In a ceremony at Argonne, leaders from the Department of Energy joined the lab in breaking ground on two new beamlines that will enable new innovations in many different scientific fields.
Pioneering materials scientist James De Yoreo receives Distinguished Scientist Fellow award. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science bestows one of its highest honors on PNNL materials scientist.
As the Covid-19 shutdowns and stay-at-home orders brought much of the world's travel and commerce to a standstill, people around the world started noticing clearer skies as a result of lower levels of air pollution.
Brazilian researchers demonstrated a new chemical approach for producing biodiesel from domestic cooking oil waste by using hydroxide lithium mixed with either sodium hydroxides or potassium hydroxides as catalysts. Their work, published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, could enable future studies related to the use of lithium from waste lithium ion batteries. The work marks one of the first times lithium has been used for such purposes.
Lithium-ion batteries contain salts rich in fluorine, which decompose in humid air to toxic, highly corrosive hydrogen fluoride. The hazardous nature of this substance makes recycling more difficult and more expensive. A research project entitled "Fluoribat" is now being launched at Empa to solve this problem. This could help to make the life cycle of a rechargeable battery less expensive and at the same time safer.
A new finding about the fundamental chemistry of two-dimensional materials called MXenes will change the way researchers work with them, and open up new areas of applications, according to researchers at Missouri S&T.MXenes are ceramics that make up one of the largest families of 2-D conductive materials. Their conductivity makes them candidates for use in energy storage, sensing and optoelectronics.
The LCLS-II upgrade project will increase the X-ray laser's power by thousands of times, producing a million pulses per second compared to 120 per second today. Now, the first phase of the upgrade has come into operation, producing an X-ray beam for the first time using newly installed undulators. The full upgrade is due to be completed within the next two years.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, have developed a new battery material that could enable long-range electric vehicles that can drive for hundreds of miles on a single charge, and electric planes called eVTOLs for fast, environmentally friendly commutes.
A new device that relies on flowing clouds of ultracold atoms promises potential tests of the intersection between the weirdness of the quantum world and the familiarity of the macroscopic world we experience every day.
Copper that was once bound with oxygen is better at converting carbon dioxide into renewable fuels than copper that was never bound to oxygen, according to scientists at Berkeley Lab and Caltech.
Scientists built a machine learning model that can rapidly predict how atoms absorb x-rays for materials science research.
What if your clothing expressed your personality or culture – and could communicate with your cellphone or smart home?
Scientists have completed an important and timely study of cloth masks. The study examined the filtration efficiency of fabrics and focused on aerosol particles in a range of sizes relevant to viral transmission through respiratory exposures. The best-performing masks used hybrid designs that include high thread-count cotton and electrostatic layers such as silk or polyester chiffon.
Imagine tiny crystals that “blink” like fireflies and can convert carbon dioxide, a key cause of climate change, into fuels. A Rutgers-led team has created ultra-small titanium dioxide crystals that exhibit unusual “blinking” behavior and may help to produce methane and other fuels, according to a study in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The crystals, also known as nanoparticles, stay charged for a long time and could benefit efforts to develop quantum computers.
A Virginia Tech chemical engineering professor has developed a surface coating that, when painted on common objects, inactivates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Chemists at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory shows that asphalt binder, when exposed to sun and water, leaches thousands of potentially toxic compounds into the environment. The study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Concrete is by far the most widely used building material in the world – and the trend is rising. Using a new type of concrete formula, an Empa team has succeeded in producing self-prestressed concrete elements. This innovation makes it possible to build lean structures much more cost-effectively – and save material at the same time.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers, in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), have designed a new process, based on a naturally occurring protein, that could extract and purify rare earth elements (REE) from low-grade sources. It could offer a new avenue toward a more diversified and sustainable REE sector for the United States. The protein, lanmodulin, enables a one-step extraction and purification of (REE)s from complex metal mixtures, including electronic waste and coal byproducts.
Small amounts of plutonium (Pu) were released from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) reactors into the environment during the site's 2011 nuclear disaster. However, the physical, chemical, and isotopic form of the released Pu has remained unknown.
Irvine, Calif., July 14, 2020 – The National Science Foundation has awarded $18 million to the University of California, Irvine in support of a new materials research science and engineering center. UCI is one of three MRSECs newly funded by the NSF in 2020, joining 16 other existing centers at leading research institutions in the United States.
Scientists have confirmed a theoretical prediction for high-temperature superconductors. In a superconductive state, like-charged electrons overcome their repulsion to pair up and flow freely. Different states of matter make superconductivity possible. One of those theorized states of matter is called a pair density wave. The scientists confirmed pair density waves using advanced microscopic imaging techniques.
Athena Safa Sefat is a Senior Research Scientist and a former Wigner Fellow in the Materials Science & Technology Division of the Physical Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Fermilab scientists have broken their own world record for an accelerator magnet. In June, their demonstrator steering dipole magnet achieved a 14.5-tesla field, surpassing the field strength of their 14.1-tesla magnet, which set a record in 2019. This magnet test shows that scientists and engineers can meet the demanding requirements for the future particle collider under discussion in the particle physics community.
Chemists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and their collaborators have created a highly efficient and long-lasting solar flow battery, a way to generate, store and redeliver renewable electricity from the sun in one device.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Montana State University have found that placing sufficient strain in a 2D material creates localized states that can yield single-photon emitters. Using sophisticated optical microscopy techniques developed at Columbia over the past 3 years, the team was able to directly image these states for the first time, revealing that even at room temperature they are highly tunable and act as quantum dots, tightly confined pieces of semiconductors that emit light.
he cold, famine and unrest in ancient Rome and Egypt after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE has long been shrouded in mystery.
The National Science Foundation has awarded University of California San Diego researchers a six-year $18 million grant to fund a new Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).
Researchers from the University of Houston, in collaboration with others, have designed a "catch and kill" air filter that can trap the virus responsible for COVID-19, killing it instantly.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has developed a new particle-level cathode coating for lithium ion batteries meant to increase their life and safety.
It’s called CHARM—the University of Delaware’s new Center for Hybrid, Active and Responsive Materials. It will drive fundamental materials science research and enable critical innovations in biomedicine, security, sensing and more.
A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a technique that could lead to new electronic materials that surpass the limitations imposed by Moore’s Law.
Artisanal makers of mezcal have a tried and true way to tell when the drink has been distilled to the right alcohol level.
Tiny, 3D printed cubes of plastic, with intricate fractal voids built into them, have proven to be effective at dissipating shockwaves, potentially leading to new types of lightweight armor and structural materials effective against explosions and impacts.
Van der Waals materials that are layered on top of each other are of high interest for electronic and photonic applications. A recent study by Penn State and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in California, provides new insights into the interactions of layered materials with laser and electron beams.
Thermoelectric devices, which use the temperature difference between the top and bottom of the device to generate power, offer some promise for harnessing naturally occurring energy. In Applied Physics Letters, authors tested a device made up of a wavelength-selective emitter that constantly cools the device during the day using radiative cooling. As a result, the top of the device is cooler than the bottom, causing a temperature difference that creates constant voltage through day and night and various weather conditions.
Columbia University researchers report that they have observed a quantum fluid known as the fractional quantum Hall states (FQHS), one of the most delicate phases of matter, for the first time in a monolayer 2D semiconductor. Their findings demonstrate the excellent intrinsic quality of 2D semiconductors and establish them as a unique test platform for future applications in quantum computing.
An international team of scientists from Austria, Germany and Ukraine has found a new superconducting system in which magnetic flux quanta can move at velocities of 10-15 km/s. This opens access to investigations of the rich physics of non-equilibrium collective systems and renders a direct-write Nb-C superconductor as a candidate material for single-photon detectors.
Glass- and carbon- fiber reinforced composites, whose use in aerospace and other high-performance applications is soaring. Components made of these materials are often 3D printed. Their strength and flexibility depends on how each layer of fibers is deposited by the printer head, whose layer-by-layer orientation is determined by toolpath instricutions in a component's CAD file. A team of NYU Tandon researchers showed that that 3D printing toolpaths are easy to reproduce — and therefore steal — with machine learning. They demonstrated a method of reverse engineering of a 3D-printed glass fiber reinforced polymer filament that, when 3D-printed, has a dimensional accuracy within one-third of 1% of the original part.
A team used the Summit supercomputer to simulate transition metal systems—such as copper bound to molecules of nitrogen, dihydrogen, or water—and correctly predicted the amount of energy required to break apart dozens of molecular systems, paving the way for a greater understanding of these materials.
Researchers from West Virginia University are using neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study novel materials called high entropy oxides, or HEOs. Their goal is to collect insights into how the atoms in the HEOs bind together and whether the materials can be used to develop useful applications to improve power plant operations.
University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have made it possible to remotely determine the temperature beneath the surface of certain materials using a new technique they call depth thermography. The method may be useful in applications where traditional temperature probes won’t work, like monitoring semiconductor performance or next-generation nuclear reactors.
All living organisms have systems that can link multiple signals to manage tasks. This ability, called complex signal integration, is not found in artificial systems. This new study demonstrates a pathway for simple, soft artificial materials called hydrogel polymers to use multiple signals from external sources to produce distinct responses.
Researchers demonstrated novel ways to design and build materials for controlling light. The new materials have two layers of metasurfaces, overcoming the limits on conventional single-layer materials. The novel two-layer design enables a new level of control over light properties and more functionality for devices that use these materials.
Scientists are developing “synthetic trees” that work like their natural counterparts to serve in specific applications. In an important step, scientists fabricated synthetic leaves using nanoporous disks that control moisture at the scale of molecules to mimic natural transpiration. The disks use a novel, layered design topped with silicon pores to trap water vapor.
Empa researchers have succeeded in applying aerogels to microelectronics: Aerogels based on cellulose nanofibers can effectively shield electromagnetic radiation over a wide frequency range – and they are unrivalled in terms of weight.
Megan Malara, The Ohio State University, has been named as the 2020-2021 TMS/MRS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow.
A collaboration between Argonne and several universities has led to the creation of a new high-throughput X-ray diffraction instrument that will enable materials research and clear the way for improvements in advance of the APS Upgrade.
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba used computer calculations to design a new carbon-based material even harder than diamond.
While the use of face masks in public has been widely recommended by health officials during the current COVID-19 pandemic, there are relatively few specific guidelines pertaining to mask materials and designs. A study in Physics of Fluids looks to better understand which types are best for controlling respiratory droplets that could contain viruses. The team experimented with different choices in material and design to determine how well face masks block droplets as they exit the mouth.
Astronomers have made the first measurement of spin-orbit alignment for a distant 'super-Jupiter' planet, demonstrating a technique that could enable breakthroughs in the quest to understand how exoplanetary systems form and evolved.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right