(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) Advances in Materials Science

[January-2022]

Physicists from the LHCb experiment at CERN have discovered a long-lived exotic matter particle and labelled it as Tcc+, a ‘Tetraquark’.
The tetraquark is an exotic hadron comprising two quarks and two antiquarks. The particle is the first to have two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks.

Scientists from IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research), Kolkata, with IIT Kharagpur, India, have developed piezoelectric molecular crystals called bipyrazole organic crystals that can self-repair from mechanical damages without any outside intervention.
Gadgets like mobiles often break and have to be replaced or repaired. Piezoelectric crystals have the property of generating electricity under mechanical effect because of which damaged pieces attain electric charge at the junction of cracks thereby attracting broken pieces and repairing them autonomously.

Scientists have declared the world’s first laser-based manipulation of antimatter. The achievement has been published in the journal Nature.
Antimatter is matter comprising antiparticles (opposite charge). Since antimatter annihilate when coming in contact with matter, they are exceptionally hard to make and control and had never been manipulated with a laser.
“With this technique, we can address long-standing mysteries like: ‘How does antimatter respond to gravity? Can antimatter help us understand symmetries in physics?’ These answers may fundamentally alter our understanding of our Universe.

IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bengaluru, scientists have experimentally demonstrated the existence of two species of Few Electron Bubbles (FEBs) in superfluid helium.
This demonstration can be a helpful model to understand how electrons’ energy and interactions between them in a material affect their properties. In liquid helium, these FEBs are nanometre-sized cavities with just a few free electrons.

A study led by the lab of Jaehong Kim, the Henry P. Becton Sr Professor and Chair of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, in collaboration between Yale, Arizona State University, and the Brookhaven National Laboratory has come up with a catalyst that is even smaller than a nanoscale with new properties and improved efficiency. Over the years, materials are being altered at the nanoscale to have more efficient catalysts for several uses like water treatment.
However, this study goes considerably smaller with a single atom of palladium on a silicon-carbide substrate which improves the kinetics of destroying dangerous chlorinated pollutants in water.