The device uses lasers to accelerate electrons along an etched channel.
In a full-scale particle accelerator, electrons fly along a kilometers-long path as microwaves bombard them, boosting the particles to near light speed. Such a high-energy electron beam, produced at facilities such as California’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, enables a variety of experiments, including capturing extremely detailed images and probing the structures of molecules. But particle accelerators are expensive, require scientists to travel from locations all over the world and cannot accommodate all the researchers who submit requests to book time. To make these devices more accessible, a team at Stanford University developed a laser-driven particle accelerator that fits on a tiny silicon chip—and that could eventually be scaled up to produce a beam with as much energy as SLAC’s.
“The idea of using lasers in accelerators goes all the way back to the year the laser was invented, 1960,” says Robert Byer, a Stanford researcher who has been working on this concept since 1974. Lasers produce electromagnetic waves with much shorter wavelengths than the microwaves used in a full-scale accelerator, which means they can accelerate electrons moving through a much smaller space. “The size of these devices is uncannily small,” Byer says. The electrons in the new accelerator, for example, travel along a channel that is about three one-thousandths of a millimeter wide—around half the width of a human red blood cell.
Although laser-driven devices can accelerate electrons in a much smaller space than full-scale accelerators, they also require much greater precision to line up the laser and the electrons in the right way, so the light waves push the particles in the correct direction with as much energy as possible. “You not only have to demonstrate the ability to couple the laser light to the electrons in these very small structures, but you have to generate the electrons and have them also be transmitted by the channel,” Byer explains. In 2013 two research groups, one at Stanford and other U.S. institutions and another in Germany, independently managed to accelerate electrons with lasers. But these proof-of-concept prototypes required separate devices to generate the electrons, and they would be difficult to manufacture in bulk using existing techniques.
Image Credit: Neil Sapra

News This Week
Can We Stop a Super Coronavirus?
The new variants of the coronavirus are even more dangerous than those known so far. Researchers and politicians fear a sharp increase in the number of infections, with dramatic consequences like those seen in Britain. [...]
Can an AI Predict the Language of Viral Mutation?
Viruses lead a rather repetitive existence. They enter a cell, hijack its machinery to turn it into a viral copy machine, and those copies head on to other cells armed with instructions to do the [...]
Nano-thin piezoelectrics advance self-powered electronics
A new type of ultra-efficient, nano-thin material could advance self-powered electronics, wearable technologies and even deliver pacemakers powered by heart beats. The flexible and printable piezoelectric material, which can convert mechanical pressure into electrical energy, [...]
In lab study, nanoparticle shows promising results for treating severe allergies
For about one in 13 children in the U.S., normally harmless foodstuffs such as milk, eggs and peanuts can send the body's natural defenses into overdrive. Symptoms of food allergies can vary widely, but at [...]
Platelet-Rich Plasma Applications for Achilles Tendon Repair: A Bridge between Biology and Surgery
Frank Boehm (Nanoapps Medical Inc. Founder) has contributed to 'Platelet-Rich Plasma Applications for Achilles Tendon Repair: A Bridge between Biology and Surgery', published by International Journal of Molecular Sciences/ MDP. Abstract: Achilles tendon ruptures [...]
SARS_CoV_2 Can Infect Neurons and Damage Brain Tissue
Using both mouse and human brain tissue, researchers at Yale School of Medicine have discovered that SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect the central nervous system and have begun to unravel some of the virus’s effects on [...]
MIT algorithm discovers antibiotic that can fight drug-resistant diseases
A deep learning algorithm developed at MIT has discovered new antibiotics that can treat drug-resistant diseases by killing 35 powerful bacteria. The pathogens that the halicin antibiotic has targetted include Acinetobacter baumannii, which was nicknamed [...]
Article: ‘Digital Rights in the Age of Super Intelligence’ by Eva Kaili
In our transforming world, digital technology has the critical mass to push our frontiers and release unlimited potential. As the wave of digital transformation soars high, improving our lives, industries and economies, we must not [...]
Scientists Discover a Way to Control the Immune System’s “Natural Killer” Cells With “Invisible” Stem Cells
UC San Francisco scientists have discovered a new way to control the immune system’s “natural killer” (NK) cells, a finding with implications for novel cell therapies and tissue implants that can evade immune rejection. The [...]
Simulations Reveal Nature’s Design For Error Correction During DNA Replication
A team led by scientists at Georgia State University simulates the precise transition between the processes of DNA synthesis and proofreading DNA replication is one of the most important processes in biology, responsible for ensuring [...]
‘Long Covid’ is anything but a mild illness
With the excitement of the Covid vaccine’s arrival, it may be easy to forget and ignore those of us with “long Covid”, who are struggling to reclaim our previous, pre-viral lives and continue to live [...]
Could COVID-19 have wiped out the Neandertals?
Everybody loves Neandertals, those big-brained brutes we supposedly outcompeted and ultimately replaced using our sharp tongues and quick, delicate minds. But did we really, though? Is it mathematically possible that we could yet be them, [...]
Inside Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine development
From a small discovery to producing at scale, photojournalist David Levene documents the groundbreaking work of the scientists of Oxford University during the development of a vaccine which is now poised for approval by medicines regulators. [...]
From molecule to medicine via machine learning
t typically takes many years of experiments to develop a new medicine. Although vaccines to protect against disease from the novel coronavirus are starting to reach clinics around the world, patients and doctors will still [...]
First Optical Tweezers Capable of Trapping Nanoparticles
Optical tweezers are a rapidly growing technology, and have opened up a wide variety of research applications in recent years. The devices operate by trapping particles at the focal points of tightly focused laser beams, [...]
Brain Implants Enable Man to Simultaneously Control Two Prosthetic Limbs with ‘Thoughts’
In what is believed to be a medical first, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have enabled a quadriplegic man to control a pair of prosthetic [...]