Lab News & Scientific Highlights
X-rays illuminate the particle atomic structure of cyan light emitting 6-monolayers CsPbBr3 nanoplatelets by Total Scattering
A cyan light (492 nm) emitting colloidal suspension of CsPbBr3 nanoplatelets in a flask, together with the high-quality XRPD Total Scattering pattern of the suspension measured at the X04SA-MS beamline and the full-nanoparticle structure thereby inferred.
Cherned up to the maximum
In topological materials, electrons can display behaviour that is fundamentally different from that in ‘conventional’ matter, and the magnitude of many such ‘exotic’ phenomena is directly proportional to an entity known as the Chern number. New experiments establish for the first time that the theoretically predicted maximum Chern number can be reached — and controlled — in a real material.
Grosser Rat bewilligt 2,4 Millionen für Technologiezentrum Anaxam
Der Kanton Aargau unterstützt das Technologietransferzentrum Anaxam in Villigen für die Dauer von vier Jahren mit insgesamt 2,4 Millionen Franken. Der Grosse Rat hat am Dienstag in Spreitenbach den entsprechenden Kredit mit 124 zu 3 Stimmen bewilligt.
Operando X-ray diffraction during laser 3D printing
Ultra-fast operando X-ray diffraction experiments reveal the temporal evolution of low and high temperature phases and the formation of residual stresses during laser 3D printing of a Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The profound influence of the length of the laser-scanning vector on the evolving microstructure is revealed and elucidated.
Tailoring Spin-Wave Channels in an Artificial Spin Ice
Magnonic crystals are periodic magnetic structures, which are attracting great interest because of their potential use in low-power information technology based on spin waves, or magnons. Artificial spin ices have been recently studied as reconfigurable magnonic crystals, but achieving the required combination of magnetic state reconfigurability and desired magnon dispersions remains challenging. Here, researchers propose a hybrid system that makes use of a magnetic thin film underlayer to couple and strengthen the interaction between the artificial spin ice’s nanoelements though spin waves. Moreover, the magnetic state of the artificial spin ice gives rise to directional spin wave channels in the underlayer. This hybrid system opens a new direction for band structure engineering in reconfigurable magnonic crystals.
Logic operations with domain walls
A collaboration of scientists from the ETH Zürich and the Paul Scherrer Institute successfully demonstrated the all-electric operation of a magnetic domain-wall based NAND logic gate, paving the way towards the development of logic applications beyond the conventional metal-oxide semiconductor technology. The work has been published in the journal Nature.
Optics for spins
In this work, published on the front cover page of Advanced Materials, an international collaboration of Italian, American, and Swiss scientists demonstrated a novel concept for the generation and manipulation of spin waves, paving the way towards the development of magnonic nano-processors.
Can skyrmions read?
Can a skyrmion-based device be used to read a handwritten text? In this work, an international scientist collaboration led by the Korea Institute of Technology and the IBM Watson research center could provide a first answer to this question by fabricating a proof-of-principle single-neuron artificial neural network, using X-ray magnetic microscopy at the Swiss Light Source to investigate its performances.
Emergence of Nontrivial Low-Energy Dirac Fermions in Antiferromagnet EuCd2As2
When magnetism meets topology, colorful novel states can emerge in condensed matter. It is widely believed that parity-time symmetry plays an essential role for the formation of Dirac states in Dirac semimetals. So far, all of the experimentally identified topological nontrivial Dirac semimetals possess both parity and time reversal symmetry. Since the magnetism will break time-reversal symmetry, only in special cases the Dirac states can be protected in a magnetic system. Thus, the realization of magnetic topological Dirac materials remains a major issue in the research of topological physics. In this work, the authors ascertained that the ground state of EuCd2As2 is a good candidate for magnetic topological Dirac semimetal when the spins point in the out-of-plane direction in the A-type antiferromagnetic phase. The Dirac state is protected by the combination of parity-time symmetry with additional translation operation. Moreover, when the spins deviate from out-of-plane direction, the bulk Dirac cone will open a gap, and the system develops into a novel state containing axion insulator, antiferromagnetic topological crystalline insulator, and higher order topological insulator.