Stable packets of light waves – called optical solitons – are emitted in ultrashort-pulse lasers as a chain of light flashes. These solitons often combine into pairs with very short temporal separation. Introducing atomic vibrations in the terahertz range, researchers at the Universities of Bayreuth and Wrocław have now solved the puzzle of how these temporal links are formed. They report on their discovery in Nature Communications. The dynamics of the coupled light packets can be used to measure atomic vibrations as characteristic "fingerprints" of materials in an extremely fast manner.
The Bavarian Centre for Battery Technology (BayBatt), a research centre of the University of Bayreuth, is launching into the future at a new location in Bayreuth's industrial north. On four floors with a floor space of around 7,000 square metres, the new building offers plenty of space for researching and developing intelligent, networked, and sustainable energy storage systems – in close cooperation between science and industry. Rooms for teaching events promote the dovetailing of research with innovative courses of study. A ceremonial inauguration is planned for November 2022, to which Minister President Dr Markus Söder is among those invited.
The alpha-olefins, consisting of carbon and hydrogen, are the most important precursors in the chemical industry. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth present a discovery in the journal “Science” that opens up previously unimagined prospects for the design and the selective as well as sustainable production of these chemical products. They have developed a highly selective catalyst that for the first time makes it possible to produce, using ethylene, a potentially infinite number of variations of alpha-olefins with pinpoint accuracy. Until now, such selective production methods were only available for three alpha-olefins.
Nuclear medicine utilizes technetium-99m among other things for tumor diagnostics. With over 30 million applications worldwide each year, it is the most widely used radioisotope. The precursor material, molybdenum-99, is mainly produced in research reactors. A study at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Research Neutron Source (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) now illustrates options to significantly reduce the radioactive waste produced during processing to a medical product.
The manufacture of products from just one material is sustainable because resources are conserved and recycling is simplified considerably. The new MonoMat project at the University of Bayreuth aims to use additive manufacturing to make it possible to produce high-quality lightweight products in medical, sports, and lifestyle sectors from a single material. The material is to be recycled repeatedly with as little wastage as possible, and can be used in different product classes. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection is funding the project, in which four industrial research partners are also involved, to the tune of almost € 1.3 million until the end of 2023.
Researchers at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy and the Chair of Thermal Process Technology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have succeeded in making invisible hydrogen gas visible to the naked eye in order to prevent the risk of fires and explosions. The key to their research is what is known as supraparticles, tiny particles that change colour as soon as they come near hydrogen. The results have been published in the journal ‘Advanced Functional Materials’.
The chemistry department in Würzburg aims to develop a new class of chiral organic semiconductors - for next-generation applications in organic electronics. The project is funded by the European Research Council with 1.5 million euros.
Just as electrons flow through an electrical conductor, magnetic excitations can travel through certain materials. Such excitations, known in physics as "magnons" in analogy to the electron, could transport information much more easily than electrical conductors. An international research team has now made an important discovery on the road to such components, which could be highly energy-efficient and considerably smaller.
Succinic acid is an important precursor for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products and also serves as a component in biodegradable plastics. It is currently derived mainly from petroleum-based processes. Researchers at the Straubing campus of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using the marine bacterium Vibrio natriegens as a biocatalyst. This could permit the production of succinic acid in sustainable processes using renewable raw materials.
Toward a new kind of superconductivity: new publication in the Nature Magazine
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