Lifeboat Foundation

Superconductors are materials capable of conducting electricity without any resistance when they are cooled below a specific temperature known as the critical temperature. These materials are used in various applications such as power grids, maglev trains, and medical imaging equipment. High-temperature superconductors, which operate at higher critical temperatures than conventional superconductors, hold great promise for enhancing these technologies. Nonetheless, the underlying mechanisms of their superconductivity are not yet fully understood.

Copper oxides or cuprates, a class of high-temperature superconductors, exhibit superconductivity when electrons and holes (vacant spaces left behind by electrons) are introduced into their crystal structure through a process called doping. Interestingly, in the low-doped state, with less-than-optimal electrons required for superconductivity, a pseudogap ­­–a partial gap in the electronic structure– opens. This pseudogap is considered a potential factor in the origin of superconductivity in these materials.

NASA ’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a sample from asteroid Bennu, revealing it contains key solar system materials and possible signs of a watery past. This discovery provides valuable insights into the early solar system’s conditions and the potential origins of life.

A deep dive into the sample of rocks and dust returned from near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA’s University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed some long-awaited surprises.

Bennu contains the original ingredients that formed our solar system, the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team found. The asteroid’s dust is rich in carbon and nitrogen, as well as organic compounds, all of which are essential components for life as we know it. The sample also contains magnesium sodium phosphate, which was as a surprise to the research team, because it wasn’t seen in the remote sensing data collected by the spacecraft at Bennu. Its presence in the sample hints that the asteroid could have splintered off from a long-gone, tiny, primitive ocean world.

A new superconducting compound offers a bridge to more practicals with a potentially attractive range of applications, according to new research. And the new material’s strange magnetic behavior recalls classics of decades ago—but this time in a material that’s already demonstrated its near-room-temperature bona fides.

Lanthanum hydrides—which combine atoms of the rare earth metal lanthanum with atoms of hydrogen—contain a range of superconducting materials of varying properties. One noteworthy material is lanthanum decahydride (LaH₁₀), which boasts the world’s highest accepted superconducting transition temperature, at −23 °C. (The catch is that to achieve this feat, lanthanum decahydride must be subjected to 200 billion pascals of pressure.)

Now a different lanthanum hydride (La₄H₂₃) has revealed similar if not quite equally impressive superconductivity stats. (Its transition temperature is −168 °C at 122 billion Pa.) However, the new lanthanum hydride also has revealingly peculiar magnetic properties that suggest an unexpected family resemblance to the superstar of the superconductivity world, cuprates.

AMD is reportedly planning to develop Glass Substrate chips as early as 2025 as Intel & Samsung eye mass production for post-2025.

Glass Substrates Are Expected To Be The Next Big Thing For The Tech Industry, Intel & Samsung Eye Towards Establishing Their Production While AMD Aims Chip Development As Early As 2025

Glass substrates are used in packaging solutions to replace organic materials. They have numerous benefits, such as higher packaging strength, which ensures more extended durability & reliability, and a higher interconnected density since glass is usually much thinner than organic material. This allows the integration of multiple transistors into a single pack. It is said to overcome flaws associated with traditional methods and open a new wave of innovation for computing chips employing glass substrates.

Superconductivity is a fascinating phenomenon, which allows a material to sustain an electrical current without any loss. This collective quantum behavior of matter only appears in certain conductors at temperatures far below ambient.

A global research team has devised a method to decompose plastics and other materials into their smallest components using a laser, enabling their future reuse.

The breakthrough involves placing these materials on two-dimensional structures called transition metal dichalcogenides and then exposing them to laser light. This technique could significantly enhance the disposal of plastics that are currently almost impossible to break down with existing technologies.

A global research team led by Texas Engineers has developed a way to blast the molecules in plastics and other materials with a laser to break them down into their smallest parts for future reuse.

Charge density waves are quantum phenomena occurring in some materials, which involve a static modulation of conduction electrons and the periodic distortion of the lattice. These waves have been observed in numerous condensed matter materials, including high-temperature superconductors and quantum Hall systems.

While many studies have investigated these states, so far experimental observations of the boundary states that emerge from charge density waves are still scarce. In a recent paper, published in Nature Physics, researchers at Princeton University and other institutes worldwide have visualized the bulk and boundary modes of the charge density wave in the topological material Ta₂Se₈I.

“Our research group focuses on discovering and investigating novel topological properties of quantum matter utilizing various state-of-the-art experimental techniques that probe electronic structure of the materials,” Maksim Litskevich, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. “In recent years, the physics community has experienced excitement exploring the intriguing and rich properties of Kagome materials, which intricately intertwine geometry, topology, and electronic interactions.”

The Brewster reflectionless effect stands out as one of the simplest yet pivotal discoveries in manipulating waves. Initial investigations were limited to isotropic materials, but later, thanks to the advent of metamaterials, the phenomenon was found to expand into anisotropic materials.

An anomalous Brewster effect has recently been demonstrated in metamaterials, thus increasing the number of degrees of freedom. In materials without magnetic responses, the Brewster effect exclusively applies to transverse–magnetic (TM, or p–wave polarization) waves. Building on the equivalence between TM mode and 2D acoustics, the Brewster effect in acoustics with zero reflection has been demonstrated by utilizing acoustic metamaterials.

In their paper published in the journal Science Bulletin, the researchers first demonstrated this universal theory by matching the continuous boundary conditions and analyzing the relationship between the reflection coefficient and various parameters, proposing a precise method to confirm the near-zero reflection condition. Subsequently, they incorporated intrinsic losses into the permittivity tensors, illustrating a novel method to achieve asymmetric vortex transmission.