Feb 24, 2026 A new study has revealed how tiny imperfections and vibrations inside a promising quantum material could be used to control an unusual quantum effect, opening new possibilities for smaller, faster and more efficient energy-harvesting devices. (Nanowerk News) An international team, led by Professor Dongchen Qi from the...
Shine a light, build a crystal
Feb 24, 2026 With the flip of a switch, scientists harness light to program how particles interact and assemble. (Nanowerk News) NYU scientists are using light to precisely control how tiny particles organize themselves into crystals. Their research, published in the Cell Press journal Chem ("Light-controlled colloidal crystallization"), provides a...
Reading peptides one amino acid at a time through a sub-nanometer pore
Feb 24, 2026 A pore smaller than one nanometer reads peptide sequences amino acid by amino acid, pinpointing single-site Alzheimer's mutations and modifications with single-residue resolution. (Nanowerk Spotlight) Detecting Alzheimer's disease early means finding molecular traces of it in blood or cerebrospinal fluid, sometimes when only a few hundred copies...
Physicists open door to future, hyper-efficient orbitronic devices
Feb 24, 2026 Atomic vibrations can transfer orbital angular momentum to electrons in a non-magnetic material. (Nanowerk News) To keep up with today’s computing needs, researchers mine the quantum realm to find better ways to handle massive data demands. A new field known as “orbitronics” is the newest of these...
AI develops easily understandable solutions for unusual experiments in quantum physics
Feb 24, 2026 Researchers once struggled to understand unconventional solutions developed by artificial intelligence. A new approach leads to faster and better understanding. (Nanowerk News) Researchers at the University of Tübingen, working with an international team, have developed an artificial intelligence that designs entirely new, sometimes unusual, experiments in quantum...
Smaller ferroelectric tunnel junctions deliver bigger memory performance gains
Feb 23, 2026 Nanoscale ferroelectric tunnel junctions built on silicon show that shrinking device size dramatically boosts resistance contrast, offering a clear path to faster, denser non-volatile memory. (Nanowerk News) Shrinking ferroelectric tunnel junctions can significantly boost their performance in memory devices, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. The...
Scientists develop a new method to decode how DNA ‘switches’ control gene activity
Feb 23, 2026 Less than 2% of the genome codes for proteins; the rest, once called 'junk DNA', contains regulatory elements. Researchers analyzed 10,000 to reveal how variants shape gene activity. (Nanowerk News) Less than 2% of the human genome encodes proteins. The remaining DNA was once dismissed as “junk...
Hair-width LEDs could replace lasers
Feb 23, 2026 Hair-thin microLEDs could replace lasers for short-range data links and next-gen displays, with new research showing major gains in efficiency, brightness and beam control. (Nanowerk News) LEDs no wider than a human hair could soon take on work traditionally handled by lasers, from moving data inside server...
Laser shockwaves transform carbon nanotube films into graphene-rich networks without external heating
Feb 23, 2026 Laser shockwaves convert carbon nanotube films into multilayer graphene without external heating, boosting thermal conductivity sevenfold in a single chemical-free step. (Nanowerk Spotlight) Single-walled carbon nanotube thin films are among the most promising platforms for flexible electronics and scalable device integration. They can be spray-coated onto substrates,...
End-to-end robotic system automates catalyst testing 45x faster
Feb 23, 2026 A dual-robot platform fully automates catalyst performance evaluation from sample loading to data collection, completing tests 45 times faster with 32% less variability. (Nanowerk News) A technology has been developed that uses robots rather than humans to evaluate the performance of newly developed catalysts. By operating 45...