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nanotimes News in Brief

One of this year‘s Joseph-von-Fraunhofer prizes was awarded to Dr. Jörg Ihde and Dr. Uwe Lom- matzsch for their development of a resource-effici- ent process for the high-rate deposition of functio- nal nano-layers. Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM: http://www.ifam.fraunhofer.de

http://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/en/press- media/2012/PDFs/RN_MAY-Special-Issue-Awards.pdf

12-04 :: April/May 2012

ion trap is now experiencing another increase in accuracy. At PTB, scientists have succeeded in ex- citing a quantum-mechanically strongly “forbidden” transition of this ion and – in particular – in mea- suring it with extreme accuracy. The optical clock based on it is exact to 17 digits after the decimal point.

N. Huntemann, M. Okhapkin, B. Lipphardt, S. Weyers, Chr. Tamm, and E. Peik: High-accuracy optical clock based on the octupole transition in 171Yb+, In: Physi- cal Review Letters, Vol. 108(2012), Issue 9, March 02, 2012, Article 090801 [5 pages], DOI:10.1103/PhysRev- Lett.108.090801:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.090801

The ion trap of the ytterbium clock at PTB. © PTB

The faster a clock ticks, the more precise it can be. Due to the fact that lightwaves vibrate faster than microwaves, optical clocks can be more precise than the caesium atomic clocks which presently determine time. The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB, Germany) is even working on several of such optical clocks simultaneously. The model with one single ytterbium ion caught in an

Improved lubrication without oil: The idea hat- ched by Andreas Malberg, Dr. Peter Eisner and Dr. Michael Menner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising sounds simple as well as surprising: lubri- cate with water, not oil. “At IVV here in Freising, we have been looking at the issue of cooling lubri- cants for some considerable time”, explains Michael Menner. “In two projects supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, we have suc- cessfully replaced oil with water. One surprising thing we found was that water is no worse a lubri- cant than oil, the key to it all being the additives.” Adding natural polymers to water can dramatically improve its lubricating properties. The Freising- based researchers set about testing renewable raw materials such as celluloses, starches or bacterial polysaccharides and improving their use as lubricant