An international collaboration headed by researchers in the Department of Physics has shown that additive manufacturing offers a realistic way to build large-scale plastic scintillator detectors for particle physics experiments.

Conductive hydrogels from ionic liquids are widely used in soft electronics and solid electrolytes due to their high flexibility and conductivity. However, engineering such hydrogels with simultaneous biocompatibility, recyclability, excellent conductivity, stretchability, and toughness for different soft electronic applications remains challenging. This study presents a simple strategy to fabricate tough, biocompatible, and recyclable conductive hydrogels based on polyvinyl alcohol PVA and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate for highly stretchable strain sensors and all-in-one supercapacitors. These hydrogels can also be recycled to make new strain sensors with consistent performance in terms of linear sensitivity, durability, and low hysteresis. This simple design concept opens up new avenues for the development of the next generation "green" wearable and implantable electronic devices.

An international team of researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Riga Technical University, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente has discovered a new method to generate electricity using small plastic beads. By placing these beads close together and bringing them into contact, they generate more electricity than usual. This process, known as triboelectrification, is similar to the static electricity produced when rubbing a balloon against hair.

Polypseudorotaxanes, in which α-cyclodextrin (α-CD) rings shuttle along a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) chain, are promising candidates for molecular machines. However, their molecular dynamics have remained unclear. Researchers have now used fast-scanning atomic force microscopy (FS-AFM) to visualize α-CD rings moving along a PEG chain. This breakthrough establishes FS-AFM as a powerful tool for analyzing supramolecular polymers and paves the way for designing efficient molecular motors.

Where there’s water, there are waves. But what if you could bend water waves to your will to move floating objects? Nanyang Technological University, Singapore co-led a team of international researchers to achieve this with physics.

The scientists developed a technique to merge waves in a water tank to produce complex patterns, such as twisting loops and swirling vortices. Some patterns acted like tweezers or a “tractor beam” to hold a floating ball in place. Other patterns made the ball spin and move precisely in a circular path.

In the future, the technique could be scaled down to precisely move particles the size of cells for experiments, or scaled up to guide boats along a desired path on the water.

Physicists developed simplified formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems. Their approach was applied to nanoscale materials, revealing unexpected quantum behaviors and identifying key quantities for the Kondo effect. These findings advance understanding of quantum technologies.