Josh Caldwell, professor of mechanical engineering and Director of the Interdisciplinary Materials Science graduate program at Vanderbilt University, and Alex Paarmann of the Fritz Haber Institute, led an international collaborative research project that successfully demonstrated the confinement of terahertz (THz) light to nanoscale dimensions using a new type of layered material. This could lead to improvements in opto-electronic devices such as infrared emitters used in remote controls and night vision and terahertz optics desired for physical security and environmental sensing.

Nine projects led by faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will receive the first round of funding from AI TechX, a new initiative created by UT to empower Tennessee communities and industry partners to adopt AI technologies that enable high-quality job creation. 

A new study has found land and ocean weathering processes are linked and together they influence the amount of carbon stored or released into the atmosphere.

A team led by Prof. Yan Lu, HZB, and Prof. Arne Thomas, Technical University of Berlin, has developed a material that enhances the capacity and stability of lithium-sulphur batteries. The material is based on polymers that form a framework with open pores (known as radical-cationic covalent organic frameworks or COFs). Catalytically accelerated reactions take place in these pores, firmly trapping polysulphides, which would shorten the battery life. Some of the experimental analyses were conducted at the BAMline at BESSY II.

The powerful light field manipulation capability of metasurfaces offers a novel development perspective for the quantum precision measurement. By applying the phase-gradient metasurface (PGM) to atomic magnetometers (AMs), we have proposed and experimentally demonstrated a new type of compact single-beam elliptically polarized atomic magnetometers (EPAMs). Employing the fabricated chiral beam splitter PGM with high cross-polarization transmittance, a new atomic spin chirality detection method was devised, enabling the ultra-high sensitivity for extremely weak magnetic field measurement and achieving a high sensitivity of 2.67 pT/Hz^1/2 under an external magnetic field of approximately 10000 nT. The new AMs combine the pumping and probing polarized light, achieving a compact design. The fabricated PGM has a size of only 3 mm × 3 mm × 0.7 mm, which is beneficial for the miniaturization and integration of AMs. This work effectively expands the application of metasurfaces in the field of quantum precision measurement, and also provides a new viewpoint for the design and development of high-sensitivity and miniaturized AMs.

Multi-energy X-ray imaging technology shows significant advantages in complex scenes， such as simultaneous imaging of bone and muscle defects in organisms. However, this technology has strict requirements on material selection and device design, which is a key bottleneck restricting its further development. Here, we establish the probability model of energy distribution of different energy X-rays in each layer of scintillator films, guiding the rational design of the type, thickness and stacking sequence of scintillators. Moreover, we propose a universal vitamin assisted in-situ growth method on perovskite scintillators, which provide technical support for the controllable preparation of polymer-ceramic composite scintillator films with high uniformity and radiation stability. More importantly, we have successfully realized multi-energy X-ray imaging by stacking four polymer-ceramic film, identifying materials with different densities. This research is expected to provide guidance for the rational selection of polymer host and multi-energy X-ray imaging applications.