Exotic Nucleus Exhibits Curious Shape
A new shape measurement of unstable ruthenium-110 has found this nucleus to be similar to a squashed football.
Story Tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, November 2017
ORNL story tips, November 2017: Fast-learning computing technique supports hurricane damage assessments; neutrons unlock liquid flow mystery; "puckering" 2D material creates tunable energy gap; window air conditioning prototype allows safe use of propane refrigerant; graphene nanoribbons become semiconductors through precise electrical contacts.
Honey, I Shrunk the Features for Low-Cost, Flexible, Large-Area Electronics
Exploiting reversible solubility allows for direct, optical patterning of unprecedentedly small features.
One-Step 3D Printing of Catalysts Developed at Ames Laboratory
The U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory has developed a 3D printing process that creates a chemically active catalytic object in a single step, opening the door to more efficient ways to produce catalysts for complex chemical reactions in a wide scope of industries.
The Inner Secrets of Planets and Stars
An INCITE research team, led by Jonathan Aurnou of UCLA, is using Mira to develop advanced models to study magnetic field generation on Earth, Jupiter and the sun at an unprecedented level of detail.
Flavins Perform Electron Magic
Researchers discover the secret behind the third way living organisms extract energy from their environment.
Mission Not So Impossible Now: Control Complex Molecular Organization
Scientists achieved thin films with structures virtually impossible via traditional methods.
Making Glass Invisible: A Nanoscience-Based Disappearing Act
Glare-free cell phone screens, ultra-transparent windows, and more efficient solar cells--these are some of the applications that could be enabled by texturing glass surfaces with tiny nanoscale features that reduce surface reflections to nearly zero.
Spin-Polarized Surface States in Superconductors
Novel spin-polarized surface states may guide the search for materials that host Majorana fermions, unusual particles that act as their own antimatter, and could revolutionize quantum computers.
Imaging Probe Printed Onto Tip of Optical Fiber
The Molecular Foundry and aBeam Technologies bring mass fabrication to nano-optical devices.
Solid-State Batteries
Solid-state batteries, which eschew the flammable and unstable liquid electrolytes of conventional lithium-ion batteries, could be a safer option. Now, researchers have demonstrated a new way to produce more efficient solid-state batteries. This proof-of-principle study may lead to safer and more compact batteries useful for everything from sensor networks to implantable biomedical devices. Researchers at the University of Maryland will present this work during the AVS 64th International Symposium and Exhibition, in Tampa, Florida.
New Studies on Disordered Cathodes May Provide Much-Needed Jolt to Lithium Batteries
In a pair of papers published this month in Nature Communications and Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has come up with a set of rules for making new disordered materials, a process that had previously been driven by trial-and-error. They also found a way to incorporate fluorine, which makes the material both more stable and have higher capacity.
Plenty of Room at the Top: Breaking through the Sunlight-to-Electricity Conversion Limit
In hybrid materials, "hot" electrons live longer, producing electricity, not heat, in solar cells.
Efforts to Revive Coal Industry Unlikely to Work, May Slow Job Growth
Current federal efforts to revive the coal industry will likely do more harm than good to fragile Appalachian communities transitioning from coal as a major source of employment, according to a study conducted by Indiana University researchers.
Scientists Get First Close-ups of Finger-Like Growths that Trigger Battery Fires
Menlo Park, Calif. -- Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the first atomic-level images of finger-like growths called dendrites that can pierce the barrier between battery compartments and trigger short circuits or fires. Dendrites and the problems they cause have been a stumbling block on the road to developing new types of batteries that store more energy so electric cars, cell phones, laptops and other devices can go longer between charges.
Deep-Depletion: A New Concept for MOSFETs
Diamond is largely recognized as the ideal material in wide bandgap development, but realizing its full potential in field-effect transistors has been challenging. Researchers incorporate a new approach by using the deep-depletion regime of bulk-boron-doped diamond MOSFETs. The new proof of concept enables the production of simple diamond MOSFET structures from single boron-doped epilayer stacks. This method increases the mobility by an order of magnitude. The results are published this week in Applied Physics Letters.
Imperfections Show "Swimming" Particles the Way to Self-Healing and Shape-Changing
Defects in liquid crystals act as guides in tiny oceans, directing particle traffic.
Piezoelectrics Stretch Their Potential with a Method for Flexible Sticking
Thin-film piezoelectrics, with dimensions on the scale of micrometers or smaller, offer potential for new applications where smaller dimensions or a lower voltage operation are required. Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for making piezoelectric microelectromechanical systems by connecting a sample of lead zirconate titanate piezoelectric thin films to flexible polymer substrates. They report their results in this week's Journal of Applied Physics.
Nanoribbons Enable "On-Off" Switch for Graphene
Built from the bottom up, nanoribbons can be semiconducting, enabling broad electronic applications.
Tree Mortality and Droughts: A Global Perspective
Stress-induced embolisms that interrupt water transport are a universal component of tree mortality.
Ames Laboratory, UConn Discover Superconductor with Bounce
The U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory has discovered extreme "bounce," or super-elastic shape-memory properties in a material that could be applied for use as an actuator in the harshest of conditions, such as outer space, and might be the first in a whole new class of shape memory materials.
Experiment Provides Deeper Look into the Nature of Neutrinos
The first glimpse of data from the full array of a deeply chilled particle detector operating beneath a mountain in Italy sets the most precise limits yet on where scientists might find a theorized process to help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
Transparent Solar Technology Represents 'Wave of the Future'
See-through solar materials that can be applied to windows represent a massive source of untapped energy and could harvest as much power as bigger, bulkier rooftop solar units, scientists report today in Nature Energy.
Electricity From Shale Gas vs. Coal: Lifetime Toxic Releases From Coal Much Higher
Despite widespread concern about potential human health impacts from hydraulic fracturing, the lifetime toxic chemical releases associated with coal-generated electricity are 10 to 100 times greater than those from electricity generated with natural gas obtained via fracking, according to a new University of Michigan study.
Tiny Tornados at the Dawn of the Universe
Swirling soup of matter's fundamental building blocks spins ten billion trillion times faster than the most powerful tornado, setting new record for "vorticity."