Scientific Highlights

3rd August 2020
Schematic representation of the tube dilation in linear-linear and star-linear blends. The undilated tube has a diameter and increases with time as a consequence of constraint release (CR) – relaxation of a given chain driven by the motions of surrounding chains. Copyright: University of the Basque Country

Direct Observation of Tube Dilation in Polymer Blends

Scientists of the University of the Basque Country and Forschungszentrum Jülich exploited the spatial and time resolution of neutron spin echo (NSE) to directly probe the time-dependent tube dilation in blends of entangled... (Read more)
3rd August 2020

Achieving Long Spin Diffusion Lengths in Carbon-based Semiconductors

Scientists of the University of Mainz report measuring spin diffusion lengths in doped conjugated polymers using a lateral spin transport device architecture, which is based on spin pumping injection and inverse spin Hall... (Read more)
4th February 2019
Polarized optical microscopy texture of a novel lyotropic liquid crystal phase formed by the self-organization of DNA nanoparticles. Copyright: authors of M. Salamonczyk et al., Nat.Commun. 7, 133358 (2016).

Molecular Engineering of Novel All-DNA Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Phases

Researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, and Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, propose that DNA can be a versatile building block for fabricating all-DNA particles with engineered shape and interaction potentials that could serve... (Read more)
4th February 2019
Negative-staining TEM image of ß–lg aggregates formed at pH 5.8. Reproduced with permission from J. M. Jung et al., Biomacromolecules 9, 2477 (2008). Copyright (2008) American Chemical Society.

Formation and Use of Globular Protein Aggregates

Globular protein aggregates are used to texture aqueous systems either as gelling agents, viscosifiers or stabilizers of emulsions, e.g. in the food and cosmetics industries. Globular proteins are characterized by a rather rigid... (Read more)