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Members of the Condensed Matter Physics Department dr. Jože Luzar, assist. prof. Stanislav Vrtnik, dr. Primož Koželj, dr. Andreja Jelen, dr. Magdalena Wencka, Darja Gačnik, Peter Mihor, prof. Janez Dolinšek and the member of the Center of Excellence in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology dr. Bojan Ambrožič, together with the colleagues from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the Ljubljana University, National Institute of Chemistry and the Slovak University of Technology in Trnava, Slovakia, have discovered the first »supersilent« high-entropy alloys for alternating-current applications. The ferromagnetic high-entropy materials AlCoFeNiCux (x = 2.0–3.0) show a combination of magnetic softness and vanishing magnetostriction and do not vibrate mechanically in an alternating magnetic field. Consequently, they do not emit annoying sound waves, known e.g. as the »humming« noise of an electrical grid transformer. The materials are suitable for the fabrication of supersilent (inaudible to a human ear) transformers, magnetocaloric coolers and other humming electromagnetic machinery based on periodic magnetization and demagnetization of the components. The authors have published the results in a paper Zero-magnetostriction magnetically soft high-entropy alloys in the AlCoFeNiCux (x = 2.0–3.0) system for supersilent applications, which has appeared recently in the journal Advanced Materials Interface.

Researchers Aljaž Kavčič, dr. Maja Garvas, Matevž Marinčič and doc. dr. Matjaž Humar from the F5 department and dr. Boris Majaron from the F7 department of the Jožef Stefan Institute have, in collaboration with researchers from Graz University, published a paper in Nature Communications entitled Deep tissue localization and sensing using optical microcavity probes. In the paper they presented a new method for imaging through scattering tissues, based on localization of whispering gallery mode microresonators with spectrally narrow emission that enables a decomposition of diffuse signal into contributions from individual microresonators. The developed method combines the ability of precise localization on cellular level with possibility of sensing various parameters such as temperature, pH and refractive index, which makes it a versatile and promising tool in the field of deep-tissue imaging. First author of the paper Aljaž Kavčič presented the results of this work in his master’s thesis, for which he was awarded »Prešernova nagrada« of University of Ljubljana.