Author Archive: wp_scixelad

Heat and electronics

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Being energy one of the main problems we have to face as a society and considering the amount of computation we are demanding, this new research happens to be particularly important. A multinational effort that includes Spain, Italy and the USA is unvealing the mechanisms of heat transport at the nanoscale. And they’ve found a new process that involves an wavy nature. In particular they’ve reported the observation of phonon interference at room temperature in molecular-scale junctions [link].

Their results have been published in Nature Materials.

Taking a picture at 350.000km from home

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Recently I got obsessed with Sergei Korolev and his achievements during the short period of time he governed de Soviet Space Program. And in particular, I got really confused with the Lunik III story. The more I read, the more I didn’t understand. So in order to be able to comprehend how the USSR was able to take a picture of the dark side of the Moon in 1959, I dove deep in the issue and simulated the process. This is the result of this obsession.

[I’ll try to make an English version soon]

A DNA turbine across a nanopore

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Prof. Cees Dekker always brings beautiful and surprising science. This time something that lives between biology, engineering and science fiction. They’ve managed to create a turbine made out of DNA (27-24nm in size) that can use transmembrane electrochemical potentials across nanopores to drive the DNA rotation.

This research has been featured in the cover of Nature Nanotechnology.

Nontrivial Hyperbolic Metasurfaces

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Dr. Johan Christensen’s research is focused in the manipulation of mechanical waves and how to manipulate them by using metamaterials.

In this last work, published in Advanced Materials, together with researchers from China, they’ve built a metamaterial with micrometer sized pillars that exhibit important and useful properties. In particular, the mechanical surface states on this structure are exceptionally robust. This ability to manipulate and focus ultrasound will be useful for therapeutic uses.

We, together with Dr. Johan Christensen, made this picture that it’s been featured at the cover of Advanced Materials.

2D Magnetic Thin Films

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2D van der Waals (vdW) magnets are amazingly useful for their applications in spintronics but they are difficult to built. This is mainly because growing these crystals require high temperatures and high temperatures weakens their magnetic properties.

A huge collaboration between researchers from three continents have developed a low temperature method to safely build these crystals that preserves their properties. Their publication has  been featured in the cover of Advanced Materials.

2024 Scixel Demoreel

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It’s been quite a while since our last reel, so here it is. I have to say that I’ve been busy (thanks to you all), so I guess these delays are good news after all. This summary of the last couple of years makes symbolizes 12 years of Scixel, which is also kind of special.

La saga de la Tercera Hija (Canto V)

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The Third Daughter saga is this project of ours in which we try to tell the story of the Earth as if it was a myth: with the poetry of myths and the beauty of science. This project was put on hold due to my commitments with my real job. But now I’m trying to find time to finish it. Hope you like it!

In this chapter we tell the story of the birth of Wâljei.

Optical Memory in a Microfabricated Vapor Cell

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I’m proud and happy to say that I’ve been working for quite a long time now for Prof. Philippe Treutlein, at Basel University. Happy because they are a particularly nice group of people and proud because they are quite ahead of their game.

This time they’ve made it to the cover of Physical Review Letters with a new advance in the fabrication of quantum network implementations. They’ve developed a ground-state quantum memory protocol using laser pulses at the single-photon level in a microfabricated vapor cell. This memory has shown to be capable of on-demand read-in and read-out.

Together with the first author, Roberto Mottola, we’ve made a picture showing the functioning vapor cell.

Taming Spin Waves

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Big changes are about to happen in information technology. Spin waves, the collective spin excitations of magnetic materials, can be used to transmit information. That, provided we learn how to control and manipulate them.

M. Borst et al. at Toeno van der Sar lab, had just published a new breakthrough on this area. They’ve proved that spin waves in a magnetic thin film can be controlled with the use of a superconducting electrode.

As M. Borst explains, “spin waves can be a promising building block for an energy-efficient replacement for electronics”.

We, together with Dr. Borst, prepared this picture for Science to illustrate this new discovery.