic phases in an atomically thin material. When cooled, the material forms tiny magnetic vortices before transitioning into a second ordered magnetic state—exactly as predicted by a famous theoretical model from the 1970s. Observing both phases together for the first time validates key ideas about how magnetism behaves in two dimensions. The findings could help inspire ultracompact technologies built on nanoscale magnetic control. When researchers at UT Austin coaxed an atomically thin sheet of nickel phosphorus trisulfide to enter a special magnetic phase, called the BKT phase, the magnetic orientations of individual atoms formed swirling patterns called vortices.  Materials can behave in surprising ways when they are thinned down layer by layer until they are only a single atom thick. In a new study published in N...
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IBM and University Researchers Create a Never-Before-Seen Molecule and Prove its Exotic Nature with Quantum Computing

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 IBM and University Researchers Create a Never-Before-Seen Molecule and Prove its Exotic Nature with Quantum Computing An international team of scientists from IBM (NYSE: IBM), The University of Manchester, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of Regensburg have created and characterized a molecule unlike any previously known — one whose electrons travel through its structure in a corkscrew-like pattern that fundamentally alters its chemical behavior. Published today in Science, it is the first experimental observation of a half-Möbius electronic topology in a single molecule. To the scientists’ knowledge, a molecule with such topology has never before been synthesized, observed, or even formally predicted. Understanding this molecule’s behavior at the electronic structure level required something equally fundamental: a high fidelity quantum computing simulation. The discovery advances science on two fronts. For chemistry, it demonstrates that electronic topology ...
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