Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Drawing on powerful computational tools and a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Iowa State University materials science and engineering researchers has discovered a new nanometer-scale atomic structure in solid metallic materials known as metallic glasses.

Researchers in the Computational Materials Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) have uncovered the fundamental limits on optical transparency in the class of materials known as transparent conducting oxides. Their discovery will support development of energy efficiency improvements for devices that depend on optoelectronic technology, such as light- emitting diodes and solar cells.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The quest to develop a so-called room-temperature superconductor – one that exhibits lossless electronic transmission – has long fueled both popular and scientific imagination. At the same time, however, ongoing efforts to raise the still-frigid temperatures at which certain materials display superconductivity are making incremental progress. That research – historically based on lattice and/or spin-based interpretations of electron pairing – has now taken a potentially significant step forward thanks to a theoretical view of how electron orbital pairing in a class of materials known as ferropnictides may provide a new road to high transition temperature superconductivity.