Controlling the flow of liquid foams
From chocolate mousse to shaving foam and insulating foams, foams are ubiquitous in everyday objects. A better understanding of their mechanical behavior opens up a wide range of applications. Liquid …
Orienting spins in a thin magnetic layer thanks to the interface with a 2D insulator
Interactions emerging at the interface of an ultrathin magnetic layer, such as the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DMI) antisymmetric exchange interaction, can lead to the appearance of particular spin orientations within the layer, …
Unleashing the power of light: a new compact photoreactor for H2 photoproduction
The configuration and geometry of chemical reactors determine reliability when assessing the performance of photocatalytic materials. Researchers have developed a novel automated photoreactor for H2 production that substantially improves the …
Three paintings by Rainier Lericolais on loan to the LPS from FDAC 91
The Laboratoire de Physique des Solides welcomes three works by Rainier Lericolais on loan from the Fonds départemental d’art contemporain de l’Essonne (FDAC). The Blandin amphitheatre of the Laboratoire de …
EMS OPA 2022 Instrumentation and Technique Development prize for Cathodoluminescence Excitation Spectroscopy
Two young researchers from the STEM group, Nadezda Varkentina (former postdoc) and Yves Auad (Ph.D) have received the 2022 Outstanding Paper Award from the European Microscopy Society in the Instrumentation …
Bidimensional crystals of pentagons
Unlike squares, triangles, or hexagons, pentagons cannot completely tile the plane. Using silver nanoprisms with a pentagonal cross-section, researchers have reproduced theoretically predicted tilings and determined the mechanisms that allow …
Unusual foam structure and dynamics with a viscoelastic continuous phase
Foams are unstable jammed materials whose growth mechanisms remain poorly understood. A recent study has demonstrated a dominant effect of the viscoelasticity of the continuous phase on the cellular structure …
Role of optical rectification in photon-assisted tunneling current
Rectification of an optical signal using an all-metallic electronic device is of fundamental and technological importance for nano-optics. Researchers probed experimentally the microscopic mechanism at the origin of the optical …
The stain left by a coffee drop on a hair
Researchers have studied the dynamics of particles contained in a droplet when it evaporates on a fiber. The deposit resulting from the drying on a fiber differs remarkably from the …
Happy New Year 2023
The Laboratoire de Physique des Solides is pleased to wish you a Happy New Year 2023!The laboratory’s greeting card is illustrated by two pictures preselected to the photo contest La …