Characterization and analytical techniques - Latest research and news (2024)

Quantifying the atomic neighbourhoods in complex concentrated alloys

Atom probe tomography unlocks the potential to precisely analyse the short-range ordering in a CoCrNi medium-entropy alloy.

• Arun Devaraj

Revisiting hyperbolic materials for deep-subwavelength polaritonics

Natural hyperbolic materials hybridized with nanostructures provide deep-subwavelength-scale confinement of an electromagnetic field.

• Seokwoo Kim
• Yeongtae Jang
• Junsuk Rho

Ultra-broadband illusion acoustics for space and time camouflages

Invisibility cloaks have attracted a tremendous amount of interest. Here, the authors present a strategy to realize ultra-broadband disappearing-space and time-shift camouflages by leveraging illusion metamaterials, thereby removing the longstanding bottleneck of limited bandwidth in invisibility.

• Chenkai Liu
• Chu Ma
• Nicholas X. Fang

Current induced hidden states in Josephson junctions

Diract imaging of supercurrent flow at a Josephson junction has been inaccessible in experiment. Here, using nanoscale magnetometry, the authors find large kinetic inductance of thin film superconductors can lead to competing Josephson vortex states hidden below the critical current, and also provide a new route towards the Josephson diode effect.

• Shaowen Chen
• Seunghyun Park
• Amir Yacoby

Behavioral biometric optical tactile sensor for instantaneous decoupling of dynamic touch signals in real time

A sensitive upconversion nanocrystal-based biometric optical tactile sensor instantaneously and quantitatively decomposes dynamic touch signals into individual components of vertical normal and lateral shear force from a single image in real-time.

• Changil Son
• Jinyoung Kim
• Jiseok Lee

Comparative study on structural, morphological, and optical properties of MS/Fe3O4 nanocomposites and M-doped Fe3O4 nanopowders (M = Mn, Zn)

• P. Soltanpour
• R. Naderali
• Kh. Mabhouti

Deep learning revealed statistics of the MgO particles dissolution rate in a CaO–Al2O3–SiO2–MgO slag

• Fereshteh Falah Chamasemani
• Florian Lenzhofer
• Roland Brunner

Ortho-positronium lifetime for soft-tissue classification

• Ashish V. Avachat
• Kholod H. Mahmoud
• Angela Di Fulvio

Quantifying the atomic neighbourhoods in complex concentrated alloys

Atom probe tomography unlocks the potential to precisely analyse the short-range ordering in a CoCrNi medium-entropy alloy.

• Arun Devaraj

Revisiting hyperbolic materials for deep-subwavelength polaritonics

Natural hyperbolic materials hybridized with nanostructures provide deep-subwavelength-scale confinement of an electromagnetic field.

• Seokwoo Kim
• Yeongtae Jang
• Junsuk Rho

Monitoring catalytic nanosites in action

Rational design of improved electrocatalysts requires a profound understanding of the catalyst’s active sites during the reaction. However, molecule conversion occurs on the few-nanometre scale and operando tools for simultaneous nanoscale chemical, electronic and structural investigation are scarce. Now, the geometric and electronic creation and evolution of individual active sites during the hydrogen evolution reaction on MoS₂ has been unravelled using electrochemical tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

• Katrin F. Domke

New dimensions for fluorescence-based barcoding in complex mixtures

Combining single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and fluorescence lifetime information inside an anti-Brownian electrokinetic (ABEL) trap makes it possible to distinguish dozens of biomolecules in a sample mixture. This method enables extensive barcoding of biomolecules with a minimal set of chemical components and opens up a path toward biomolecule quantification in complex mixtures.

• Thorsten Hugel

Combining two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy with atomic force microscopy

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is coupled with time-domain two-dimensional infrared (2DIR) spectroscopy to develop AFM-2DIR nanospectroscopy, which combines the spatial precision of AFM with the rich spectroscopic information provided by 2DIR spectroscopy. Application of this method reveals the anharmonicity of a carbonyl vibrational mode and the possible energy transfer pathways of hyperbolic phonon polaritons in isotope-rich hexagonal boron nitride.

Best practices for operando hard X-ray absorption spectroscopy

A powerful technique with broad applications, operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is widely used but there is a lack of design and reporting standards. Focusing on water-splitting electrocatalysts, we propose best practices for the reproducibility, replicability and reliability of operando XAS studies.

• Adam H. Clark
• Thomas J. Schmidt
• Emiliana Fabbri