Inventing the world's strongest silver

A team of scientists has made the strongest silver ever — 42 percent stronger than the previous world record. It's part of a discovery of a new mechanism at the nanoscale that can create metals much stronger than any ever made before — while not losing electrical conductivity.

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Finding the 'magic angle' to create a new superconductor

Researchers have made a discovery that could provide new insights into how superconductors might move energy more efficiently to power homes, industries and vehicles. Their work showed that graphene — a material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms — is more likely to become a superconductor than originally thought possible.

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Ultra-fast optical way to extract critical information from quantum materials

Topological insulators are quantum materials, which, due to their exotic electronic structure, on surfaces and edges conduct electric current like metal, while acting as an insulator in bulk. Scientists have now demonstrated how to tell apart topological materials from their regular — trivial — counterparts within a millionth of a billionth of a second by probing it with ultra-fast laser light.

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Structural color printing of 3D microscale objects by shrinking photonic crystals

Researchers have developed a 'coloring-by-shrinking' method to print arbitrary 3D microscopic objects exhibiting structural colors. The design consisted of woodpile photonic crystals with varying lattice constants as the 3D building blocks. These structures remain colorless until they are heat treated, causing them to shrink and manifest color, a result of their lattice constants shrinking down below the wavelength of visible light. The team printed a colorful microscopic Eiffel Tower with structural colors, demonstrating feature sizes smaller than 100 nm.

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