https://phys.org/physics-news/materials/ en-us The latest news on Physics, Materials, Science and Technology Altermagnetism is a new, third type of magnetism of great interest for spin-transport applications like computer memory. If properly harnessed, it could combine the benefits of the two existing types of magnetism, ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism, ultimately reducing or eliminating heat during information transfer and increasing the ability to miniaturize next-generation technologies. Rice University's Pengcheng Dai recently published a paper in Physical Review X describing the first successful efforts to put a proposed altermagnetic material into a single magnetic-domain state, allowing the research team to characterize the material's intrinsic magnetic structure. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-uniaxial-strain-reveals-tune-electron.html Condensed Matter Thu, 13 Aug 2026 02:39:51 EDT news705807532 Signals ride on waves of one kind or another: light, sound, radio. But new carriers are needed to relay information in next-generation devices. Disturbances or waves in magnetic materials called magnons could be an efficient option—if scientists can tame them. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-spontaneous-magnons-synchronize-external-room.html Condensed Matter Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:00:05 EDT news705746821 New research introduces a contactless way to see how mirror-image materials respond differently to circularly polarized light, without first building them into a complete electronic device. The researchers developed a novel method based on light-induced charge separation that allows researchers to directly probe how the material's structure acts like a microscopic filter, influencing how electrons separate and move. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-contactless-method-reveals-mirror-image.html Condensed Matter Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:20:04 EDT news705670261 Every electronic and optoelectronic device generates heat, and today that heat is managed almost entirely from the outside. Heatsinks, fans, cold plates and refrigerators are bulky exterior measures bolted onto a chip or package after the fact. They treat heat as a single averaged quantity to be removed in bulk, even though the heat is actually produced locally, component by component, deep inside the circuitry. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-quantum-circuits-electronics-oldest-power.html Condensed Matter Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:40:10 EDT news705585471 In January 2024, physicists at TU Dortmund University demonstrated a continuous time crystal in a semiconductor whose oscillations remained stable for hours. In a new study published in Nature Communications, Professor Alex Greilich and his team show that many such time crystals can form in the same material and synchronize their electron-nuclear spin oscillations. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-distant-crystals-oscillate-unison-paving.html Condensed Matter Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:20:09 EDT news705593161 Over the last decade, researchers have developed two-dimensional materials with fascinating quantum effects that could be harnessed for next-generation technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-discovery-electrons-2d-material-memory.html Condensed Matter Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:20:05 EDT news705584761 Skyrmions—essentially magnetic vortices—represent a promising approach in spintronics; in the future, they could serve as components in storage media or computers, potentially complementing established CMOS technologies. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now visualized the interaction of antiferromagnetic skyrmions for the first time and shown that antiferromagnetic skyrmions move reproducibly along straight trajectories aligned with the driving electric current. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-real-reveal-antiferromagnetic-skyrmions-line.html Condensed Matter Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:00:03 EDT news705581582 Measuring faint magnetic fields is useful in a number of areas, including mapping brain activity, monitoring hearts and probing fundamental physics. Typically, picking up such weak signals requires expensive or bulky equipment, such as liquid-helium cooling tanks or specially shielded rooms that block out Earth's magnetic field. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tiny-magnet-ultrafaint-magnetic-fields.html General Physics Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:20:02 EDT news705322283 Scientists in China predict that stacking two microscopic layers of boron could set a new record for superconductivity. Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance. Traditional types need temperatures close to absolute zero to work, requiring complex and expensive cooling equipment. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-boron-layers-superconductivity-theoretical.html Condensed Matter Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:20:01 EDT news705241771 A tall glass of ice water isn't just a thirst quencher; it's also an everyday example of coexisting phases. Water can exist simultaneously in both liquid and solid phases. As it turns out, this phase duality can also exist in more exotic quantum materials, in ways that are far more complicated to tease apart. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-physicists-material-electrons-reassemble-coexisting.html Condensed Matter Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:01 EDT news705315901 Researchers have demonstrated a solid-state organic laser microcavity fabricated entirely by solution processing. The device operates in the strong light–matter coupling regime, where light and matter form hybrid states called polaritons. This makes the platform not only a new type of solution-processed laser but also a powerful way to study nonlinear polariton interactions. The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-fully-solution-solid-state-polariton.html Condensed Matter Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:00:06 EDT news705251523 For the first time, scientists have observed a three-dimensional woven structure forming naturally inside a crystal, revealing a previously unknown way in which matter can organize itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-woven-naturally-crystal.html Condensed Matter Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:50:01 EDT news705255901 Lasers have become indispensable in everyday life and research, with applications ranging from data transmission and metrology to manufacturing. Masers, by contrast, have so far found hardly any practical applications. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-semiconductor-maser-room-temperature.html Condensed Matter Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:00:06 EDT news705154441 Chiral phonons are groups of atoms that move in a circular direction when excited by an energy source, such as heat. As the phonons move through a material, they propagate that circular motion, or angular momentum, through the material. The angular momentum serves as the source of spin, and the chirality dictates the direction of the spin, enabling spin control in spintronics. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-electric-field-reverses-phonon-chirality.html Condensed Matter Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:00:06 EDT news705151382 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) are often described as a "fifth state of matter": a quantum state in which many particles lose their individual identities and behave as one collective object. For more than 60 years, researchers have sought to create such condensates from excitons—electron-hole pairs—as a solid-state route to macroscopic quantum coherence, which is useful for quantum technologies. This has been difficult to realize in controllable semiconductor devices because optically generated excitons have very short lifetimes of around a billionth of a second, and BECs are normally attained with ultracold gases in a vacuum. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-quantum-fluid-reveals-hidden-states.html Condensed Matter Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:40:02 EDT news705076621 Researchers at Flinders University have discovered an unexpected way light can control tiny electronic structures inside advanced materials, a development that could help pave the way for more energy-efficient memory devices, sensors and future computing technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-nanoscale-domains-ferroelectric-crystal.html Condensed Matter Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:50:01 EDT news704993701 Ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) is a metal oxide that commonly serves as an important metallic conductor, quantum material and industrial electrocatalyst. While there have been debates surrounding the magnetic properties of RuO2, it is generally thought to be nonmagnetic in its bulk form. But now, a new study, published in Science Advances, has found that very thin layers of RuO2 can become magnetic when its lattice is placed under strain. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-unusual-metal-oxide-magnetism-lattice.html Condensed Matter Sat, 01 Aug 2026 14:40:01 EDT news704715788 Information and communication technologies (ICTs) driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are generating data at an unprecedented rate. Every internet search, AI-generated image, recommendation, scientific simulation and large language model creates and processes enormous amounts of information that must be stored, transferred and analyzed. As AI continues to expand across every sector of society, global demand for data storage and computing is rising dramatically. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-optimized-magnetic-pulses-memory-energy.html Condensed Matter Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:00:01 EDT news704720412 The performance of many next-generation devices depends on controlling how energy flows at extremely small scales. In the field of microelectronics—where devices continue to shrink and new materials are introduced—small imperfections in solids can strongly influence how a material stores, transfers or loses energy. Those processes can either be used to improve device performance or create problems such as energy loss, information loss, signal disruption or reduced reliability. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-source-software-energy-tiny-defects.html General Physics Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:00:06 EDT news704719732 Topological photonics can force propagating light to travel in a single direction—allowing researchers to route optical signals around corners and past defects without any of it scattering backward. So far, however, this one-way flow has only been found at the boundary between two specially engineered "topological insulator" regions, leaving most of the material unavailable for light transport. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-photonic-platform-lane-highway.html Condensed Matter Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:20:04 EDT news704625165 Semiconductor spin qubits are one of the most promising building blocks for future quantum computers, but turning them into a working, large-scale quantum computer has so far proven difficult. For now, two big questions remain open: how to connect qubits that aren't sitting right next to each other, and how to control huge numbers of them without an unmanageable tangle of wiring. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-independent-semiconductor-qubits-scales.html Condensed Matter Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:20:04 EDT news704643614 Quantum fluctuations influence direction-dependent electrical transport in chiral magnets, researchers from Science Tokyo report. In chiral magnetic systems, electric current flows differently depending on its direction, but the role of quantum effects in this behavior has remained unclear. Through theoretical analysis, the researchers showed that chiral magnetic systems exhibit logarithmic temperature dependence at low temperatures, offering new insights into electron transport in magnetic materials. These findings are expected to play a crucial role in spintronics. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-effects-electrical-chiral-magnets.html Condensed Matter Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:30:01 EDT news704648701 Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have demonstrated a new way of switching a material between two fundamentally different magnetic states using an electric current. The discovery could pave the way for compact, energy-efficient electronic devices that store information, perform logic operations and even interface with future quantum computers. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-electrically-magnetic-gen-cryogenic-devices.html Condensed Matter Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:10:01 EDT news704645341 Bose–Einstein condensates are states of matter that form when particles called bosons are cooled to temperatures that are only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (i.e., 0 Kelvin [-460°F]). In these states, particles occupy the same quantum state and exhibit interesting collective behaviors, essentially behaving as if they were a single "super-particle." https://phys.org/news/2026-07-physicists-boseeinstein-condensate-ultracold-polar.html Condensed Matter Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:40:03 EDT news704539595 Mechanical strain is one of the most common tools used to tailor the properties of materials. In piezoelectric materials, stretching or compressing a crystal generates an electrical polarization. In piezomagnetic materials, it induces magnetization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have now discovered that mechanical strain also induces chirality in non-chiral crystals, opening a new direction to control this property on demand and potentially imprint chiral electronic properties. This work has just been published in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-strain-chiral-crystals-left-demand.html Condensed Matter Wed, 29 Jul 2026 19:40:01 EDT news704555461 Resolving a long-standing problem in semiconductor physics and optoelectronics, a team of researchers from Skoltech—a VEB.RF group institution—and their colleagues from ITMO University and HSE University have for the first time demonstrated direct electrical pumping of a polariton laser based on a solution-processed halide perovskite microcrystal. Published in Nature, this solution to a decades-long technological challenge ushers in inexpensive nonepitaxial laser diodes operating under continuous electric current. These could be used in optical sensing and spectroscopy, high-speed computing and energy-efficient neuromorphic computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-electrically-perovskite-polariton-laser-diode.html Condensed Matter Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:20:06 EDT news704544242 Most electronic memory storage devices require the ability to trap large numbers of electrons for each bit of memory. In an ideal world, however, it would take only one electron. This would reduce space requirements and power consumption for devices. Now, a team in China has realized this goal with an ultrathin device capable of minimizing the stray capacitance that plagued earlier attempts. The new study, published in Science, describes how this novel device has overcome challenges in implementing the single-electron design. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-2d-quantum-memory-device-electron.html Condensed Matter Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:40:09 EDT news704550526 Scientists have discovered a previously unknown law of geometry that explains why some growing surfaces, whether in nature or in engineered materials, suddenly stop being able to stay smooth and instead form dimples and folds. Until now, researchers believed they understood the geometric rules behind these shape changes, but this study reveals a new kind of "geometric frustration" that arises even when all the known rules are satisfied. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-wrinkles-suddenly-crumple.html General Physics Wed, 29 Jul 2026 13:20:01 EDT news704540741 Researchers at The University of Manchester have revealed how intense electronic excitation can trigger rapid structural changes in metals—without heating the atomic lattice—offering new insight into ultrafast materials behavior. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hot-electrons-reshape-metals-billionths.html Condensed Matter Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:30:01 EDT news704452041 A new concept from Warwick researchers could help solve one of the biggest challenges to building large-scale quantum computers: enabling communication between vast numbers of quantum bits (qubits) over long distances across a single chip. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-chip-architecture-built-vibrations.html Condensed Matter Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:10:01 EDT news704387701