NEWS RELEASES

It may be the smallest, shortest chorus dance ever recorded. 

As reported in Science Advances, an international team of researchers observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around a particle less than a nanometer in diameter. 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. That light-trapping ability has been applied in a wide range of areas, from turning light into chemical energy to improving light-sensitive gadgets and even converting sunlight into electricity. 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.”

Rice researchers found that a carbon material known as monolayer amorphous carbon is eight times tougher than graphene.

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Mini flow cell battery provides the first step toward an AI-driven, robotic energy storage discovery laboratory.

Mini flow cell battery provides the first step toward an AI-driven, robotic energy storage discovery laboratory.

Researchers have been working for decades to understand the details of where the proton gets its intrinsic angular momentum, otherwise referred to as its spin. Recently, there have been indications that the spin contribution of the gluons could either be positive or negative. Now, a new approach that avoids assumptions and re-analyzes observational data with lattice quantum chromodynamics points strongly toward a positive gluon spin contribution, ∆g, to the proton spin.

A new study led by Rice materials scientist Lane Martin sheds light on how the extreme miniaturization of thin films affects the behavior of relaxor ferroelectrics — materials with noteworthy energy-conversion properties used in sensors, actuators and nanoelectronics.

SLAC researchers studying laser-driven proton acceleration introduced a self-replenishing water sheet target to address the inefficiency of replacing targets after each laser pulse. The new target had an unanticipated side effect, resulting in a naturally focused, more tightly aligned proton beam.