Physics World Instrumentation & Vacuum Briefing 2023

Physics World Instrumentation & Vacuum Briefing 2023

Plastics have fundamentally changed how things are manufactured and packaged, but they carry a high cost in terms of pollution. Some scientists believe that the future lies with wood. We look at how Sweden’s Treesearch consortium is using a range of analytical tools to develop and characterize new wood-based materials. We also learn about the materials-characterization capabilities of the Waterloo Advanced Technology Laboratory (WATLab) in Waterloo, Canada and what it can offer to its academic and industrial users. In this issue we describe how a magnetically levitated oscillator could soon join the hunt for dark matter, and how the first direct measurement has been made of the fine structure constant, which defines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. And we take a look at how the additive manufacturing technique of 3D printing has been used to create a tiny vacuum pump that could be used to create portable mass spectrometers for use in remote locations.

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