A team of University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their colleagues have discovered that the mixing of small particles between two solid electrolytes can generate an effect called a “space charge layer,” an accumulation of electric charge at the interface between the two materials.

The finding could aid the development of batteries with solid electrolytes, called solid-state batteries, for applications including mobile devices and electric vehicles.

Some microbes living on sand grains use up all the oxygen around them. Their neighbors, left without oxygen, make the best of it: They use nitrate in the surrounding water for denitrification – a process hardly possible when oxygen is present. This denitrification in sandy sediments in well-oxygenated waters can substantially contribute to nitrogen loss in the oceans.

Starting June 1, 2025, Dr. Jonas Ohland, laser physicist at GSI/FAIR, will lead the young investigator group ALADIN (Adaptive Laser Architecture Development and INtegration). For this purpose, he will receive funding of 2.8 million euros over five years from the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space as part of the “Fusionstalente” (fusion talents) program. The ALADIN project lays the foundation for the realization of stable, efficient lasers for inertial confinement fusion.

• Tracing the origin of an ultra-hot exoplanet: The chemical composition of WASP-121b suggests that it formed in a cool zone of its natal disc, comparable to the region of gas and ice giants in our Solar System.

• First detection of silicon monoxide in a planetary atmosphere: Measurements of this refractory gas allow quantifying the rocky material the planet had accumulated.