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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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Molecular 'catapult' fires electrons at the limits of physics

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 Molecular 'catapult' fires electrons at the limits of physics Electrons can be "kicked across" solar materials at almost the fastest speed nature allows, scientists have discovered, challenging long-held theories about how solar energy systems work. The finding could help researchers design more efficient ways of harvesting sunlight and converting it into electricity. The research is published in Nature Communications. In experiments capturing events lasting just 18 femtoseconds—less than 20 quadrillionths of a second—researchers at the University of Cambridge observed charge separation happening within a single molecular vibration. "We deliberately designed a system that—according to conventional theory—should not have transferred charge this fast," said Dr. Pratyush Ghosh, Research Fellow, at St John's College, Cambridge, and first author of the study. "By conventional design rules, this system should have been slow, and that's what makes the...
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Superfluids emerge in 2D moiré crystal formed from time, study predicts

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 Superfluids emerge in 2D moire crystal formed from time, study predicts An AI-enhanced conceptual illustration depicting ultracold atoms being 'twisted' by multiple laser pulses, offering a visual representation of our core idea: using periodic driving to engineer moiré patterns in time. Credit: Liang, Zhang & Zhang. (PRL, 2026). Conventional crystals are materials in which atoms arrange themselves in repeating spatial patterns. Time crystals, on the other hand, are phases of matter characterized by repeating motions over time without constantly heating up, breaking a physical rule known as time-translation symmetry. Researchers at East China Normal University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University recently predicted the formation of a new type of time crystal, dubbed a two-dimensional (2D) moiré time crystal. This crystal was theorized to emerge when periodic perturbations (i.e., regular, repeated disturbances) are applied to ultracold atoms held in a smooth, continuous trap, ...
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