Research on Covid-19

Imaging strain in crystalline materials with high resolution can be a challenging task. Researchers demonstrate an original use of X-ray ptychography for this purpose: ptychographic topography.

Magnetic anisotropy is anticipated to govern the formation of exotic spin textures reported recently in cubic chiral magnets, like low-temperature tilted conical and skyrmion lattice (SkL) states and metastable SkLs with various lattice geometry. Motivated by these findings, we quantified the cubic anisotropy in a series of CoZnMn-type cubic chiral magnets. We found that the strength of anisotropy is highly enhanced towards low temperatures. Moreover, not only the magnitude but also the character of cubic anisotropy drastically varies upon changing the Co/Mn ratio.

The rare earth nickelates RNiO₃ are metallic at high temperatures and insulating and magnetically ordered at low temperatures. The low temperature phase has been predicted to be type II multiferroic, i.e., ferroelectric and magnetic order are coupled and occur simultaneously. Confirmation of those ideas has been inhibited by the absence of experimental data on single crystals. Here we report on Raman spectroscopic data of RNiO₃ single crystals (R = Y, Er, Ho, Dy, Sm, Nd) for temperatures between 10 and 1000 K. Entering the magnetically ordered phase we observe the appearance of a large number of additional vibrational modes, implying a breaking of inversion symmetry expected for multiferroic order.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.