News

A patented method of protecting the surface of fuel cells from corrosion, which will extend the life of fuel cells under both emergency and standard conditions, could be used in all 94 nuclear reactors in the United States. Innovative solutions were patented in the Czech Republic by Irena Kratochvílová, František Fendrych, Andrew Taylor (for the Institute of Physics) and Radek Škoda, Jan Škarohlíd (then for the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University) already in 2015.

The Pierre Auger Collaboration is releasing 10% of the data recorded using the world’s largest cosmic ray detector.  These data are being made available publicly with the expectation that they will be used by a wide and diverse community including professional and citizen-scientists and for educational and outreach initiatives.

Operation of the L3-HAPLS laser system (ELI Beamlines Research Centre) at 0.5 PW level was demonstrated through compression of the full energy output pulses currently generated by the laser chain, in the Petawatt vacuum compressor. The L3-HAPLS is a system designed for sustained operation with repetition rate 10 Hz.

The amended Framework Education Programmes published on 1 February 2021 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports introduced significant curriculum reduction for physics education in elementary schools. The Education Programme disregards, for example, Newton’s laws or the explanation of the transformations of different forms of energy.

The physicist, poet and translator Elena Buixaderas made it with her article to the cover of the special issue of Women in Ferroelectrics Research and Development, prepared for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. As she admits herself, she is stubborn and when she wants something, she pursues it no matter what. In science as in poetry.

The BIVOJ laser has broken its own performance record that it set in 2016. In a recent test, the system was operated for an hour at a pulse energy in excess of 145 J (with a maximum of 146.5 J) in 10 ns pulses at a repetition rate of 10 Hz at a wavelength of 1030 nm.

Crystals are as a construction set. They are made up from tiny building blocks which often are molecules. Lukáš Palatinus is able to determine what molecules look like and how they are put together in a crystal. He can thus create new models of crystal structures. An imperfect crystal, which is characterised by errors and inaccuracies in the cube structure, is another scientific challenge for Lukáš Palatinus.

Brain4Industry, a consortium led by the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences - as the representative of the Czech Republic - has applied for membership in the European Digital Innovation Hub.

In the public competition of the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR) with the start of implementation in 2021, the researchers of the Institute of Physics succeeded with 19 projects. The most successful projects include one EXPRO project and three JUNIOR STAR projects which belong into the area of selective projects to support excellence in basic research.