Quantum wells go metallic
Tai Chang Chiang and co-workers at Urbana confined electrons in thin films of silver ranging from 1 monolayer to around 100 monolayers thick. Just as photons resonate back and forth in an optical Fabr...
Wigner crystal found
Normal metals have an equal number of electrons with spin “up” and spin “down”. However, when there are more spins pointing up than down, or vice versa, the metal becomes a fer...
Green look for red fluorescent lights
The technique works because two different ions, gadolinium and europium, are in the phosphor material. The UV light boosts a gadolinium ion to its excited state. This excess energy is then transferred...
Measuring the conductivity of blood
Doctors need to measure blood conductivity to calculate the internal pump volume of the heart and the blood circulation rate. However, when patients receive additional fluids – for example, wate...
Quantum physics breakthrough wins Nobel Prize
Two of the physicists, Horst L. Störmer from Columbia University, New York, and Daniel C. Tsui, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, discovered the effect – called the fractional qu...
New light on plasma properties
Previous experiments found it difficult to measure plasma spectra because the high temperatures inside the plasma caused the spectral lines to blur. The Weizmann team solved the problem by adding oxyg...
Electronics with single atoms
Scheer and colleagues used a scanning tunnelling microscope, a mechanically controlled break junction, and lithography to fabricate various simple electronic circuits. These devices measured the effec...
‘Negative resistance’ surprises material scientists
Deborah Chung and Shoukai Wang of the University of Buffalo in the US stumbled across this unexpected behaviour whilst researching ‘smart’ materials. These materials, usually based on carb...
Light makes insulator conduct
The researchers cooled the manganese oxide compound (Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3) to below 200 K in a zero magnetic field. At this temperature the electrons drop into a low energy state, which minimizes their natu...
Hydrogen exonerated in Hindenburg crash
William Van Vorst of the University of California at Los Angles and Addison Bain, an independent consultant, have gathered evidence that hydrogen could not have caused the explosion. Film footage and ...
