News & updates
Latest developments from our institute
Stay informed about new research results, awards, events, and collaborations across our scientific community.
Only when it is exceptionally ice cold
It is at a temperature of −70 °C that water molecules at the surface of ice make the most bonds with each other. AMOLF researchers, together with an international team of colleagues, describe this in an article in Physical Review Letters published on September 28. Insights into the behavior of the top layer of ice is important for understanding how glaciers move, how avalanches arise, and why we can skate on ice, among other things.
‘Bigger is different’ – the unusual physics of mechanical metamaterials exposed
Mechanical metamaterials, which exhibit unusual properties such as shape morphing and programmability, have been found to display further surprising features. When the materials are a step in size larger, new rules seem to apply. This was discovered by AMOLF researchers and collaborators from Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. Their findings are published in Nature Physics on 25 September.
Who doesn’t want to wear a soft robotic jacket?!
AMOLF group leader Bas Overvelde has been awarded funding through the programme ‘Creatieve industrie – Kennis Innovatie Mapping’ (KIEM) from NWO Humanities. The funding will go to “Project Cairo: an intelligent soft robotic jacket”. Overvelde will work on this project with the Distributed and Interactive Systems group led by Pablo Cesar (CWI) and with Borre Akkersdijk (Byborre).
Newest solar cells underperform in cloudy countries
To determine how efficient new solar cells convert sunlight into electricity, small sample cells are tested under ideal conditions. However, the reported efficiency is not very representative of the actual annual yield when the cells are placed onto a rooftop and exposed to the Dutch weather. In a recent article in ACS Energy Letters, AMOLF researchers present a model that predicts how the next generation of solar cells will perform under realistic conditions.
Nanoparticles give solar panels a green color
Researchers from AMOLF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) have developed a technology to create efficient bright green colored solar panels. Arrays of silicon nanoparticles integrated in the front module glass of a silicon heterojunction solar cell scatter a narrow band of the solar spectrum and create a green appearance for a wide range of angles. The remainder of the solar spectrum is efficiently coupled into the solar cell. The current generated by the solar panel is only reduced by 10%. The realization of efficient colorful solar panels is an important step for the integration of solar panels into the built environment and landscape. The new design was published online on August 15, 2017, in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
The reason why small balls on a hot plate bounce and scream
Water droplets float in a hot pan because of the so-called Leidenfrost effect. Now physicists from AMOLF and Leiden University have discovered a variation: the Elastic Leidenfrost effect. It explains why so called hydrogel balls jump around on a hot plate making high pitched sounds. The explanation appears in Nature Physics on July 24.
Vogel spirals for lighting
Periodic arrays of plasmonic nanoantennas can enhance the directionality of light emission of nearby fluorophores. Unfortunately, their narrow spectral bandwidth and the anisotropy of their optical resonances limit the use…
Nanoscale motion sends light into overdrive
Researchers demonstrate record strong conversion of motion into light AMOLF researchers have developed nanoscale strings whose motion can be converted to light signals with unprecedented strength. This could allow for extremely precise sensors and comes with an important side-effect. “Analogous to a guitar amplifier in overdrive producing distorted sound waves, our strong motion-to-light conversion leads to distorted light signals”, says group leader Ewold Verhagen. “But these signals actually carry information about the motion that may lead to new ways of measuring quantum mechanical motion.” The researchers published their results on 7 July 2017 in Nature Communications.