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Ce contenu n'est pas disponible en français.Highlights & Events
Here you find current and previous news from the NUM division. For scientific highlights, please have a look here.
News
2024 Guido Altarelli Award to Javier Mazzitelli
The Guido Altarelli Award honours the memory of the late Guido Altarelli, one of the founding fathers of QCD, an outstanding communicator of particle physics, and a mentor and strong supporter of Junior Scientists.
Javier Mazzitelli has been awarded the 2024 Guido Altarelli Award in acknowledgement of his distinguished contributions to the field of particle physics. The Guido Altarelli Award is awarded every year to junior scientists for outstanding scientific contributions to the fields covered by the DIS Conference series.
Unveiling the Power of Flexoelectricity: A Breakthrough Research Project by Ambizione Awardee, Nikita Shepelin
The search for sustainable energy solutions is of utmost priority in modern society. Overcoming the challenges of energy conversion and storage is critical to reducing dependence on fossil fuels and harnessing renewable sources. Dielectric materials hold great promise for meeting these challenges, but current limitations prevent their widespread use.
In the search for New Physics at the Intensity Frontier: a first result from the MEG II experiment
In a special seminar at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland, the MEG II collaboration presented on October 20th its first results, based on data collected in 2021. The results are reported on a paper published on arXiv and submitted to the European Journal of Physics C.
Scientific Highlights
Surface oxidation/spin state determines oxygen evolution reaction activity of cobalt-based catalysts in acidic environment
Co-based catalysts are promising candidates to replace Ir/Ru-based oxides for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysis in an acidic environment. However, both the reaction mechanism and the active species under acidic conditions remain unclear. In this study, by combining surface-sensitive soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy characterization with electrochemical analysis, we discover that the acidic OER activity of Co-based catalysts are determined by their surface oxidation/spin state.
Electron Glass Phase with Resilient Zhang-Rice Singlets in LiCu3O3
LiCu3O3 is an antiferromagnetic mixed valence cuprate where trilayers of edge-sharing Cu(II)O (3d9) are sandwiched in between planes of Cu(I) (3d10) ions, with Li stochastically substituting Cu(II). Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory reveal two insulating electronic subsystems that are segregated in spite of sharing common oxygen atoms: a Cu dz2/O pz derived valence band (VB) dispersing on the Cu(I) plane, and a Cu 3dx2−y2/O 2px,y derived Zhang-Rice singlet (ZRS) band dispersing on the Cu(II)O planes.
Making powerful lithium-air batteries suitable for everyday use
Chemical processes in lithium-air batteries revealed using neutron beams and synchrotron light.