The new material, which the Advanced Photon Source helped characterize, is strong yet stretchable, and could be ideal for creating artificial tendons and ligaments for prosthetics and robotics.
Khalil Amine, a senior materials scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee developed an automated workflow to study metal halide perovskites, materials with outstanding properties for harnessing light that can be used to make solar cells, energy-efficient lighting and sensors.
Our bones adapt to strain and get stronger, and now robots could do the same. New research from Aaron Esser-Kahn demonstrates how a soft gel can become harder when exposed to vibration
Empa researchers have succeeded in extracting the pigment melanin in large quantities from a fungus. The gigantic Armillaria fungus in the service of science is one of the largest and oldest living organisms in the world. Potential applications for the "black gold" range from wood preservatives to the construction of water filters and historic musical instruments.
The University of Delaware's Stephanie Law is being recognized as a leading expert in molecular beam epitaxy, a technique used to make promising, novel materials precisely designed for use in many applications, such as ultra-sensitive gas sensing or new qubits for quantum computing. Law received the Young Investigator Award from the 21st International Conference on Molecular Beam Epitaxy 2020.
What is the origin of black holes and how is that question connected with another mystery, the nature of dark matter? Dark matter comprises the majority of matter in the Universe, but its nature remains unknown.
In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have demonstrated a new material that has an excellent balance of parameters needed to generate a good accelerator beam.
Researchers in the UK have developed a way to coax microscopic particles and droplets into precise patterns by harnessing the power of sound in air. The implications for printing, especially in the fields of medicine and electronics, are far-reaching.
Using thin films — no more than a few pieces of notebook paper thick — of a common explosive chemical, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories studied how small-scale explosions start and grow. These experiments advanced fundamental knowledge of detonations.
Penn State professor uncovers a 1963 interview with a forgotten, important figure in X-ray diffraction, Walter Friedrich, and translates it with the help of a German professor, making a case that Friedrich deserved to be part of the 1914 Nobel Prize for physics.
Researchers of the Center for Photonics and Two-Dimensional Materials at MIPT, together with their colleagues from Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, and Singapore, including co-creator of the world's first 2D material and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov, have measured giant optical anisotropy in layered molybdenum disulfide crystals for the first time. The scientists suggest that such transition metal dichalcogenide crystals will replace silicon in photonics. Birefringence with a giant difference in refractive indices, characteristic of these substances, will make it possible to develop faster yet tiny optical devices. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.
As he prepares to enter PNNL's Energy Sciences Center later this year, Vijayakumar 'Vijay' Murugesan is among DOE researchers exploring solutions to design and build transformative materials for batteries of the future.
With a bit of "metal whispering," Iowa State University engineers have developed technology capable of recovering pure and precious metals from the alloys in our old phones and other electrical waste. All it takes is the controlled application of oxygen and relatively low levels of heat.
New 140,000-square-foot facility will advance fundamental chemistry and materials science for higher-performing, cost-effective catalysts and batteries, and other energy efficiency technologies.
A team from Cornell University's Environmental Systems Lab has put forth a new framework for injecting as much information as possible into the pre-design and early design phases of a building project, potentially saving architects and design teams time and money down the road.
Berkeley Lab scientists have captured real-time, high-resolution videos of liquid structures taking shape as nanoparticles form a solid-like layer at the interface between oil and water. Their findings could help advance all-liquid robotics for targeted cancer drug delivery and other applications.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the partner institute Empa have started a joint initiative called SynFuels. The goal is to develop a process for producing kerosene from renewable resources. In this way liquid fuel mixtures of the highest quality, which would allow the most residue-free combustion possible and thus be suitable for aircraft propulsion, should be obtainable using carbon dioxide and hydrogen from renewable resources.
New hydrogel-based materials that can change shape in response to psychological stimuli, such as water, could be the next generation of materials used to bioengineer tissues and organs, according to a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago.
A German-Polish research team has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons at room temperature. With the help of the scanning transmission X-ray microscope Maxymus at Bessy II at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, they were able to film the recurring periodic magnetization structure in a crystal.
Thomas H. Epps, III, the Allan and Myra Ferguson Distinguished Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, has been named to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. The AIMBE College of Fellows consists of the top 2% of medical and biological engineers in the United States.
A revolutionary machine-learning (ML) approach to simulate the motions of atoms in materials such as aluminum is described in this week’s Nature Communications journal.
A materials engineer at the University of California San Diego is leading the development of a new research platform for studying high-performance materials, in particular new materials that melt above 4000 degrees Celsius (C). UC San Diego nanoengineering professor Kenneth Vecchio is leading the project, which is funded by a new $800,000 grant from the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP).
A team of researchers designed and manufactured a new sodium-ion conductor for solid-state sodium-ion batteries that is stable when incorporated into higher-voltage oxide cathodes. This new solid electrolyte could dramatically improve the efficiency and lifespan of this class of batteries. A proof of concept battery built with the new material lasted over 1000 cycles while retaining 89.3% of its capacity--a performance unmatched by other solid-state sodium batteries to date.
A Florida State University research team has developed a way to use a material found in plants to help create safer batteries. Using the organic polymer lignin — a compound in the cell walls of plants that makes them rigid — the team was able to create battery electrolytes.
Mike Kirka, a researcher and group leader in Deposition Science and Technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been recognized by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, or TMS, with the Young Innovator in the Materials Science of Additive Manufacturing Award.
A new paper by authors from Los Alamos and Argonne national laboratories sums up the recent progress in colloidal-quantum-dot research and highlights the remaining challenges and opportunities in the rapidly developing field, which is poised to enable a wide array of new laser-based and LED-based technology applications.
A Fermilab scientist and his team have developed new way to make antireflective lenses, enabling big discoveries about the cosmic microwave background radiation and the fabric of the universe.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of California San Diego have discovered that a material that looks geometrically similar to rock salt could be an interesting candidate for lithium battery anodes that would be used in fast charging applications.
Researchers developed a low-cost, high-performance, sustainable lead-based anode for lithium-ion batteries that can power hybrid and all-electric vehicles. They also uncovered its previously unknown reaction mechanism during charge and discharge.
A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration.
Michigan Tech engineers look into the untapped potential of parking lots in a study that investigates the energy-related benefits of developing charging stations powered with solar canopies built into the parking infrastructure of large-scale retailers like Walmart.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), and other collaborating institutions have uncovered dynamic, atomic-level details of how an important platinum-based catalyst works in the water gas shift reaction. The experiments provide definitive evidence that only certain platinum atoms play an important role in the chemical conversion, and could therefore guide the design of catalysts that use less of this precious metal.
New piezoelectric material is effective at elevated temperatures, along with demonstrating a surprisingly high level of electric production. This holds promise for a range of new uses including space exploration.
A multi-institutional team became the first to generate accurate results from materials science simulations on a quantum computer that can be verified with neutron scattering experiments and other practical techniques.
Six groups that included seventeen scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory were recent recipients of the DOE’s 2020 Secretary of Energy’s Honor Awards.
The UC Santa Cruz professor uses computing resources at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials to run calculations for quantum information science, spintronics, and energy research.
New computer design methods pave the way for scientists to design and assemble bundles of peptides with specific size, shape, and display characteristics. Scientists can then link these customizable building blocks, called bundlemers, to produce a huge array of polymers.
Scientists recently investigated the factors that control fluorescent light signals from metal organic frameworks (MOFs). The light may turn on due to structural changes in the MOF and turn off due to reorganization of the electrons in the MOF. Understanding these factors advances researchers’ ability to design and use MOFs as chemical sensors.
Scientists have created a new type of electricity-conducting polymer containing both linear and ring elements. The new polymers have very different electronic properties than scientists would expect if the polymers simply added the contributions from each linear and ring component. The polymers open new avenues for moving energy within and between polymers.
Using high-speed X-ray tomography, researchers captured images of solid-state batteries in operation and gained new insights that may improve their efficiency.
Three technologies developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have won National Technology Transfer Awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium. The annual FLC Awards recognize significant accomplishments in transferring federal laboratory technologies to the marketplace.
Scientists from MIPT, Moscow Pedagogical State University and the University of Manchester have created a highly sensitive terahertz detector based on the effect of quantum-mechanical tunneling in graphene. The sensitivity of the device is already superior to commercially available analogs based on semiconductors and superconductors, which opens up prospects for applications of the graphene detector in wireless communications, security systems, radio astronomy, and medical diagnostics. The research results are published in a high-rank journal Nature Communications.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have developed a new method for 3D printing living microbes in controlled patterns, expanding the potential for using engineered bacteria to recover rare-earth metals, clean wastewater, detect uranium and more.