* Astronomy

Natural 3D Counterpart to Graphene Discovered

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene - the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon - promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. A collaboration of researchers at the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered that sodium bismuthate can exist as a form of quantum matter called a three-dimensional topological Dirac semi-metal (3DTDS). This is the first experimental confirmation of 3D Dirac fermions in the interior or bulk of a material, a novel state that was only recently proposed by theorists.
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Honeycomb Carbon Crystals Possibly Detected in Space

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted the signature of flat carbon flakes, called graphene, in space. If confirmed, this would be the first-ever cosmic detection of the material -- which is arranged like chicken wire in flat sheets that are one atom thick.
Graphene was first synthesized in a lab in 2004, and subsequent research on its unique properties garnered the Nobel Prize in 2010. It's as strong as it is thin, and conducts electricity as well as copper. Some think it's the "material of the future," with applications in computers, screens on electrical devices, solar panels and more.
Graphene in space isn't going to result in any super-fast computers, but researchers are interested in learning more about how it is created. Understanding chemical reactions involving carbon in space may hold clues to how our own carbon-based selves and other life on Earth developed.
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The Hoyle state is an excited state of carbon-12 with precisely the properties necessary to allow just the right amount of carbon to be created in a stellar environment. The existence of the Hoyle state is essential for the nucleosynthesis of carbon in helium-burning red giant stars. The resonant state was predicted by Fred Hoyle in the 1950s based on the observed abundances of heavy elements in the universe. The resonant state allows carbon to be produced via the triple-alpha process.
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Title: Strain-Induced Pseudo-Magnetic Fields Greater Than 300 Tesla in Graphene Nanobubbles
Authors: N. Levy, S. A. Burke, K. L. Meaker, M. Panlasigui, A. Zettl, F. Guinea, A. H. Castro Neto, M. F. Crommie

Recent theoretical proposals suggest that strain can be used to engineer graphene electronic states through the creation of a pseudo-magnetic field. This effect is unique to graphene because of its massless Dirac fermion-like band structure and particular lattice symmetry (C3v). Here, we present experimental spectroscopic measurements by scanning tunneling microscopy of highly strained nanobubbles that form when graphene is grown on a platinum (111) surface. The nanobubbles exhibit Landau levels that form in the presence of strain-induced pseudo-magnetic fields greater than 300 tesla. This demonstration of enormous pseudo-magnetic fields opens the door to both the study of charge carriers in previously inaccessible high magnetic field regimes and deliberate mechanical control over electronic structure in graphene or so-called "strain engineering."

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Strain creates energy levels in graphene that are similar to those seen in very high applied magnetic fields.

Graphene, the extraordinary form of carbon that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, has produced another in a long list of experimental surprises. In the current issue of the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of researchers headed by Michael Crommie, a faculty senior scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, reports the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory - just by putting the right kind of strain onto a patch of graphene.
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