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An international team of scientists, involving researchers from the Regional Centre of Advanced Technologies and Materials (RCPTM), the Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU), has designed and experimentally verified the possibility of preparing single-dimensional, carbon-based conductive polymers. As carbon is one of the most abundant elements, new polymer conductors have potentially lower production costs than normal metal conductors, along with greater stability and the opportunity to control their material properties. The joint work of Czech, Spanish and Swiss scientists, which was published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology¹, introduces a novel approach to designing non-metallic conductors, which could be used in solar energy applications, optical technologies or nanoelectronics. The work is so important that the editors of Nature Nanotechnology included a special commentary on the article in their News & Views.

The discovery of the ruby laser by Theodore Maiman in Malibu, CA on 16 May 1960, triggered extensive work around the world to make lasers. In the former Czechoslovakia, the first laser was successfully designed, built and operated at the Institute of Physics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. Karel Pátek (5. 5. 1927 – 25. 11. 1967), a distinguished research scientist working in the Department of Luminescence of the Institute, registered 1064-nm laser action in an optically-pumped Nd:glass rod on 9 April 1963. Pátek’s group studied a variety of different Nd³⁺ doped glasses using a number of experimental and theoretical techniques and, together with Jaroslav Pantoflíček at the Charles University in Prague, obtained valuable results in this area.