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Research News

Silicon carbide data storage technology could preserve information for millions of years

Researchers from Germany, Japan, and the United States proposed a novel concept for long-term, high-density data storage using silicon carbide. Their approach leverages the unique properties of atomic-scale silicon vacancies to store and retrieve digital information. They created these defects using focused ion beams. The energy required to write a single bit using this method is lower than the energy consumption of magnetic disk drives and solid-state drives. The writing speed is also faster than other optical data storage media. However, the reading speed is limited by the emission rate of the silicon defects. Visit the website for more information.

Making diamonds at ambient pressure via liquid metal alloy system

Researchers from the Institute for Basic Science in the Republic of Korea grew diamonds under conditions of 1 atmosphere pressure and at 1,025°C using a liquid metal alloy system. Conventional belief is that diamonds can only be grown using liquid metal catalysts in the gigapascal pressure range and 1,300–1,600°C temperature range. This study breaks that paradigm and offers the possibility to scale up diamond growth. Additionally, initial formation occurs without the need for diamond or other seed particles commonly used in conventional synthesis methods. Visit the website for more information.

Atom-by-atom: Imaging structural transformations in 2D materials

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a method to visualize the thermally induced rearrangement of 2D materials, atom-by-atom, from twisted to aligned structures using transmission electron microscopy. They observed a new and unexpected mechanism for this process, whereby a new grain was seeded within a monolayer that had its structure templated by the adjacent layer. Researchers have speculated that this mechanism may happen, but there were no direct visualizations at the atomic scale proving or disproving the theory until this study, which directly tracked the movement of individual atoms to see the tiny, aligned domain grow. Visit the website for more information.