Ohio-based Strangpresse has exclusively licensed additive manufacturing-related extruder technology from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that can quickly print hundreds of pounds of polymer material.
Argonne researchers have found a new way to produce solar fuels by developing “synthetic purple membranes.” These membranes involve an assembly of lipid nanodiscs, man-made proteins, and semiconducting nanoparticles that, when taken together, can transform sunlight into hydrogen fuel.
A “cool flame” may sound contradictory, but it’s an important element of diesel combustion — one that, once properly understood, could enable better engine designs with higher efficiency and fewer emissions.
A Cornell University engineering and physics team is using the octopus as inspiration for a method to morph flat surfaces into three-dimensional ones on demand. They have devised a method for precisely transforming stretchable 2-D objects into 3-D shapes. It involves the use of rigid mesh, laser cut in a way that, when attached to a stretchable material, would constrain the material to form targeted shapes when inflated.
Berkeley Lab researchers contributed key algorithms which helped scientists achieve a goal first proposed more than 40 years ago – using angular correlations of X-ray snapshots from non-crystalline molecules to determine the 3D structure of important biological objects.
The technology, shear thickening fluid, permeates fabrics and layers of material and actually gets stronger when it is struck with increasing force, making the material highly puncture and ballistic-resistant. The nanocomposite material, sometimes called "liquid armor," adds little weight to the fabric and does not reduce its flexibility - two critical features for a space suit. NASA recently provided a grant for its study and prototypes will be sent for testing on the International Space Station in November.
Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have demonstrate that they can repurpose DNA to create new substances with possible medical applications.
Most manure just sits around. Anaerobic digesters take those piles and place them in large covered tanks and convert waste into an energy source. Chemical engineers from Michigan Tech examined the carbon footprint of anaerobic digestion.
The same electrostatic charge that can make hair stand on end and attach balloons to clothing could be an efficient way to drive atomically thin electronic memory devices of the future, according to a new Berkeley Lab study. Scientists have found a way to reversibly change the atomic structure of a 2-D material by injecting it with electrons. The process uses far less energy than current methods for changing the configuration of a material's structure.
Lithium ion batteries are flammable and the price of the raw material is rising. Are there alternatives? Yes: Empa and ETH Zürich researchers have discovered promising approaches as to how we might produce batteries out waste graphite and scrap metal
Energy from the sun and a block of wood smaller than an adult’s hand are the only components needed to heat water to its steaming point in these purifying devices.
Researchers have begun to use metamaterials, engineered composites that have unique properties not found in nature, to enhance the absorption rates of plasmonic absorbers, and a team in Japan used a trilayered metamaterial to develop a wavelength-selective plasmonic metamaterial absorber on top of a spintronic device to enhance the generation of spin currents from the heat produced in the mid-infrared regime. The research is reported this week in APL Photonics.
Inspired by human forgetfulness – how our brains discard unnecessary data to make room for new information — scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory and three universities, conducted a recent study that combined supercomputer simulation and X-ray characterization of a material that gradually “forgets.” This could one day be used for advanced bio-inspired computing.
Simultaneous measurements of x-rays and gamma rays emitted in radioactive nuclear decays show that the vacancy left by an electron’s departure, not the atomic structure, influences whether gamma rays are released.
Seven-year study explains how packets of light are exchanged when protons meet electrons.
To accelerate innovation and adoption of new lightweighting technologies for on-highway vehicles, the Lightweight Materials National Laboratory Consortium, or LightMAT, is overseeing a second directed funding- assistance call. Interested industry partners wanting to collaborate with research experts and leverage unique materials capabilities at the U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories are encouraged to apply.
UC Riverside physicists have developed a photodetector – a device that converts light into electrons – by combining two distinct inorganic materials and producing quantum mechanical processes that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected. The researchers stacked two atomic layers of tungsten diselenide on a single atomic layer of molybdenum diselenide. Such stacking results in properties vastly different from those of the parent layers, allowing for customized electronic engineering at the tiniest possible scale.
Using flexible conducting polymers and novel circuitry patterns printed on paper, researchers have demonstrated proof-of-concept wearable thermoelectric generators that can harvest energy from body heat to power simple biosensors for measuring heart rate, respiration or other factors.
While hydrogen is often talked about as a pollution-free fuel of the future, especially for use in fuel cell electric vehicles, hydrogen can be used for much more than zero-emission cars. In fact, from enhancing the flexibility of the grid to greening agriculture, hydrogen could play a major role in a clean and resilient energy system.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory nuclear physicists and their partners are using America’s most powerful supercomputers to characterize behavior of objects, from subatomic neutrons to neutron stars, that differ dramatically in size yet are closely connected by physics.
A staff member at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory, Matthew Latimer is in charge of seven spectroscopy beamlines at SSRL. He was recently selected for the 2017 Farrel W. Lytle Award, established by the SSRL Users’ Organization Executive Committee. The award promotes accomplishments in synchrotron science and supports collaboration among visiting scientists and staff who conduct research at SSRL.
A team of researchers found that randomly selected, high-angle, general grain boundaries in a nickel-bismuth (Ni-Bi) polycrystalline alloy can undergo interfacial reconstruction to form ordered superstructures, a discovery that enriches the theories and fundamental understandings of both grain boundary segregation and liquid metal embrittlement in physical metallurgy.
Test results show that interactions between admixtures can reduce air-void stability, contributing to lowered freezing-and-thawing durability and scaling resistance.
Scientists create widely controllable ultrathin optical components that allow virtual objects to be projected in real environments.
A Missouri S&T professor known for both his teaching acumen and research portfolio has been named an ASM International fellow, a top honor in materials science and engineering. Dr. David Van Aken, a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of metallurgical engineering, is one of 18 inductees in the professional society’s 2017 class of fellows.
In just two years, a process that was developed by Molecular Foundry staff and users has nearly doubled the number of materials with the potential for using sunlight to produce fuel.
Confined within tiny carbon nanotubes, extremely cold water molecules line up in a highly ordered chain.
Scientists design outstanding catalysts by controlling the composition and shape of these tiny plate-like structures on the nanoscale.
As microchips become smaller and faster, the shrinking size of their copper interconnects leads to increased electrical resistivity at the nanoscale. Finding a solution to this technical bottleneck is a problem for the semiconductor industry; one possibility involves reducing the resistivity size effect by altering the crystalline orientation of interconnect materials. Researchers conducted electron transport measurements in epitaxial single-crystal layers of tungsten as one potential solution. The work is published in this week’s Journal of Applied Physics.
Scientists set record resolution for patterning materials at sizes as small as a single nanometer using microscope-based lithography.
Big impacts on crystal formation result from small changes and reveal design principles for new materials for solar cells, more.
For the first time, self-organized, soft machines powered by molecular motors propelled fluid for hours across meters.
Scientists from the Stanford PULSE Institute at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a potential new way to make attosecond laser pulses using ordinary glass - in this case, the cover slip from a microscope slide.
A team of University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers has created the most functional flexible transistor in the world — and with it, a fast, simple and inexpensive fabrication process that’s easily scalable to the commercial level.
Chemists from Empa have developed and patented an environmentally friendly way to produce flame retardants for foams that can be used in mattresses and upholstery. Unlike previous flame retardants made of chemicals containing chlorine, the new material is non-toxic and effective. Two of Empa’s industrial partners are now launching the innovation on the market.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have dived down to the atomic scale to resolve every “jiggle and wiggle” of atomic motion that underlies metal strength.
The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a $1.44 million National Science Foundation grant to discover new 2D materials that can be used to manufacture better and cheaper batteries.
A technology that can print pure, ultra-precise doses of drugs onto a wide variety of surfaces could one day enable on-site printing of custom-dosed medications at pharmacies, hospitals and other locations.
Kasper Kjaer is the winner of the inaugural LCLS Young Investigator Award given by the Users Executive Committee of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The prize recognizes scientists in the early stages of their career for exceptional research performed with the LCLS X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Two Berkeley Lab teams will receive DOE funding to develop near-term quantum computing platforms and tools to be used for scientific discovery in the chemical sciences. One team will develop novel algorithms, compiling techniques and scheduling tools, while the other team will design prototype four- and eight-qubit processors to compute these new algorithms.
Using X-ray techniques, scientists are developing an analysis tool that can more accurately predict how sulfur compounds in a batch of crude oil might corrode equipment– an important safety issue for the oil industry.
The University of Washington is home to a new national center of excellence for research, education and training in materials science. The Molecular Engineering Materials Center is funded by a $15.6 million, six-year grant from the National Science Foundation as part of its highly competitive Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program.
A new type of “bijel” created by Berkeley Lab scientists could one day lead to applications in soft robotics, liquid circuitry, and energy conversion.
The Cornell Center for Materials Research – which through research and education is enhancing national capabilities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and materials research at all levels – has been has been granted $23.2 million for the next six years from the National Science Foundation.
In a recent experiment conducted at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a research team used bright, ultrafast X-ray pulses from SLAC’s X-ray free-electron laser to create a high-speed movie of a fluorescent protein in action. With that information, the scientists began to design a marker that switches more easily, a quality that can improve resolution during biological imaging.
A new high-performance computing initiative announced this week by the U.S. Department of Energy will help U.S. industry accelerate the development of new or improved materials for use in severe environments.
The Northwestern Institute of Science and Engineering this summer offered its inaugural summer research program for 12 undergraduate science and engineering majors. During the 10-week program, the students worked on projects of mutual strategic importance to Argonne and the university in machine learning, environmental sensing, synthetic biology, materials synthesis and characterization, and energy storage.
Northwestern University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which is among the longest continually funded materials research centers in the country, has received a six-year, $15.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
In a study published Sept. 20 in Nature, UChicago and Cornell University researchers describe an innovative method to make stacks of semiconductors just a few atoms thick. The technique offers scientists and engineers a simple, cost-effective method to make thin, uniform layers of these materials, which could expand capabilities for devices from solar cells to cell phones.
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