Physics

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in turning specially prepared graphene flakes either into insulators or into superconductors by applying an electric voltage. This technique even works locally, meaning that in the same graphene flake regions with completely different physical properties can be realized side by side.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have succeeded for the first time in looking inside materials using the method of transient grating spectroscopy with ultrafast X-rays at SwissFEL. The experiment at PSI is a milestone in observing processes in the world of atoms. The researchers are publishing their research results today in the journal Nature Photonics.

Physical chemists and chemical engineers led by EPFL have used a chemical tweak to push the power-conversion efficiency and operational stability of perovskite solar cells to 25.6% and at least 450 hours respectively.

Water can freeze from liquid to solid ice or boil into a gas. In the kitchen these “phase transitions” aren’t smooth, but their discontinuous nature is smoothed out at high pressure. An international team of physicists – led by EPFL and in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI – have now discovered the same behavior in certain quantum magnets, which may have consequences for the technology of qubits.

Uranus and Neptune both have a completely skewed magnetic field, perhaps due to the planets’ special inner structures. But new experiments by ETH Zurich researchers now show that the mystery remains unsolved.