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Titanium complexes cleanly edit the core skeleton of highly stable organic compounds

Multi-titanium hydrides can selectively snip the strong structural bonds of stable organic molecules called pyridines, RIKEN researchers have shown. This discovery could guide designing catalysts for applications in multiple branches of industrial chemistry, from oil refining to the synthesis of functional organic molecules. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Pyridines are stable aromatic molecules characterized by a ring consisting of one nitrogen atom and five carbon atoms. They are a common structural motif in complex organic molecules such as pharmaceuticals. They are also a component of crude oil that needs to be removed during refining.

“The removal of nitrogen-containing impurities such as pyridines from crude oil is an important industrial process in petroleum refining,” notes Zhaomin Hou of the RIKEN Organometallic Chemistry Laboratory and the RIKEN Advanced Catalysis Research Group.

Compact vacuum ultraviolet laser may improve nanotechnology and power nuclear clocks

Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have demonstrated a new kind of vacuum ultraviolet laser that is 100 to 1,000 times more efficient than existing technologies of its kind. The researchers say the device could one day allow scientists to observe phenomena currently out of reach for even the most powerful microscopes—such as following fuel molecules in real time as they undergo combustion, spotting incredibly small defects in nanoelectronics and more.

The new laser might also allow for practical, ultraprecise nuclear clocks that rely on an energy transition in the nuclei of thorium atoms. These long sought-after devices could, theoretically, allow researchers to robustly track time with unprecedented precision.

The group is led by physicists Henry Kapteyn and Margaret Murnane, fellows of JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Jeremy Thurston, who earned his doctorate in physics from CU Boulder in 2024, spearheaded work on the new laser.

Heavy water expands energy potential of carbon nanotube yarns

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have developed a new electrolyte system that significantly boosts the energy-harvesting performance of twistrons, which are carbon nanotube yarns that generate electricity when repeatedly stretched. The findings could aid in the manufacturing of intelligent textiles, such as fabrics used to make spacesuits, that would power wearable electronic devices or sensors by harvesting energy from human motion.

In a study published in ACS Nano, the UT Dallas scientists and their collaborators reported that replacing conventional water with heavy water in the neutral electrolyte solution that bathes the twistrons significantly increased energy output from the yarns.

Normal water comprises hydrogen and oxygen atoms. In heavy water, the hydrogen is replaced with deuterium, a form of hydrogen that contains an added neutron in its nucleus.

Twisted bilayer photonic crystals dynamically tune light’s handedness

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a chip-scale device that can dynamically control the “handedness” of light as it passes through—also known as its optical chirality—with a simple twist of two specially designed photonic crystals. The study is published in the journal Optica.

The work, led by graduate student Fan Du in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, describes a reconfigurable twisted bilayer photonic crystal that can be tuned in real time using an integrated micro-electromechanical system (MEMS). The breakthrough opens new possibilities for advanced chiral sensing, optical communication, and quantum photonics.

“Chirality is very important in many fields of science—from pharma to chemistry, biology, and of course, physics and photonics,” Mazur said. “By integrating twisted photonic crystals with MEMS, we have a platform that is not only powerful from a physics standpoint, but also compatible with the way modern photonics are manufactured.”

Artificial kinetochores take the pressure off aging chromosomes during meiosis

For sexual reproduction to yield healthy offspring, newly generated oocytes—immature egg cells—must receive the correct amount of DNA after cell division. This process of segregating chromosomes becomes more prone to failure as we age. Now, RIKEN researchers have identified a strategy that could help to prevent such errors and restore healthy production of oocytes.

Oocytes are produced by a cell-division process known as meiosis, during which every chromosome is duplicated. These replicates form X-shaped structures in which the chromosomes are joined via structures called centromeres, where a protein called cohesin locks chromosome copies together.

As division proceeds, protein fibers called microtubules spread from opposite poles of the dividing cell, attaching to each chromosome. These microtubules eventually pull the two apart, so that each newly formed cell receives one copy of each chromosome.

Photonic ‘ski jumps’ efficiently beam light into free space

Photonic chips use light to process data instead of electricity, enabling faster communication speeds and greater bandwidth. Most of that light typically stays on the chip, trapped in optical wires, and is difficult to transmit to the outside world in an efficient manner.

If a lot of light could be rapidly and precisely beamed off the chip, free from the confines of the wiring, it could open the door to higher-resolution displays, smaller Lidar systems, more precise 3D printers, or larger-scale quantum computers.

Now, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new class of photonic devices that enable the precise broadcasting of light from the chip into free space in a scalable way.

Acoustic driving enables controlled condensation of light and matter on chip

An international research team led by Alexander Kuznetsov at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics (PDI) in Berlin has demonstrated a fundamentally new way to control the condensation of hybrid light-matter particles. Using coherent acoustic driving to dynamically reshape the energy landscape of a semiconductor microcavity, the researchers achieved deterministic steering of a macroscopic quantum state into its lowest energy configuration.

The results, published in Nature Photonics, establish a strategy for engineering nonequilibrium quantum states and open prospects for ultrafast, tunable photonic technologies.

In collaboration with long-term partners from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council CONICET and the Bariloche Atomic Center and Balseiro Institute in Argentina, the team experimentally realized a universal scheme for selectively transferring populations within a multilevel quantum system using strong time periodic modulation.

Fiber setup compresses mid-infrared pulses to 187 femtoseconds using just 80 watts

Ultrashort mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser pulses are essential for applications such as molecular spectroscopy, nonlinear microscopy, and biomedical imaging, but their generation often relies on complex and power-intensive systems that are difficult to implement outside of specialized laboratories. These systems usually require high pump powers, elaborate optical setups, and precise alignment, which can limit their widespread adoption and practical use in everyday research and clinical settings.

In a paper published in the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, a team of researchers from SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, report a compact, fiber-based method for generating clean ultrashort mid-IR pulses at significantly reduced input power.

The study demonstrates that high-quality pulse compression can be achieved using a holmium-doped ZBLAN photonic crystal fiber integrated into a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM), offering a simpler and more energy-efficient alternative to conventional systems.

Researchers mix X-rays and optical light to track speedy electrons in materials

To unlock materials of the future, including better photocatalysts or light-switchable superconductors, researchers need to understand how the valence electrons within materials respond to light at the atomic scale. Materials are made of atoms, and an atom’s outer electrons, or valence electrons, are responsible for chemical bonding as well as a material’s thermal, magnetic, and electronic properties.

But imaging valence electrons in bulk materials is extremely difficult because valence electrons are only a small subset of a typically large pool of electrons.

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have refined a way to track valence electrons using a unique method that shines both X-rays and lasers onto a material, then tracks the frequency generated by both sources. The method allows the researchers to understand more about extremely fast-moving valence electrons, including the symmetry of their local environment.

Stacked quantum materials enable precise spin control without external magnetic fields

Spintronics—a technology that harnesses the electron’s magnetic quantum states to carry information—could pave the way for a new generation of ultra-energy-efficient electronics. Yet a major challenge has been the ability to control these delicate quantum properties with sufficient precision for practical applications. By combining different quantum materials, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have now taken a decisive step forward, achieving unprecedented control over spin phenomena. The advance opens the door to next-generation low-power data processing and memory technologies.

Data centers, cloud services, AI and connected systems account for a rapidly growing share of global energy consumption. In the quest for new, more energy-efficient technological solutions, spin electronics, or spintronics, has proven to be a new and promising approach. Instead of relying solely on the movement of electric charge, spintronics use magnetic states to carry information. More specifically, it takes advantage of a quantum property of electrons known as spin, which makes electrons behave like tiny magnets.

“Just like a compass needle, an electron’s spin can point in one of two directions—up or down. These two directions can be used to represent digital information, in the same way today’s electronics use 0s and 1s,” explains Saroj Dash, Professor of Quantum Device Physics at Chalmers University of Technology.

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