C60 is an extremely well-studied carbon molecule, which consists of 60 carbon atoms and is structured like a soccer ball. The macromolecule is also known as buckminsterfullerene (or buckyball), a name given as a tribute to the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, who designed buildings with similar shapes. Laser physicists have now irradiated buckyballs with infrared…

Thanks to their unusual optical properties, carbon particles with diameters on the order of a few nanometers — so-called C-dots — show great promise for a wide range of technological applications, as diverse as energy conversion and bio-imaging. Moreover, C-dots have several practical advantages over comparable materials insofar as they are easy to fabricate, stable…

Today’s computers are faster and smaller than ever before. The latest generation of transistors will have structural features with dimensions of only 10 nanometers. If computers are to become even faster and at the same time more energy efficient at these minuscule scales, they will probably need to process information using light particles instead of…

The mode of packaging of the genomic DNA in the cell nucleus determines patterns of gene expression. Munich researchers have used DNA-based nano-tweezers to measure the forces between nucleosomes, the basic packing units of nuclear DNA. Every human cell contains some two meters of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which encodes the genetic information that specifies the…

Chemical compounds based on elements that belong to the so-called transition metals can be processed to yield atomically thin two-dimensional crystals consisting of a monolayer of the composite in question. The resulting materials are semiconductors with remarkable optical properties. In cooperation with American colleagues, a team of LMU physicists led by Alexander Högele has now…