Significant amounts of antibiotic residues and pathogens enter the environment via our wastewater. A German Italian team of researchers has now investigated a novel nanomaterial that has an antibacterial effect and can bind antibiotics at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum. Wastewater could thus be treated more effectively and safely.
Depressive disorders are among the most frequent illnesses worldwide. The causes are complex and to date only partially understood. The trace element lithium appears to play a role. Using neutrons of the research neutron source at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a research team has now proved that the distribution of lithium in the brains of depressive people is different from the distribution found in healthy humans.
Perovskite oxynitride materials can act as effective photocatalysts for water splitting driven by visible light. A combined neutron and x-ray study now provides unique insight into the underlying processes at the solid–liquid interface and highlights how solar-to-hydrogen conversion can be improved.
The first application of stroboscopic neutron diffraction to studying lithium-ion batteries during operation establishes a new approach to unravelling the complex processes playing out in energy-storage materials.
With experimental work demonstrating that the correlated ground state of the pyrochlore system Ce2Sn2O7 is a quantum liquid of magnetic octupoles, an international team led by PSI researcher Romain Sibille establishes a fundamentally new state of matter: higher-rank multipole ice.
Researchers of BNC developed a state-of-the-art combination of three-dimensional surface and volumetric digital imaging techniques, as well as position-resolved element composition analysis by PGAI, to scrutinize the rocks containing fossils of the Parascutella gibbercula sea urchins.
The methodology used in the described study opens new perspectives in the understanding of the sedimentation conditions of the sea bottom.
A complete set of detector response functions, i.e. the gamma spectra corresponding to incremental gamma-ray energies up to 12 MeV, were obtained for the Budapest PGAA facility by geant4 Monte-Carlo simulations and were used to unfold the experimental prompt-gamma spectra, for use in nuclear physics.
The unfolding successfully removed the continuous Compton-background and the escape peaks related to a full-energy peak but preserved the shape and area of the full-energy peak itself.
The behaviour of colloidal particles at water-solid interfaces is relevant in material science, food processing, medicine and environmental engineering. A team from the University of Geneva with researchers from the Budapest Neutron Centre used neutron reflectivity to study colloidal silica nanoparticle suspensions near the (negatively) like-charged native-oxide-covered surface of Si. Intriguingly, the nanospheres develop a self-organised damped, oscillatory concentration profile normal to the interface, as demonstrated in the figure.
Biocompatible iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) offer great potential for biomedical applications, both in terms of imaging and therapy. More rapid progress in researching IONPs now looks promising by using a new method combination developed by a team of Jülich researchers using neutrons as a probe.
An international team are using neutron science to help develop the next generation of electronic devices. The researchers from the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) and other institutions are experimenting with the design of semiconductors, which form an essential component of modern computer chips. They hope their studies could herald the future of electronics through the use of organic materials and bespoke designs.