Latest Quantum chemistry Stories

[ Watch the Video ] Orbit of captured electron matches orbit of Jupiter's captured asteroids Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton's classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They've built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium. In a new paper published this week in Physical Review Letters, Rice's team and collaborators at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Vienna University of...

PERTH, Australia, Dec. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Orbital Corporation Limited (NYSE Amex: OBT) has filed its annual report Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The report is available on the company's website http://www.orbitalcorp.com.au. Shareholders may receive a hard copy of the report, which includes Orbital's audited financial statements, free of charge through the contact below. Electronic Link:...

Berkeley Lab Scientists Find Unique Luminescence in Tetrapod NanocrystalsObservation of a scientific rule being broken can sometimes lead to new knowledge and important applications. Such would seem to be the case when scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) created artificial molecules of semiconductor nanocrystals and watched them break a fundamental principle of photoluminescence known as "Kasha's rule."Named for chemist...

UA scientists have inserted metal atoms into methane gas molecules -- a potential advancement for industrial hydrocarbon chemistry and our understanding of how nature uses metals in the molecules of living organismsFor the first time, chemists have succeeded in plugging a metal atom into a methane gas molecule, thereby creating a new compound that could be a key in opening up new production processes for the chemical industry, especially for the synthesis of organic compounds, which in turn...

An approach pioneered by researchers at North Carolina State University gives scientists new insight into the way silicon bonds with other materials at the atomic level. This technique could lead to improved understanding of and control over bond formation at the atomic level, and opportunities for the creation of new devices and more efficient microchips.Manufacturers build silicon-based devices from layers of different materials. Bonds "“ the chemical interaction between adjacent atoms...

An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom's outer electrons for the first time.Through a process called attosecond absorption spectroscopy, researchers were able to time the oscillations between...

When light is absorbed by atoms, the electrons become excited. If the light particles, so-called photons, carry sufficient energy, the electrons can be ejected from the atom. This effect is known as photoemission and was explained by Einstein more than hundred years ago. Until now, it has been assumed that the electron start moving out of the atom immediately after the impact of the photon. This point in time can be detected and has so far been considered as coincident with the arrival time...

Physicists at JILA have for the first time observed chemical reactions near absolute zero, demonstrating that chemistry is possible at ultralow temperatures and that reaction rates can be controlled using quantum mechanics, the peculiar rules of submicroscopic physics.The new results and techniques, described in the Feb. 12 issue of Science,* will help scientists understand previously unknown aspects of how molecules interact, a key to advancing biology, creating new materials, producing...

Groundbreaking approach could impact fields from cryptography to materials scienceIn an important first for a promising new technology, scientists have used a quantum computer to calculate the precise energy of molecular hydrogen. This groundbreaking approach to molecular simulations could have profound implications not just for quantum chemistry, but also for a range of fields from cryptography to materials science."One of the most important problems for many theoretical chemists is how...

Research gives new perspective on periodic tableTransforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of "alchemy" is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State researchers have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements. According to the team's leader A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Departments of...