Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to use diamondoids – the smallest possible bits of diamond – to assemble atoms into the thinnest possible electrical wires, just three atoms wide.

By grabbing various types of atoms and putting them together LEGO-style, the new technique could potentially be used to build tiny wires for a wide range of applications, including fabrics that generate electricity, optoelectronic devices that employ both electricity and light, and superconducting materials that conduct electricity without any loss. The scientists reported their results today in Nature Materials.

“What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves,” said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. “The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It’s almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go.”

The Smaller the Better

Although there are other ways to get materials to self-assemble, this is the first one shown to make a nanowire with a solid, crystalline core that has good electronic properties, said study co-author Nicholas Melosh, an associate professor at SLAC and Stanford and investigator with SIMES, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC.

The needle-like wires have a semiconducting core – a combination of copper and sulfur known as a chalcogenide – surrounded by the attached diamondoids, which form an insulating shell.

Their minuscule size is important, Melosh said, because a material that exists in just one or two dimensions – as atomic-scale dots, wires or sheets – can have very different, extraordinary properties compared to the same material made in bulk. The new method allows researchers to assemble those materials with atom-by-atom precision and control.

The diamondoids they used as assembly tools are tiny, interlocking cages of carbon and hydrogen. Found naturally in petroleum fluids, they are extracted and separated by size and geometry in a SLAC laboratory. Over the past decade, a SIMES research program led by Melosh and SLAC/Stanford Professor Zhi-Xun Shen has found a number of potential uses for the little diamonds, including improving electron microscope images and making tiny electronic gadgets.

For this study, the research team took advantage of the fact that diamondoids are strongly attracted to each other, through what are known as van der Waals forces. (This attraction is what makes the microscopic diamondoids clump together into sugar-like crystals, which is the only reason you can see them with the naked eye.)

They started with the smallest possible diamondoids – single cages that contain just 10 carbon atoms – and attached a sulfur atom to each. Floating in a solution, each sulfur atom bonded with a single copper ion. This created the basic nanowire building block.

The building blocks then drifted toward each other, drawn by the van der Waals attraction between the diamondoids, and attached to the growing tip of the nanowire.

“Much like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape,” said Stanford graduate student Fei Hua Li, who played a critical role in synthesizing the tiny wires and figuring out how they grew. “The copper and sulfur atoms of each building block wound up in the middle, forming the conductive core of the wire, and the bulkier diamondoids wound up on the outside, forming the insulating shell.”

The team has already used diamondoids to make one-dimensional nanowires based on cadmium, zinc, iron and silver, including some that grew long enough to see without a microscope, and they have experimented with carrying out the reactions in different solvents and with other types of rigid, cage-like molecules, such as carboranes.

The cadmium-based wires are similar to materials used in optoelectronics, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and the zinc-based ones are like those used in solar applications and in piezoelectric energy generators, which convert motion into electricity.

“You can imagine weaving those into fabrics to generate energy,” Melosh said. “This method gives us a versatile toolkit where we can tinker with a number of ingredients and experimental conditions to create new materials with finely tuned electronic properties and interesting physics.”

Theorists led by SIMES Director Thomas Devereaux modeled and predicted the electronic properties of the nanowires, which were examined with X-rays at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, to determine their structure and other characteristics. </s> Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to use diamondoids – the smallest possible bits of diamond – to assemble atoms into the thinnest possible electrical wires, just three atoms wide.

By grabbing various types of atoms and putting them together LEGO-style, the new technique could potentially be used to build tiny wires for a wide range of applications, including fabrics that generate electricity, optoelectronic devices that employ both electricity and light, and superconducting materials that conduct electricity without any loss. The scientists reported their results today in Nature Materials.

“What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves,” said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. “The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It’s almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go.”

This animation shows molecular building blocks joining the tip of a growing nanowire. Each block consists of a diamondoid – the smallest possible bit of diamond – attached to sulfur and copper atoms (yellow and brown spheres). Like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape. The copper and sulfur atoms form a conductive wire in the middle, and the diamondoids form an insulating outer shell. (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

The Smaller the Better

Although there are other ways to get materials to self-assemble, this is the first one shown to make a nanowire with a solid, crystalline core that has good electronic properties, said study co-author Nicholas Melosh, an associate professor at SLAC and Stanford and investigator with SIMES, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC.

The needle-like wires have a semiconducting core – a combination of copper and sulfur known as a chalcogenide – surrounded by the attached diamondoids, which form an insulating shell.

Their minuscule size is important, Melosh said, because a material that exists in just one or two dimensions – as atomic-scale dots, wires or sheets – can have very different, extraordinary properties compared to the same material made in bulk. The new method allows researchers to assemble those materials with atom-by-atom precision and control.

The diamondoids they used as assembly tools are tiny, interlocking cages of carbon and hydrogen. Found naturally in petroleum fluids, they are extracted and separated by size and geometry in a SLAC laboratory. Over the past decade, a SIMES research program led by Melosh and SLAC/Stanford Professor Zhi-Xun Shen has found a number of potential uses for the little diamonds, including improving electron microscope images and making tiny electronic gadgets.

Constructive Attraction

For this study, the research team took advantage of the fact that diamondoids are strongly attracted to each other, through what are known as van der Waals forces. (This attraction is what makes the microscopic diamondoids clump together into sugar-like crystals, which is the only reason you can see them with the naked eye.)

They started with the smallest possible diamondoids – single cages that contain just 10 carbon atoms – and attached a sulfur atom to each. Floating in a solution, each sulfur atom bonded with a single copper ion. This created the basic nanowire building block.

The building blocks then drifted toward each other, drawn by the van der Waals attraction between the diamondoids, and attached to the growing tip of the nanowire.

“Much like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape,” said Stanford graduate student Fei Hua Li, who played a critical role in synthesizing the tiny wires and figuring out how they grew. “The copper and sulfur atoms of each building block wound up in the middle, forming the conductive core of the wire, and the bulkier diamondoids wound up on the outside, forming the insulating shell.”

A Versatile Toolkit for Creating Novel Materials

The team has already used diamondoids to make one-dimensional nanowires based on cadmium, zinc, iron and silver, including some that grew long enough to see without a microscope, and they have experimented with carrying out the reactions in different solvents and with other types of rigid, cage-like molecules, such as carboranes.

The cadmium-based wires are similar to materials used in optoelectronics, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and the zinc-based ones are like those used in solar applications and in piezoelectric energy generators, which convert motion into electricity.

“You can imagine weaving those into fabrics to generate energy,” Melosh said. “This method gives us a versatile toolkit where we can tinker with a number of ingredients and experimental conditions to create new materials with finely tuned electronic properties and interesting physics.”

Theorists led by SIMES Director Thomas Devereaux modeled and predicted the electronic properties of the nanowires, which were examined with X-rays at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, to determine their structure and other characteristics.

The team also included researchers from the Stanford Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Justus-Liebig University in Germany. Parts of the research were carried out at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), both DOE Office of Science User Facilities. The work was funded by the DOE Office of Science and the German Research Foundation.

Citation: Yan et al., Nature Materials, 26 December 2016 (10.1038/nmat4823)

Press Office Contact: Andrew Gordon, agordon@slac.stanford.edu, (650) 926-2282

SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit www.slac.stanford.edu.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. </s> This animation shows molecular building blocks joining the tip of a growing nanowire. Each block consists of a diamondoid -- the smallest possible bit of diamond -- attached to sulfur and copper atoms (yellow and brown spheres). Like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape. The copper and sulfur atoms form a conductive wire in the middle, and the diamondoids form an insulating outer shell. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to use diamondoids - the smallest possible bits of diamond - to assemble atoms into the thinnest possible electrical wires, just three atoms wide.

By grabbing various types of atoms and putting them together LEGO-style, the new technique could potentially be used to build tiny wires for a wide range of applications, including fabrics that generate electricity, optoelectronic devices that employ both electricity and light, and superconducting materials that conduct electricity without any loss. The scientists reported their results today in Nature Materials.

"What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves," said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. "The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It's almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go."

The Smaller the Better

Although there are other ways to get materials to self-assemble, this is the first one shown to make a nanowire with a solid, crystalline core that has good electronic properties, said study co-author Nicholas Melosh, an associate professor at SLAC and Stanford and investigator with SIMES, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC.

The needle-like wires have a semiconducting core - a combination of copper and sulfur known as a chalcogenide - surrounded by the attached diamondoids, which form an insulating shell.

Fuzzy white clusters of nanowires on a lab bench, with a penny for scale. Assembled with the help of diamondoids, the microscopic nanowires can be seen with the naked eye because the strong mutual attraction between their diamondoid shells makes them clump together, in this case by the millions. At top right, an image made with a scanning electron microscope shows nanowire clusters magnified 10,000 times. Credit: SEM image by Hao Yan/SIMES; photo by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Their minuscule size is important, Melosh said, because a material that exists in just one or two dimensions - as atomic-scale dots, wires or sheets - can have very different, extraordinary properties compared to the same material made in bulk. The new method allows researchers to assemble those materials with atom-by-atom precision and control.

The diamondoids they used as assembly tools are tiny, interlocking cages of carbon and hydrogen. Found naturally in petroleum fluids, they are extracted and separated by size and geometry in a SLAC laboratory. Over the past decade, a SIMES research program led by Melosh and SLAC/Stanford Professor Zhi-Xun Shen has found a number of potential uses for the little diamonds, including improving electron microscope images and making tiny electronic gadgets.

Constructive Attraction

For this study, the research team took advantage of the fact that diamondoids are strongly attracted to each other, through what are known as van der Waals forces. (This attraction is what makes the microscopic diamondoids clump together into sugar-like crystals, which is the only reason you can see them with the naked eye.)

They started with the smallest possible diamondoids - single cages that contain just 10 carbon atoms - and attached a sulfur atom to each. Floating in a solution, each sulfur atom bonded with a single copper ion. This created the basic nanowire building block.

The building blocks then drifted toward each other, drawn by the van der Waals attraction between the diamondoids, and attached to the growing tip of the nanowire.

An illustration shows a hexagonal cluster of seven nanowires assembled by diamondoids. Each wire has an electrically conductive core made of copper and sulfur atoms (brown and yellow spheres) surrounded by an insulating diamondoid shell. The natural attraction between diamondoids drives the assembly process. Credit: H. Yan et al., Nature Materials

"Much like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape," said Stanford graduate student Fei Hua Li, who played a critical role in synthesizing the tiny wires and figuring out how they grew. "The copper and sulfur atoms of each building block wound up in the middle, forming the conductive core of the wire, and the bulkier diamondoids wound up on the outside, forming the insulating shell."

A Versatile Toolkit for Creating Novel Materials

The team has already used diamondoids to make one-dimensional nanowires based on cadmium, zinc, iron and silver, including some that grew long enough to see without a microscope, and they have experimented with carrying out the reactions in different solvents and with other types of rigid, cage-like molecules, such as carboranes.

The cadmium-based wires are similar to materials used in optoelectronics, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and the zinc-based ones are like those used in solar applications and in piezoelectric energy generators, which convert motion into electricity.

"You can imagine weaving those into fabrics to generate energy," Melosh said. "This method gives us a versatile toolkit where we can tinker with a number of ingredients and experimental conditions to create new materials with finely tuned electronic properties and interesting physics."

Theorists led by SIMES Director Thomas Devereaux modeled and predicted the electronic properties of the nanowires, which were examined with X-rays at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, to determine their structure and other characteristics.

Explore further Scientists discover that a single layer of tiny diamonds increases electron emission 13,000-fold

More information: Hybrid metal-organic chalcogenide nanowires with electrically conductive inorganic core through diamondoid–directed assembly, Nature Materials, nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nmat4823 Journal information: Nature Materials Hybrid metal-organic chalcogenide nanowires with electrically conductive inorganic core through diamondoid–directed assembly, </s> In a breakthrough for optical computing, researchers have used graphene to confine light to the smallest possible space, just one atom wide.

Confining light to small spaces is a fundamental challenge for computing using light rather than electric current. The smaller the space into which a pulse of light can be confined, the more compact a device using this technology, such as sensors or nanoscale lasers can be. Up to now, light has been confined to a space smaller than its own wavelength using the atomic lattices of metals to trap and guide photons. Now, researchers from the European Graphene Flagship, led by a team from ICFO (the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona), have found that this is yet another property that can be accessed using the single atom thick form of elemental carbon

“Graphene keeps surprising us: nobody thought that confining light to the one atom limit would be possible,” said research leader Prof Frank Koppens. In a paper published in Science, Koppens and colleagues at the University of Minho, Portugal, and MIT describe how they fabricated a composite nano-optical device starting with a layer of graphene, topped with an insulating hexagonal boron nitride layer, which was in turn topped with an array of metallic rods. Graphene is already known to have the ability to guide light in the form of plasmons, which are oscillations of electrons within the material structure that interact strongly with light.

“At first, we were looking for a new way to excite graphene plasmons,” said David Alcaraz Iranzo, lead author of the Science paper. “On the way, we found that the confinement was stronger than before and the additional losses minimal.” This is a step forward, because confinement using metal lattices has always led to a sharp drop in the energy of the light pulse. “So we decided to go to the one atom limit,” he continued, “with surprising results.”

The team sent infrared light through the device stack and observed that plasmon is propagated between the metal and the graphene. Reducing the thickness of hexagonal boron nitride layer to a single atom thick, they found to their surprise that the plasmons were still in an excited state – that is, the electrons were vibrating – and that this vibration could propagate freely along the single atom thick channel. This plasmon propagation could be switched on and off by applying an electric voltage, which demonstrates the ability of the channel less than 1nm thick to control the light.

“The impressive results reported in this paper are testimony to the relevance for cutting-edge science of the Flagship work,” said Prof Andrea Ferrari, chair of the Graphene Flagship management panel. “Having read the ultimate limit of light confinement could lead to new devices with unprecedented small dimensions.”

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENGINEERING NEWS </s> Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory scientists have found a way of utilizing diamondoids. These are the smallest bits of diamond which are assembled into the thinnest electric wires.

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These wires are just three atoms wide. The procedure involves gripping a number of atoms and collating them in a LEGO-like manner. Small wires could be built this way and they have a number of applications.

These applications include: electricity-producing fabrics, gadgets that use both electricity and light and superconducting substances that conduct electricity without any wastage whatsoever.

The research efforts got published in the journal Nature Materials.

What got demonstrated was how tiny conductive wires of very small sizes got assembled all by themselves. The process is in fact very simple.

You just dump the materials together and in a short amount of time they collate themselves into patterns. It is magic since the diamondoids tend to assemble in a way that suggests they have a mind of their own.

This self-assembly is seen in other materials too. Yet here what is seen is the formation of nanowires that have solid crystalline cores with excellent electric properties.

These wires appear to be needle-like in their consistency. They also have semiconducting cores. These are composed of a mixture of sulfur and copper. This is called chalcogenide.

The stuck diamondoids form a shell of insulating material. The matter of size is of the utmost importance here. That is because by being so small, these wires manage to possess extraordinary properties.

These properties are different from what they would have been had the material been made in large amounts. These nanowires can be assembled with extreme precision.

The diamondoids are small cages of hydrogen and carbon atoms. The source of these diamondoids is ordinary petroleum. They are extracted and than undergo separation in regard to size and geometry in an SLAC lab.

A number of uses have been found for these tiny diamondoids. The diamondoids are very much attracted to each other due to van der Waals forces. Scientists attached sulphur atoms to small diamondoids. As this all floated in a solution, the bonding took place.

The building blocks assembled like LEGO. Nanowires made of zinc, cadmium, iron and silver have also been experimented with. It is an exciting journey for scientists as they carry on their research efforts on the leading edge of modern science. </s> Three British scientists behind groundbreaking research into exotic matter in the quantum world were on Tuesday jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

Awarding the prize in two parts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences handed one half to David J. Thouless of the University of Washington and the second half to F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University.

The scientists had “opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states,” the Nobel committee said in its citation.

“They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films,” it added.

“Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter,” it added. “Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics.”

The committee said the three laureates’ use of topological concepts in physics was decisive for their discoveries. Topology is a branch of mathematics that describes properties that only change step-wise.

“Using topology as a tool, they were able to astound the experts,” the committee said.

In the early 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers. They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.

In the 1980s, Thouless was able to explain a previous experiment with very thin electrically conducting layers in which conductance was precisely measured as integer steps. He showed that these integers were topological in their nature. At around the same time, Duncan Haldane discovered how topological concepts can be used to understand the properties of chains of small magnets found in some materials.

We now know of many topological phases, not only in thin layers and threads, but also in ordinary three-dimensional materials. Over the last decade, this area has boosted frontline research in condensed matter physics, not least because of the hope that topological materials could be used in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers. Current research is revealing the secrets of matter in the exotic worlds discovered by this year’s Nobel laureates.

The prize amount of 8 million Swedish krona ($937,000) will be shared between Thouless, 82, and Haldane, 65, and Kosterlitz, 74.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in physics went to Japan’s Takaaki Kajita and Canada’s Arthur McDonald for determining that neutrinos have mass, a key piece of the puzzle in understanding the cosmos. Scientists Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura of the U.S. also won in 2014 for their work on LED lamps.

The physics prize is the second of the Nobels to be awarded, after the medicine prize was on Monday awarded to Japanese microbiologist Yoshinori Ohsumi. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize will be announced, to be followed by the peace prize Friday. </s> Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016

4 October 2016

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 with one half to

David J. Thouless

University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

and the other half to

F. Duncan M. Haldane

Princeton University, NJ, USA

and

J. Michael Kosterlitz

Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

”for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”

They revealed the secrets of exotic matter

This year’s Laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states. They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films. Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics.

The three Laureates’ use of topological concepts in physics was decisive for their discoveries. Topology is a branch of mathematics that describes properties that only change step-wise. Using topology as a tool, they were able to astound the experts. In the early 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers. They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.

In the 1980s, Thouless was able to explain a previous experiment with very thin electrically conducting layers in which conductance was precisely measured as integer steps. He showed that these integers were topological in their nature. At around the same time, Duncan Haldane discovered how topological concepts can be used to understand the properties of chains of small magnets found in some materials.

We now know of many topological phases, not only in thin layers and threads, but also in ordinary three-dimensional materials. Over the last decade, this area has boosted frontline research in condensed matter physics, not least because of the hope that topological materials could be used in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers. Current research is revealing the secrets of matter in the exotic worlds discovered by this year’s Nobel Laureates.

Read more about this year’s prize

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All illustrations: Copyright © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

David J. Thouless, born 1934 in Bearsden, UK. Ph.D. 1958 from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

https://sharepoint.washington.edu/phys/people/Pages/view-person.aspx?pid=85

F. Duncan M. Haldane, born 1951 in London, UK. Ph.D. 1978 from Cambridge University, UK. Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University, NJ, USA.

https://www.princeton.edu/physics/people/display_person.xml?netid=haldane&display=faculty

J. Michael Kosterlitz, born 1942 in Aberdeen, UK. Ph.D. 1969 from Oxford University, UK. Harrison E. Farnsworth Professor of Physics at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.

https://vivo.brown.edu/display/jkosterl

Prize amount: 8 million Swedish krona, with one half to David Thouless and the other half to be shared between Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz.

Further information: http://kva.se and http://nobelprize.org

Press contact: Jessica Balksjö Nannini, Press Officer, phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, jessica.balksjo@kva.se

Experts: Thors Hans Hansson, phone +46 8 553 787 37, hansson@fysik.su.se, and David Haviland, haviland@kth.se, members of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organisation whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.

Nobel Prize® is a registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation.

To cite this section

MLA style: Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Mon. 9 Sep 2019. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2016/press-release/> </s> Image copyright CERN

Scientists have detected a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

The discovery will help researchers learn more about the so-called "strong force" which holds the centres of atoms together.

The existence of the new particle was theoretically predicted but this is the first time it has been identified.

The details of the Xi-cc++ particle were presented at a high-energy physics conference in Venice.

The study was carried out at the LHCb experiment and led by Dr Patrick Spradlin of Glasgow University. He said that the discovery would "shed light on a longstanding puzzle and open an exciting new branch of investigation".

His colleague, Prof Paul Soler, also from Glasgow University, described the development as "a new frontier in understanding the strong force".

Nearly all the matter that we see around us is made of neutrons and protons, which form the centres of atoms. These are made up of three smaller particles called quarks which can be either light or heavy.

New arrangement

There are, however, six different types of quarks which combine in different ways to form other kinds of particle. Those that have been detected so far contain at most, one heavy quark.

This is the first time that researchers have confirmed the existence of one with two heavy quarks. According to Prof Guy Wilkinson of Oxford University, there is an intriguing difference between the new particle and the ones that have been discovered before.

"In contrast to other particles of this type, in which the three quarks perform an elaborate dance around each other, a particle with two heavy quarks is expected to act like a planetary system, where the heavy quarks are like two stars orbiting one around the other, with the lighter quark orbiting around this binary system."

The research team will now measure the properties of the Xi-cc++ to establish how this new arrangement of quarks behaves and how the strong force holds the system together. They also expect to find more double heavy quark particles.

Another unusual property of the particle is that it has two positive charges double that of the proton and it is four times heavier.

The researchers have submitted a paper reporting these findings to the journal Physical Review Letters.

Follow Pallab on Twitter </s> Image copyright HARVARD UNIVERSIT/R.DIAS/I.SILVERA Image caption Smaller than the cross-section of a hair on your head: The tiny sample went from transparent, to black, to highly reflective as the pressure was increased. Becoming shiny and reflective is a sign the material has become a solid metal, the Harvard team claims

Scientists in the US say they have at last managed to turn hydrogen into a state where it behaves like a metal.

If that is true - and it is a controversial claim - it fulfils a more than 80-year quest to produce what many have said would be a wonder material.

Theory suggests metallic hydrogen could be used to make zero-resistance electrical wiring and super-powerful rocket fuel, among many applications.

Ranga Dias and Isaac Silvera are the Harvard researchers behind the work.

They report their experiments in this week’s Science Magazine.

"It's the first time solid metallic hydrogen has ever existed on Earth," Prof Silvera told the BBC.

The pair say the quantity of metallic hydrogen created so far is tiny - a speck that is less than the cross section of a human hair. But in time, they believe, ways could be found to boost its production.

Image copyright Harvard University Image caption Ranga Dias stands in front of the experimental set-up

Their laboratory approach - as is common in this field of study - was to squeeze a cell containing a small sample of molecular hydrogen between two synthetic diamonds.

In the Science paper, Dias and Silvera say this diamond anvil cell (DAC) achieved pressures up to 495 gigapascals.

That is the equivalent of sitting under almost five million Earth atmospheres. The DAC was also chilled down to close to minus 270 Celsius.

The scepticism here is probably a good thing, in that it will drive many groups towards attempting to reproduce this experiment Marcus Knudson, Sandia National Laboratories

The intention was to pack the atoms of hydrogen so close together that they formed a crystal lattice and started to share their electrons - behaviour that is exactly that of a metal.

Dias and Silvera report that this state became obvious to them when the material in the diamond anvil cell developed the kind of lustrous surface so ubiquitous of metals.

"As we turned the pressure up, it went to a transparent molecular solid. And then as the pressure kept going up, it went black, and we think it goes black because it becomes like a semi-conductor and it can absorb light," Prof Silvera recalled on the BBC’s Science In Action programme.

"And then we turned the pressure up higher and it started shining. It was very exciting. It's got extremely high reflectance. The reflectance we measured is about 90%. It's about the reflectivity of an aluminium mirror."

Image copyright SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption Artwork: In a metal, the atoms pack closely together in a lattice arrangement, which enables them to share their electrons. This is why metals make such good electrical conductors

It has to be said, however, that news of the Harvard experiment has already attracted a good degree of scepticism.

Other scientists working in the same and related fields have told the BBC that the team's paper is short on the kind of data needed to make a proper assessment of its achievements.

"Complete garbage," is how Eugene Gregoryanz from Edinburgh University described the research. "Like everybody else who works with hydrogen at high pressures, I am appalled by what is being published in Science."

That there is so much scepticism is natural. If what is being claimed pans out, it would represent one of the major physics breakthroughs of recent decades.

Metallic hydrogen was first predicted more than 80 years ago, and there has been a race to create it ever since. That is because of the stunning properties that are promised.

It has been suggested for example that metallic hydrogen might be metastable; that is - once made under extreme conditions it would maintain its state even when brought back up to ambient pressures and temperatures.

And if, as some think, it is also a zero-resistance superconductor, that could lead to a revolution in the transmission and storage of electricity. For example, cables made from metallic hydrogen could feed energy across a country without the sort of electrical losses experienced in standard power grids.

The US space agency is also fascinated by the material. Already super-cold liquid hydrogen makes for a very powerful rocket propellant, but the dense metallic form of hydrogen promises to deliver really colossal levels of thrust that would enable huge payloads to be lifted off Earth.

But all this is in the realms of speculation for now. First, it must be shown that the Harvard work can be reproduced. If that's possible - and some are saying that is a very big "if" - then more sizeable quantities of metallic hydrogen need to be created.

Image copyright NASA Image caption Metallic hydrogen would give a rocket prodigious capability

"I understand that others in the DAC community have been rather sceptical (arguing that the apparent reflectivity might be coming from contaminants in the sample, the aluminium oxide coating on the diamonds, etc.). However, if they really have achieved nearly 500 gigapascals in the DAC it is not unreasonable to have observed a transition to metallic hydrogen,” commented Marcus Knudson from Sandia National Laboratories.

"The scepticism here is probably a good thing, in that it will drive many groups towards attempting to reproduce this experiment. This publication will certainly incite the field. Again, if it holds up, this is an exciting result. I think in this case time will tell," he told BBC News.

And Jeffrey McMahon from Washington State University concurred: "With respect to the tiny sample amount: Such experiments are performed in small diamond anvil cells. One challenge would be to make a larger quantity (at once); another, perhaps bigger challenge is to recover even the small sample (ie, remove it from the extreme pressures that it is under in the diamond anvil cell).

"Whether the latter is possible is an important open question."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory find a way to make thinner electrical wires that measure just three atoms wide.