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Future Technologies

The manifold characteristics of materials are determined by what type of atoms they are made of, how these atoms are arranged, and how they move. In the research area Future Technologies, scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute are trying to clarify this link between the internal structure and the observable properties of different materials. They want to use this knowledge as fundamental principles for new applications – whether in medicine, information technology or energy generation and storage – or to explore innovative manufacturing processes for industry.

Find out more at: Future Technologies

7 July 2017

Research experience from California benefits Swiss X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL

Media Releases Large Research Facilities Future Technologies SwissFEL

An X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) is capable of visualizing extremely fast structural and electronic processes. Pilot experiments will take place at the PSI's Swiss Free-Electron Laser (SwissFEL) from the end of 2017 on. Two current publications in Science and Nature Communications demonstrate the kind of outstanding scientific work that is enabled by such facilities. The work was carried out at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in California. Two of the leading authors behind these studies have now relocated to the PSI in order to share their expertise as SwissFEL expands its capabilities.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
29 June 2017

Fuel and chemicals from plant waste

Media Releases Energy and Climate Research Using Synchrotron Light Materials Research Future Technologies Energy transition

Lignin, as a constituent of many plants, accumulates in large quantities and could theoretically be used as a precursor material for production of fuels and chemicals. Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have developed a method with which the processes that take place in the catalytic breakdown of lignin can be observed in detail. The knowledge thus gained could enable targeted improvement of production methods in the future.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
18 April 2017

Successful for 20 years: Probing materials with particles

Media Releases Future Technologies Research Using Neutrons Large Research Facilities

Whether they study materials for the electronics of the future, batteries, or swords from the Bronze Age — for 20 years researchers from a range of disciplines have been using the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source SINQ of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI for their investigations. At a symposium on 18 April, researchers looked back on the facility's successes and presented plans for modernisation.

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16 March 2017

3-D X-ray imaging makes the finest details of a computer chip visible

Media Releases Materials Research Micro- and Nanotechnology Future Technologies Research Using Synchrotron Light

Researchers at the PSI have made detailed 3-D X-ray images of a commercially available computer chip. In their experiment, they examined a small piece that they had cut out of the chip beforehand. This sample remained undamaged throughout the measurement. It is a major challenge for manufacturers to determine if, in the end, the structure of their chips conforms to the specifications. Thus these results represent one important application of an X-ray tomography method that the PSI researchers have been developing for several years.

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16 December 2016

Towards energy-saving data storage

Media Releases Future Technologies Research Using Neutrons

A new material could become the basis for future data storage devices, since it may enable significant reductions in energy demands in comparison to present-day hard drives. It is a material from the class of so-called magnetoelectric multiferroics, exhibiting the necessary magnetic properties even at room temperature.

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24 October 2016
teaser picture

Under the chemical microscope

Research Using Synchrotron Light Future Technologies

Interview with Daniel GrolimundAt the Swiss Light Source SLS, researcher Daniel Grolimund is responsible for a beamline where the arrangement of chemical bonds in different objects can be determined. These capabilities prove valuable to researchers in the most diverse disciplines: to battery researchers as well as biologists, archeologists, and many more. In this interview Grolimund talks about the variety of topics and the challenges that come with this diversity.

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11 October 2016

Selectively conductive or insulating

Media Releases Future Technologies Materials Research Research Using Synchrotron Light

The material neodymium nickel oxide is either a metal or an insulator, depending on its temperature. The possibility to control this transition electrically makes the material a potential candidate for transistors in modern electronic devices. By means of a sophisticated development of X-ray scattering, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now been able to track down the cause of this transition: electrons around the oxygen atoms are rearranging.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
5 October 2016

Physicists at the PSI’s large-scale research facilities are thinking beyond the Nobel Prize theories

Miscellaneous Large Research Facilities Materials Research Future Technologies

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz. The Academy also cited, in its background report, experiments carried out by Michel Kenzelmann, who today is a laboratory head at the PSI. He and other researchers at the PSI continue to do experiments based on the theories now honoured by the Nobel Prize.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
4 October 2016

ERC funding of €2.4 million for research on fundamental interactions in magnets

Media Releases Research Using Neutrons Future Technologies

Christian Rüegg has been awarded a prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). With this funding he will continue to investigate how the smallest magnetic building blocks of matter interact.

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6 September 2016

En route to better transformers

Media Releases Future Technologies Research Using Neutrons

Thanks to an ultramodern research method, scientists have successfully looked inside transformers and observed the magnetic domains at work in the interior of a transformer’s iron core. Transformers are indispensable in regulating electricity both in industry and in domestic households. The current research results show that the new examination method can be profitably applied to develop more efficient transformers.

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12 August 2016
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The deuteron too poses a mystery

Media Releases Future Technologies Research with muons

The deuteron — just like the proton — is smaller than previously thoughtThe deuteron — one of the simplest atomic nuclei, consisting of just one proton and one neutron — is considerably smaller than previously thought. This new research finding fits with a 2010 study in which, similarly, the proton was measured at the Paul Scherrer Institute and, likewise, a smaller value than expected was found. The result from 2010 formed the basis for what has been known since then as the proton radius puzzle.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
18 July 2016

Hitching a ride to gamma-ray bursts

Media Releases Future Technologies

Researchers at the PSI have developed a detector called POLAR. It is designed to search out and investigate extreme eruptions of energy from the depths of the universe. This coming September, POLAR will be launched into orbit with a Chinese space mission.

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9 June 2016

One atom at a time

Future Technologies

At the PSI, the Heavy Elements Research Group explores the exotic, unstable atoms at the end of the periodic table of elements. The dream: to discover one day the island of stability that could exist beyond the elements charted so far on the chemists' map.

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30 May 2016
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Zebra - a new instrument for the PSI

Research Using Neutrons Large Research Facilities Future Technologies

Interview with Oksana ZaharkoNew scientific questions demand ever better experimental equipment. In this interview, PSI researcher Oksana Zaharko reports on the challenges of setting up a new instrument for research with neutrons.

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17 March 2016

New particle could form the basis of energy-saving electronics

Media Releases Research Using Synchrotron Light Materials Research Future Technologies

The Weyl fermion, just discovered in the past year, moves through materials practically without resistance. Now researchers are showing how it could be put to use in electronic components.

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This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
11 February 2016

A micrometer-sized model of the Matterhorn

Media Releases Future Technologies Materials Research Micro- and Nanotechnology

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute have produced large numbers of detailed models of the Matterhorn, each one less than a tenth of a millimetre in size. With this, they demonstrated how 3-D objects so delicate could be mass-produced. Materials whose surface is covered with a pattern of such tiny 3-D structures often have special properties, which could for example help to reduce the wear and tear of machine parts.

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27 January 2016

Slowed down current could point the way to energy-saving computers

Media Releases Future Technologies Research Using Synchrotron Light

Computers and other electronic devices account for a substantial portion of worldwide energy use. With today’s technologies, it is not possible to reduce this energy consumption significantly any further; chips in the energy-saving electronics of the future will hence have to be made from novel materials. Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now found important clues in the search for such materials.

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7 January 2016

Neutrons reveal distribution of flux-tube islands

Media Releases Future Technologies Research Using Neutrons

Usually, superconductors expel magnetic fields. In type II superconductors, however, thin channels – so-called flux tubes – are formed. The magnetic field is guided through these tubes while the rest of the material remains field-free and superconducting. In the metal niobium, the flux tubes bunch together into small islands that create complex patterns similar to those found in other fields of nature. A team of researchers from PSI and TU München were the first to conduct neutron experiments to study these patterns in niobium and determine the distribution of the islands in detail.

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12 November 2015

Electron’s cousin discovered after eighty-six-year search

Future Technologies Research Using Synchrotron Light

In a series of experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS, physicists from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have discovered a particle, the existence of which was predicted eighty-six years ago. It is a member of the particle family that also includes the electron, the carrier of electrical currents. The particle now discovered is massless and can exist only within a special class of materials known as Weyl semi-metals.

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5 November 2015

Structure of concrete disease solved

Media Releases Research Using Synchrotron Light Future Technologies

When bridges, dam walls and other structures made of concrete are streaked with dark cracks after a few decades, the culprit is the so-called the concrete disease. Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and Empa have now solved the structure of the material produced in these cracks at atomic level - and have thereby discovered a previously unknown crystalline arrangement of the atoms.

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01/2023

5232 — The magazine of the Paul Scherrer Institute

01/2023
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