Feature Channels: Materials Science

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When two mesh screens are overlaid, beautiful patterns appear when one screen is offset. These “moiré patterns” have long intrigued artists, scientists and mathematicians and have found applications in printing, fashion and banknotes. Now, a Rutgers-led team has paved the way to solving one of the most enduring mysteries in materials physics by discovering that in the presence of a moiré pattern in graphene, electrons organize themselves into stripes, like soldiers in formation.

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The properties of high-temperature superconductors can be tailored by the introduction of artificial defects. An international research team around physicist Wolfgang Lang at the University of Vienna has succeeded in producing the world's densest complex nano arrays for anchoring flux quanta, the fluxons.

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While artificial leaves hold promise as a way to take carbon dioxide — a potent greenhouse gas — out of the atmosphere, there is a “dark side to artificial leaves that has gone overlooked for more than a decade,” according to Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering.

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The ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, a partnership between The Electrochemical Society and Toyota Research Institute of North America, a division of Toyota Motor North America, is in its fifth year. The fellowship aims to encourage young professors and scholars to pursue innovative electrochemical research in green energy technology. Through this fellowship, ECS and Toyota hope to see further innovative and unconventional technologies borne from electrochemical research. ECS is proud to announce the 2019-2020 fellowship award winners: Prof. Jennifer L. Schaefer, University of Notre Dame; Prof. Neil Dasgupta, University of Michigan; Prof. Kelsey Hatzell, Vanderbilt University; Prof. Nemanja Danilovic, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Dr. Zhenhua Zeng, Purdue University.

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Researchers at Iowa State and Ames Laboratory are using neutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source to improve the process of metal-flux synthesis used in manufacturing solid-state materials used to make advanced technologies such as renewables and electronics.

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Collaborators at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and U.S. universities used neutron scattering and other advanced characterization techniques to study how a prominent catalyst enables the “water-gas shift” reaction to purify and generate hydrogen at industrial scale.

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Advances in organic phosphorescent materials are opening new opportunities for organic light-emitting diodes for combined electronics and light applications, including solar cells, photodiodes, optical fibers and lasers. While low-dimensional luminescent materials, like the calcium titanium oxide mineral perovskite, have promising optical properties, their performance remains insufficient compared to conventional organic LEDs. A recent study, in this week’s Applied Physics Reviews, explores a new approach using an exciton confinement effect to optimize highly efficient perovskite LEDs.

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Hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites have been used in optoelectronic devices including solar cells, photodetectors, light-emitting diodes and lasers, but the surface of hybrid perovskites is prone to surface defects, where charge carriers are trapped in the semiconducting material. To solve this problem, the crystal surface must be passivated. In this week’s Applied Physics Reviews, researchers describe testing hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite crystals treated with benzylamine to investigate the mechanisms by which the surface of the crystal is passivated, and traps states are reduced.

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Gold is an extremely important material for high-pressure experiments and is considered the ‘gold standard’ for calculating pressure in static diamond anvil cell experiments. When compressed slowly at room temperature (on the order of seconds to minutes), gold prefers to be the face-centered cubic (fcc) structure at pressures up to three times the center of the Earth. However, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Carnegie Institution of Washington have found that when gold is compressed rapidly over nanoseconds (1 billionth of a second), the increase in pressure and temperature changes the crystalline structure to a new phase of gold. This well-known body centered cubic (bcc) structure morphs to a more open crystal structure than the fcc structure.

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Acceptance of Argonne’s final design report for the complex APS Upgrade authorizes the laboratory to proceed with procurements needed to build the nation’s brightest energy, storage-ring based X-ray source.

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A research team lead by Osaka University demonstrated how information encoded in the circular polarization of a laser beam can be translated into the spin state of an electron in a quantum dot, each being a quantum bit and a quantum computer candidate.

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Researchers led by Iowa State's Martin Thuo are using liquid-metal particles to print electronic lines and traces on rose petals, leaves, paper, gelatin -- on all kinds of materials. The technology creates flexible electronics that could have many applications such as monitoring crops or collecting biological data.

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Cell freezing (cryopreservation) – which is essential in cell transfusions as well as basic biomedical research – can be dramatically improved using a new polymeric cryoprotectant, discovered at the University of Warwick, which reduces the amount of ‘anti-freeze’ needed to protect cells.

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A scientist, an artist, and a computer music professor combined 3-D printing, sound, and virtual reality to represent nanoscience data.

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Hans-Georg Steinrück, a versatile scientist who has made important contributions to research involving lithium-ion batteries, organic transistors, and catalysis, has been chosen to receive the 2019 William E. and Diane M. Spicer Young Investigator Award.

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A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has found what they believe is a more stable, less toxic semiconductor for solar applications, using a novel double mineral discovered through data analytics and quantum-mechanical calculations.

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From Berkeley Lab: exploring human origins in the uncharted territory of our chromosomes; scientists grow spiraling new material; drones will fly for days with this new technology

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Through a newly introduced course at Penn State, AMD 597 Legal Issues in Additive Manufacturing, students will be prepared to navigate the legal issues arising in additive manufacturing, emboldening them to become both technical experts and emerging thought leaders in the industry.

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Researchers at Sandia and Pacific Northwest national laboratories are leading a collaborative effort to investigate how hydrogen affects materials such as plastics, rubber, steel and aluminum. The Hydrogen Materials Compatibility Consortium, or H-Mat, will focus on how hydrogen affects polymers and metals used in diverse sectors including fuel cell transportation and hydrogen infrastructure.

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Renowned heavy-element chemist Polly Arnold has been appointed Chemical Sciences Division Director at Berkeley Lab. Arnold will join Berkeley Lab in late September this year. Concurrent with her role at Berkeley Lab, she will also join the Chemistry Department faculty at UC Berkeley in January 2020.

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Profiled is Raphaël Hermann of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who conducts experiments to better understand materials for energy and information applications.

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Construction has begun on VENUS, a state-of-the-art neutron imaging instrument, at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This new instrument will provide a platform for studying in real time the makeup and performance of a wide range of functional materials under varying environments.

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The Materials Research Society, the Optical Society, and SPIE make final selection for prestigious appointments to learn and contribute to science policymaking in Washington, D.C.

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Diamond is one of the only materials hard and tough enough for the job of constant grinding without significant wear, but as any imminent proposee knows, diamonds are pricey. High costs drive the search for new hard and superhard materials. However, the experimental trial-and-error search is itself expensive. A simple and reliable way to predict new material properties is needed to facilitate modern technology development. Using a computational algorithm, Russian theorists have published a predictive tool in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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An imaging guide that Brookhaven and ExxonMobil scientists made to identify petroleum contaminants could lead to cleaner, more efficient fuels.

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A comprehensive kit with functional material samples and technical specifications focuses on diagnostic applications

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working on membranes that could separate chemicals without using energy-intensive distillation processes.

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Scientists at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed a magnetic device out of liquids. Their findings could lead to printable liquid magnetic devices for a variety of applications such as artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots.

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Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense, receiving a three-year, $33 million contract from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (CCDC AvMC) for a project focused on emerging materials for high-speed missile applications.

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With high-energy X-rays, such as those that will be produced by the upgrade to Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source comes a potential hitch — the more penetrating the X-rays are, the higher a likelihood that researchers could run into problems with the image data. In a new study, researchers at Argonne have found a novel way to combat this image degradation.

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In a new publication in Nature, University of Utah chemists Jolene Reid and Matthew Sigman show how analyzing previously published chemical reaction data can predict how hypothetical reactions may proceed, narrowing the range of conditions chemists need to explore. Their algorithmic prediction process, which includes aspects of machine learning, can save valuable time and resources in chemical research.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a graphene device that switches from a superconducting material that conducts electricity without losing any energy, to an insulator that resists the flow of electric current – all with a simple flip of a switch.

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Four scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been selected for the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists and engineers who are early in their careers and have distinguished themselves in their respective fields.

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Researchers have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers. Swarms of these “micro-bristle-bots” might work together to sense environmental changes, move materials – or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.

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Physicists have theorized that a new type of material, called a three-dimensional (3-D) topological insulator (TI), could be a candidate to create qubits for quantum computing due to its special properties. A study found that when the TI’s insulating layers are as thin as 16 quintuple atomic layers across, the top and bottom metallic surfaces begin to destroy their metallic properties.

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Researchers have developed a significantly improved delivery mechanism for the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing method in the liver. The delivery uses biodegradable synthetic lipid nanoparticles that carry the molecular editing tools into cells to precisely alter their genetic code with as much as 90 percent efficiency.

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Nuclear physicists conducting research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) traded shift time for presentations on the latest successes and plans for the future at the 2019 RHIC & AGS (Alternating Gradient Synchrotron) Users' Meeting June 4-7. Even as RHIC's beams continued to collide for the completion of Run 19, there was plenty to celebrate in terms of machine performance and scientific highlights.

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Over the past few years, the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has developed a new tool to visualize physical and chemical processes with outstanding clarity: an ultra-high-speed “electron camera” capable of tracking atomic motions in a broad range of materials in real time. Starting this week, the lab has made this tool available to researchers worldwide.

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This research is a fundamental discovery of how to engineer proteins onto non-biological surfaces. Artificial proteins engineered from scratch have been assembled into nanorod arrays, designer filaments and honeycomb lattices on the surface of mica, demonstrating control over the way proteins interact with surfaces to form complex structures previously seen only in natural protein systems. The study provides a foundation for understanding how protein-crystal interactions can be systematically programmed and sets the stage for designing novel protein-inorganic hybrid materials.

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Argonne National Laboratory played a critical role in the discovery of a DNA-like twisted crystal structure created with a germanium sulfide nanowire, also known as a “van der Waals material.” Researchers can tailor these nanowires in many different ways — twist periods from two to twenty micrometers, lengths up to hundreds of micrometers, and radial dimensions from several hundred nanometers to about ten micrometers. By this means, they can adjust the electrical and optical properties to optimize performance for different applications.

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The High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation program (HPC4EI) today announced the nine public/private projects awarded more than $2 million in Department of Energy funding, with aims of improving energy production, enhancing or developing new material properties and reducing energy usage in manufacturing.

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A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore has found an innovative way of using their novel hydrogel to harvest clean water from humid air above water surfaces. The unique water-absorbing gel collects water up to 14 times its weight per day from open water bodies.

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NJIT Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Professor Dibakar Datta and his team used the Comet supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), located at the University of California San Diego, to create detailed simulations of graphene-water interactions to determine if graphene is a good candidate for delivering medicine to a specific part of the body.

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The males of one species of butterfly are more attracted to females that are active, not necessarily what they look like, according to a recent research conducted at Augustana University.The paper, “Behaviour before beauty: Signal weighting during mate selection in the butterfly Papilio polytes,” found that males of the species noticed the activity levels of potential female mates, not their markings.

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Newly published research from a team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory sheds more light on the nature of high-temperature iron-based superconductivity.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have devised a method to create pieces of “smart” glass that can recognize images without requiring any sensors or circuits or power sources.

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A chemical surface treatment boosts the catalytic activity of the wire-looking nanostructures for a key reaction in solar fuel production.

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The team of Toma Susi at the University of Vienna uses a state-of-the-art electron microscope, the UltraSTEM, to manipulate strongly bound materials with atomic precision. Since the instruments used are fully computerized.

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By energizing precursor molecules using a tiny, high-energy supersonic jet of inert gas, researchers have dramatically accelerated the fabrication of nanometer scale structures. The rapid additive manufacturing technique also allows them to produce structures with high aspect ratios. Now, a theory developed to describe the technique could lead to new applications for additive nanomanufacturing and new nanoscale materials.

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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have shown that an algorithm with no training in materials science can scan the text of millions of papers and uncover new scientific knowledge. They collected 3.3 million abstracts of published materials science papers and fed them into an algorithm called Word2vec. By analyzing relationships between words the algorithm was able to predict discoveries of new thermoelectric materials years in advance and suggest as-yet unknown materials as candidates for thermoelectric materials.