Energy can be carried in a number of ways: by electrons, the particles that underpin all modern electronics, as well as by quasiparticles, the results of different particles interacting with one another at the quantum level. Columbia chemist Milan Delor has been watching these different forms of energy flow with an instrument called stroboSCAT, a unique microscope that uses strobe-like light pulses to capture particles and quasiparticles as they move through different materials.
The latest iteration of stroboSCAT, described in Nature Materials, can now resolve individual quantum energy carriers as they move through materials for the first time. It can also observe their interactions with greater precision than existing imaging techniques.
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