News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

A 50-year-old puzzle in statistical mechanics has been solved by an international team of researchers who have proved that two-dimensional (2D) liquids have fundamentally different dynamical properties to three-dimensional (3D) liquids.

One of the last obstacles hindering the photography and filming of processes occurring on a scale of attoseconds, i.e. billionths of a billionth of a second, has disappeared. The key to its removal lies in the random nature of the processes responsible for the formation of X-ray laser pulses.

An international research team jointly led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Germany's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) has for the first time observed the ultrafast formation and then breakdown of the water ion that is created when water is exposed to ionizing radiation.

Freiburg researchers investigate ultrafast reaction of superfluid helium triggered by extreme ultraviolet laser pulses.

Chemists and physicists at Kiel University joined forces with colleagues from France, and Switzerland to design, deposit and operate single molecular spin switches on surfaces. The newly developed molecules feature stable spin states and do not lose their functionality upon adsorption on surfaces. They present their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Researchers have shown mechanical force can start chemical reactions, making them cheaper, more broadly applicable, and more environmentally friendly than conventional methods.