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Researchers and engineers from QuTech and Eindhoven University of Technology have created Majorana particles and measured their properties with great control. These Majoranas are so-called 'poor man's Majoranas' based on two quantum dots in a nanowire, which could be scaled up to a larger chain of quantum dots with more resilient Majorana behavior.

NWO has awarded funding of 760,000 euros for research into the mathematical modelling of thin polymer films. In the PRONTO project, mathematicians at Utrecht University and computational chemists at the University of Amsterdam will work together with non-academic partners to develop a new generation of models for materials science.

Fifty years after scientists predicted a new liquid crystalline phase, it has been observed by Utrecht researchers. The observations were made in model systems of colloidal rods, rod-like particles that are larger than molecules and therefore easier to study. The researchers provide guidance on a way to realize the material with rod-shaped molecules as well.

Publication in Nature demonstrates promising method towards building the foundation for a future quantum computer. Scientists from QuTech and Eindhoven University of Technology have taken a next step in qubit research. Qubits are one of the building blocks of a future quantum computer. The researchers - including Sasa Gazibegovic, Ghada Badawy and Erik Bakkers from TU/e - have published their results in Nature on 23 November 2022.

Professor Gert-Willem Römer of the University of Twente says it's one of his pet peeves: in many science fiction and action films, lasers are used in a way that completely defy the laws of physics. Take lasers that blow up spaceships. These lasers make a sound when they are fired, but space consists of a vacuum, so sound doesn't travel there.

TNO, TU Eindhoven, imec and TU Delft - partners in Solliance - joined forces to further push the conversion efficiency of tandem solar cells to beyond the limits of today's commercial photovoltaic (PV) modules.

The sophisticated artificial skin sweats where and how much the researchers want it to. This was reported in an Angewandte Chemie article by Danqing Liu and first author Yuanyuan Zhan. Following the breakthrough with their first sweating artificial skin two years ago, Danqing Liu-s multidisciplinary team hasn-t been sitting still.

We like some foods, and dislike others. Of course, the way food tastes is important, but mouthfeel, and even the sound that food makes when we bite it, also determine whether we enjoy the eating experience. Is it possible to design edible materials that optimize this enjoyment? Physicists and food researchers show that indeed it is.

In a new publication in Nature Communications, a team of physicists from Amsterdam, Leiden and Atlanta show how to 'puppeteer' lab-designed metamaterials. By only touching these materials from the outside, they are able to predict and perform precise deformations of the whole material. Puppeteering is the art of pulling and pushing strings and rods to cause a puppet to move in a coordinated fashion.

Sometimes, the inside of a material can determine what happens on the outside. A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam has devised a new way to make use of this general truth, in particular in systems that do not conserve energy. The results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

A team of physicists from the universities of Stanford and Amsterdam, led by UvA-physicist Jorik van de Groep, have constructed a new type of lens, with a thickness of only a single layer of atoms, that can be turned on and off at will. Such tuneable optical elements have promising applications, for example in augmented and virtual reality.