Energy transition

There is considerable evidence that the superconducting state of Sr₂RuO₄ breaks time reversal symmetry. In the experiments showing time reversal symmetry breaking, its onset temperature, T_TRSB, is generally found to match the critical temperature, T_c, within resolution. In combination with evidence for even parity, this result has led to consideration of a d_xz ± id_yz order parameter.

Our collaborators at the Jozef Stefan Institute – the leading author, Jan Ravnik, is now a PSI Fellow at LMN – report a study of the electron ordering in equilateral triangle structures via photoexcitation of the prototypical dichalcogenide 1T-TaS₂.

Fission products from the PSI-SINQ gas-jet facility, as operated by LRC, were used to reveal the separation of relevant radionuclides from radioactively contaminated water. The tests were conducted using a novel innovative filter material made of a blend of milk whey and active charcoal on cellulose. This material has been developed by the ETHZ spin-off BluAct Technologies GmbH.

The importance of this project was recently highlithed in ETSON/news

The electronic properties of transition-metal oxides with highly correlated electrons are of central importance in modern condensed-matter physics and chemistry, both for their fundamental scientific interest and for their potential for advanced electronic applications. However, the design of materials with tailored properties has been restricted by the limited understanding of their structure–property relationships, which are particularly complex in the proximity of the regime where localized electrons become gradually mobile. RENiO₃ perovskites, characterized by the presence of spontaneous metal to insulator transitions, are some of the most widely used model materials for the investigation of this region in theoretical studies. However, crucial experimental information needed to validate theoretical predictions is still lacking due to their challenging high-pressure synthesis, which has prevented to date the growth of sizable bulk single crystals with RE ≠ La, Pr, and Nd. Here we report the first successful growth of single crystals with RE = Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy, Y, Ho, Er, and Lu in sizes up to ∼75 μm, grown from molten salts in a temperature gradient under 2000 bar of oxygen gas pressure. The crystals display regular prismatic shapes with flat facets, and their crystal structures and metal–insulator and antiferromagnetic order transition temperatures are in excellent agreement with previously reported values obtained from polycrystalline samples. The availability of such crystals opens access to measurements that have hitherto been impossible to conduct. This should contribute to a better understanding of the fascinating properties of materials with highly correlated electrons and guide future efforts to engineer transition-metal oxides with tailored functional properties.

CeRh₂As₂, a nonsymmorphic heavy fermion material, was recently reported to host a remarkable temperature versus z-axis magnetic-field phase diagram with two superconducting phases. In this material, the two inequivalent Ce sites per unit cell, related by inversion symmetry, introduce a sublattice structure corresponding to an extra internal degree of freedom. In this work, we propose a classification of the possible superconducting states in CeRh₂As₂ from the two Ce-sites' perspective.

Schematic representation of the method used to grow RENiO₃ nickelate single crystals covering the full 4f series and Y. This novel procedure, based on the use of moderate oxygen gas pressures (2000 bar), solvothermal growth in a temperature gradient, and highly reactive eutectic salt mixtures as fluxes, yields prismatic-shaped crystals with flat facets and sizes up to ∼75 μm.

The Kitaev quantum spin liquid epitomizes an entangled topological state, for which twoflavors of fractionalized low-energy excitations are predicted: the itinerant Majorana fermion and the Z₂ gauge flux. It was proposed recently that fingerprints of fractional excitations are encoded in the phonon spectra of Kitaev quantum spin liquids through a novel fractional- excitation-phonon coupling. Here, we detect anomalous phonon effects in α-RuCl₃ using inelastic X-ray scattering with meV resolution.

Intertwining quantum order and non-trivial topology is at the frontier of condensed matter physics. A charge- density-wave-like order with orbital currents has been pro- posed for achieving the quantum anomalous Hall effect in topological materials and for the hidden phase in cuprate high-temperature superconductors. However, the experimental realization of such an order is challenging. Here we use high-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy to discover an unconventional chiral charge order in a kagome material, KV₃Sb₅, with both a topological band structure and a superconducting ground state.

An article on the on-demand sample delivery and protein crystallography using acoustic levitation has been selected in an Applied Physics Letters collection of papers on technology and application of acoustic tweezers.

Encapsulation of highly dispersed palladium oxide clusters in the microporous channels and voids of the nanosized silicalite-1 crystals has been achieved by using an amine-based ligand.

The possibility of tuning the magnetic properties of materials with voltage (converse magnetoelectricity) or generating electric voltage with magnetic fields (direct magnetoelectricity) has opened new avenues in a large variety of technological fields, ranging from information technologies to healthcare devices and including a great number of multifunctional integrated systems, such as mechanical antennas, magnetometers, and radio frequency (RF) tunable inductors, which have been realized due to the strong strain-mediated magnetoelectric (ME) coupling found in ME composites. The development of single-phase multiferroic materials (which exhibit simultaneous ferroelectric and ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic orders), multiferroic heterostructures, as well as progress in other ME mechanisms, such as electrostatic surface charging or magneto-ionics (voltage-driven ion migration), have a large potential to boost energy efficiency in spintronics and magnetic actuators. This article focuses on existing ME materials and devices and reviews the state of the art in their performance.

The silver ruthenium oxide AgRuO₃ consists of honeycomb Ru₂⁵⁺O₆²⁻ layers and can be considered and can be considered an analogue of SrRu₂O₆ with a different intercalation. We present measurements of magnetic susceptibility and specific heat on AgRuO₃ single crystals, which reveal a sharp antiferromagnetic transition at 342(3) K. The electrical transport in single crystals of AgRuO₃ is determined by a combination of activated conduction over an intrinsic semiconducting gap of ≈100 meV and carriers trapped and thermally released from defects.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the NHC Key Laboratory of Systems Biology of Pathogens in Beijing, China, in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institut characterize the interactions of SARS-CoV-2 orf9b and human TOM70 biochemically, and they determine the 2.2 Å crystal structure of the TOM70 cytosolic domain with a bound SARS-CoV-2 orf9b peptide.