Researchers grow nanocircuitry with semiconducting graphene nanoribbons

In a development that could revolutionize electronic ciruitry, a research team from the Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE)'s Argonne National Laboratory has confirmed a new way to control the growth paths of graphene nanoribbons on the surface of a germainum crystal.

Germanium is a semiconductor, and this method provides a straightforward way to make semiconducting nanoscale circuits from graphene, a form of carbon only one atom thick.

The method was discovered by UW scientists and confirmed in tests at Argonne.

"Some researchers have wanted to make transistors out of carbon nanotubes, but the problem is that they grow in all sorts of directions," said Brian Kiraly of Argonne. "The innovation here is that you can grow these along circuit paths that works for your tech."

New high-precision calculation holds promise for new physics

A team of theoretical high-energy physicists in the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations has published a new high-precision calculation that could significantly advance the indirect search for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The calculation applies to a particularly rare decay of the B meson (a subatomic particle), which is sometimes also called a "penguin decay" process.

After being produced in a collision, subatomic particles spontaneously decay into other particles, following one of many possible decay paths. Out of one billion B mesons detected in a collider, only about twenty decay through this particular process.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, the last missing piece, the SM of particle physics now accounts for all known subatomic particles and correctly describes their interactions. It's a highly successful theory, in that its predictions have been verified consistently by experimental measurements. But scientists know that the SM doesn't tell the whole story, and researchers around the globe are eagerly searching for evidence of physics beyond the SM.

Why high-performance glass flows, and how fast

Does glass in cathedral windows flow downward at room temperature—acting essentially as a liquid in super slow-motion? No. It’s a myth. The larger volume observed at the bottom of some windows is due to the manufacturing process, not gravity.

But in more complex, high-tech kinds of glass, like Corning Gorilla Glass, a scratch- and damage-resistant glass used on more than one billion smartphones and tablets screens, susceptibility to room-temperature deformations have been known to exist for a few years. Now researchers from the Univ. of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have discovered why such flowing happens and how fast.

Mound near lunar south pole formed by unique volcanic process

A giant mound near the moon’s south pole appears to be a volcanic structure unlike any other found on the lunar surface, according to new research by Brown University geologists. The formation, known as Mafic Mound, stands about 800 m tall and 75 km across, smack in the middle of a giant impact crater known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This new study suggests that the mound is the result of a unique kind of volcanic activity set in motion by the colossal impact that formed the basin. “If the scenarios that we lay out for its formation are correct, it could represent a totally new volcanic process that’s never been seen before,” said Daniel Moriarty, a PhD student in Brown’s Dept. of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and the study’s lead author. The research has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. Mafic Mound (mafic is a term for rocks rich in minerals such as pyroxene and olivine) was first discovered in the 1990s by Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist at Brown and Moriarty’s adviser.