A diamond-based quantum sensor developed at UHasselt in collaboration with UCLouvain and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy will accompany Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois on the International Space Station (ISS). The aim? To carry out fundamental research into the behaviour of molecules in microgravity. The aim? To gain a better understanding of the effects of weightlessness on biological systems such as the human body and plants. At the end of 2026, Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois of the European Space Agency (ESA) will embark on his first space mission, carrying a diamond-based quantum sensor for astrochemical research to the International Space Station (ISS). Developed by the OSCAR team at Hasselt University in collaboration with UCLouvain and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), this quantum sensor will spend 6 months researching the behaviour of light-sensitive molecules in microgravity.

The ability to tune the energy gap in bilayer graphene makes it the perfect playground for the study of the effects of internal electric fields, such as the crystalline field, which are developed when other layered materials are deposited on top of it. Here, we introduce a novel device architecture allowing simultaneous control over the applied displacement field and the crystalline alignment between two materials. Our experimental and numerical results confirm that the crystal field and electrostatic doping due to the interface reflect the 120° symmetry of the bilayer graphene/BN heterostructure and are highly affected by the commensurate state. These results provide unique insight into the role of twist angle in the development of internal crystal fields and intrinsic electrostatic doping in heterostructures. Our results highlight the importance of layer alignment, beyond the existence of a moiré superlattice, to understand the intrinsic properties of a heterostructure.

Flat bands in moiré systems are exciting new playgrounds for the generation and study of exotic many-body physics phenomena in low-dimensional materials. Such physics is attributed to the vanishing kinetic energy and strong spatial localization of the flat-band states. Here, we use numerical simulations to examine the electronic transport properties of such flat bands in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene in the presence of disorder. We find that while a conventional downscaling of the mean free path with increasing disorder strength occurs at higher energies, in the flat bands the mean free path can actually increase with increasing disorder strength. This phenomenon is also captured by the disorder-dependent quantum metric, which is directly linked to the ground state localization. This disorder-induced delocalization suggests that weak disorder may have a strong impact on the exotic physics of magic-angle bilayer graphene and other related moiré systems.

L’UCLouvain a l’honneur d’accueillir Jean-Marie Lehn, prix Nobel de chimie en 1987, pour une conférence exceptionnelle. Ce grand scientifique, pionnier de la chimie supramoléculaire, échangera avec les chercheur·euses et étudiant·es sur l'impact de ses découvertes et les défis futurs de la discipline.