Charis Quay awarded Prix d’Aumale
On the 17th of October, the Académie des Sciences awarded the 2023 Prix d’Aumale to Charis Quay, maîtresse des conférences at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay). Charis …
The world of liquid crystals as seen through X-ray diffraction
Liquid crystals are substances with one or more states of matter between the crystalline solid and the usual liquid. These liquid-crystal states are characterized by the specific, microscopic organization of …
Electron microscope and laser join forces in spectacular fashion
Understanding how materials absorb light on the nanometer scale is essential for applications in photonics and quantum optics. By superimposing a laser beam and an electron beam in an electron …
Alteration of the elastic properties of the hepatitis B virus capsid by antivirals
In collaboration with researchers from the Institut de Biologie Intégrative de la Cellule, the SOLEIL synchrotron and the University of California, Riverside, a team from the Laboratoire de Physique des …
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 …
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 …
