The colour of the light emitted by an LED can be tuned by altering the size of their semiconductor crystals. LMU researchers have now found a clever and economical way of doing just that, which lends itself to industrial-scale production. Unlike our old friend the incandescent lightbulb, light-emitting diodes (or LEDs) produce light of a defined colour within the spectral range from the infrared to the ultraviolet.

To localise sounds, particularly low-frequency sounds, mammals must perceive minimal differences in the timing of signal reception between the two ears. LMU researchers now describe a unique feature of the neurons responsible for this task. In the mammalian auditory system, sound waves impinging on the tympanic membrane of the ear are transduced into electrical signals by sensory hair cells and transmitted via the auditory nerve to the brain...

Light, when strongly concentrated, is enormously powerful. Now, a team of physicists led by Professor Jörg Schreiber from the Institute of Experimental Physics – Medical Physics, which is part of the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP), a Cluster of Excellence at LMU Munich, has used this energy source with explosive effect. The researchers focus high-power laser light onto beads of plastic just a few micrometers in size.

  Using ultrasound technology, physicists from the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics make proton radiation in cancerous tissue visible. In future, the irradiation of tumors with protons could become more precise.