As the demand grows for ever smaller, smarter electronics, so does the demand for understanding materials’ behavior at ever smaller scales. Physicists are building a unique optical magnetometer to probe magnetism at the nano- and mesoscale.

Nanoscale worlds sometimes resemble macroscale roller-coaster style hills, placed at the tip of a series of hexagons. Surprisingly, these nanohills stem from the self-organization of particles — the very particles that have been eroded and subsequently redeposited following the bombardment of semi-conductors with ion beams. Now, a new theoretical study constitutes the first exhaustive investigation of the redeposition effect on the evolution of the roughening and smoothing of two-dimensional surfaces bombarded by multiple ions.

Using powerful computer simulations, researchers have identified a material with a higher melting point than any known substance. The computations show that a material made with hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have a melting point of more than 4,400 kelvins (7,460 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun, and 200 kelvins higher than the highest melting point ever recorded experimentally.

Researchers have developed a method that could improve medical imaging and cancer treatments and increase the efficiency of commercial solar cells by 25 to 30 percent.

By encoding information in photons via their spin, ‘photonic’ computers could be orders of magnitude faster and efficient than their current-day counterparts. Likewise, encoding information in the spin of electrons, rather than just their quantity, could make ‘spintronic’ computers with similar advantages. Engineers and physicists have now discovered a property of silicon that combines aspects of all of these desirable qualities.

Two new advancements in electrochromic materials — a highly selective cool mode and a warm mode — not thought possible several years ago have been developed by engineers. The researchers are one step closer to delivering smart windows with a new level of energy efficiency.

For the first time, researchers have combined a novel synthesis process with commercial electron-beam lithography techniques to produce arrays of semiconductor junctions in arbitrary patterns within a single, nanometer-thick semiconductor crystal. The process transforms patterned regions of one existing, single-layer crystal into another. The two semiconductor crystals formed sharp junctions, the desired building blocks of electronics.

Scientists used the Mira supercomputer to identify and improve a new mechanism for eliminating friction, which fed into the development of a hybrid material that exhibited superlubricity at the macroscale for the first time. Researchers helped enable the groundbreaking simulations by overcoming a performance bottleneck that doubled the speed of the team’s code.

BPA’s popularity soared after the 1950s, but evidence suggests that even low doses might be harmful to human and environmental health. Many manufacturers are now phasing out BPA, but it doesn’t break down easily, making safe disposal difficult. Now, researchers have developed a hybrid photocatalyst that can break down BPA using visible light. Their findings could eventually be used to treat water supplies and to more safely dispose of BPA and materials like it.

Throw away the detergent and forgo the elbow grease: pesky proteins can now be removed from surfaces by simply exposing them to light, thanks to a reusable titania template.