University of Illinois Chicago researchers have developed a novel class of nanotube membranes that enable ultrafast ion transport. The findings open new pathways for high-efficiency clean energy generation, lithium recovery and molecular separation.

Researchers have developed a new kind of lidar system that simultaneously measures the location, speed and material properties of objects in a scene, which could be useful for applications in robotics, autonomous driving and remote sensing.

Compostable plastics could be part of a solution to the world’s plastic waste problem. But currently these materials need industrial composting facilities to break down. In a step toward making a home-compostable plastic, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have augmented polylactide (PLA) — a widely used biobased and compostable polymer— with a small amount of an additive. Tests show it helps the material degrade substantially faster without sacrificing critical qualities like strength or transparency. 

This system is crucial for enabling next-generation particle accelerators to better reveal fundamental biological and chemical processes, as well as advance materials science and energy research. The compact detector is a technological breakthrough, combining artificial diamonds, custom microchips, and cutting-edge assembly techniques into one unit.

This study presents a method for fabricating high-resolution, luminescent cerium-doped YAG:Ce³⁺ 3D microstructures using sol–gel synthesis combined with multiphoton laser lithography and controlled annealing. The process yields single-phase crystalline architectures with sub-micrometer features (≈0.48 µm) and isotropic shrinkage while preserving geometry. Structural and optical analysis confirms phase purity and strong emission at 558 nm, with optimal performance at 2 mol% Ce³⁺, enabling applications in photonic and optoelectronic microsystems.

By teaching an AI to use optical tweezers, researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, have sped up the analysis of life’s smallest components. The AI platform captures particles, takes measurements and loads new samples, all without human intervention.

Precise shaping of three-dimensional vector fields inside enclosed optical cavities has long been a critical unresolved bottleneck in modern photonics, essential for super-resolution imaging, nanolasers and advanced quantum photonic technologies. To address this, scientists in China invented a novel full-space adjoint-enabled freeform meta-optics framework, realizing 5-fold imaging fidelity enhancement while retaining λ/5 optical super-resolution. This technique opens new avenues for cutting-edge nanophotonics, topological photonics and quantum optics applications.