Feature Channels: Materials Science

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While the international nonproliferation community inspects known nuclear power reactors, a major concern is that nations could build smaller, secret reactors to produce materials for weapons. Now, University of Michigan researchers are involved in an effort to build a prototype of a detector that may one day identify undeclared sites from a neighboring country. The initiative, known as the Advanced Instrumentation Testbed (AIT), seeks to detect nearly-massless particles produced when a nuclear reactor is running. In addition to revealing the presence of secret reactors, these particles can signal when nuclear reactors are running or shut down. The on/off cycle can indicate whether reactors are being used to produce energy or plutonium, a metal that provides explosive power in nuclear weapons.

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This is the first in series of five planned profiles on past National Science Bowl competitors.

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When it comes to the special sauce of batteries, researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered it's all about the salt concentration.

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Harnessing the unusual characteristics of the elusive subatomic particles known as antineutrinos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) will lead a new international multi-laboratory and university collaboration for nonproliferation research.

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There’s a class of materials responsible for the chemistry we rely on to make fertilizer for crops, create prescription drugs and refine oil into gasoline. They’re called catalysts, and they speed up chemical reactions and steer the direction of the changes that happen during the transformation from one chemical compound to another. Despite the fact that many catalysts are commonly found in biology (these catalysts are called enzymes), the chemistries of most catalysts are still not fully understood because of their complexity.

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Argonne scientists and collaborators have identified another elemental actor in catalytic reactions that helps activate palladium while reducing the amount of the precious metal needed for those reactions to occur.

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The graduate programs in engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are once again considered among the best in the United States, according to the U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings released this week.

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Join physicist Rob Moore for a live webcast Apr. 4 as he explores the subatomic realm of quantum materials, and explains how they may shape our technological future.

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The DOE’s Office of Science is supporting research and facilities that improve the fundamental understanding of chemistry and physics essential to these technologies. Research into nanoparticles, two-dimensional materials, and metal-organic frameworks is setting the foundation for sensors that are cheaper, more efficient, and more sensitive than current technologies.

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The Grand Unified File Index (GUFI) is designed using a new, heirarchical approach to storing file metadata, allowing rapid parallel searches across many internal databases.

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Exotic material exhibits an optical response in enormous disproportion to the stimulus -- larger than in any known crystal.

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Researchers from Penn State, China and Australia have developed a material with twice the piezo response of any existing commercial ferroelectric ceramics.

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Argonne researchers conducted basic science computational studies as part of a collaboration with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to design a “beyond-lithium-ion” battery cell that operates by running on air over many charge and discharge cycles. The design offers energy storage capacity about three times that of a lithium-ion battery, with significant potential for further improvements.

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COSMIC, a next-generation X-ray beamline now operating at Berkeley Lab, brings together a unique set of capabilities to measure the properties of materials at the nanoscale. It allows scientists to probe working batteries and other active chemical reactions, and to reveal new details about magnetism and correlated electronic materials.

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Northwestern University researchers have discovered a new approach for creating important new catalysts to aid in clean energy conversion and storage. The method also has the potential to impact the discovery of new optical and data storage materials and catalysts for higher efficiency processing of petroleum products at lower cost. The researchers created a catalyst that is seven times more active than state-of-the-art commercial platinum by combining theory, a new tool for synthesizing nanoparticles and more than one metallic element.

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Flexible, tunable technique warms plants without need for electricity, aiding ecosystem research in remote locales.

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Understanding strontium titanate’s odd behavior will aid efforts to develop materials that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at higher temperatures.

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Chemical genomic-guided engineering of gamma-valerolactone-tolerant yeast.

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To address challenges and opportunities from Argonne’s Upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the laboratory commissioned the “Velociprobe,” a new scanning tool to explore the limits of fast, high-resolution X-ray microscopy. The instrument, which will be used at the APS before the Upgrade is completed, was built under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

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Scientists have gained new insights into a fundamental mystery about hybrid perovskites, low-cost materials that could enhance or even replace conventional solar cells made of silicon.

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Japanese researchers have optimized the design of laboratory-grown, synthetic diamonds. This brings the new technology one step closer to enhancing biosensing applications, such as magnetic brain imaging. The advantages of this layered, sandwichlike, diamond structure are described in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters.

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Using neutrons at ORNL, researchers identified a multiferroic material that exhibits a rare combination of magnetic and electrical properties. Studying these dual characteristics could lead to significant advances in information storage and power performance in new devices.

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n a new study, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories observed the formation of two kinds of defects in individual nanowires, which are smaller in diameter than a human hair.

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It defies conventional wisdom about semiconductors. It's baffling that it even works. It eludes physics models that try to explain it. This newly tested class of light-emitting semiconductors is so easy to produce from solution that it could be painted onto surfaces to light up our future in myriad colors shining from affordable lasers, LEDs, and even window glass.

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Paul Voyles, the Beckwith-Bascom Professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and collaborators in Madison and at Yale University have made significant experimental strides in understanding how, when and where the constantly moving atoms in molten metal "lock" into place as the material transitions from liquid to solid glass.

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Proteins are finicky molecules. When removed from their native environments, they typically fall apart. To function properly, proteins must fold into a specific structure, often with the help of other proteins. Now a team of researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California at Berkeley have discovered a way to keep proteins active outside of a cell. The discovery could lead to a new class of materials with functions found only in living systems.

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Lithium-metal batteries — which can hold up to 10 times more charge than the lithium-ion batteries that currently power our phones, laptops and cars — haven’t been commercialized because of a fatal flaw: as these batteries charge and discharge, lithium is deposited unevenly on the electrodes. This buildup cuts the lives of these batteries too short to make them viable, and more importantly, can cause the batteries to short-circuit and catch fire.

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A new biochemical leaching process has been developed that uses corn stover as feedstock, and recovers valuable rare earth metals from electronic waste.

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A new study, which included experiments at Berkeley Lab, suggests that water may be more common than expected at extreme depths approaching 400 miles and possibly beyond – within Earth’s lower mantle. The study explored microscopic pockets of a trapped form of crystallized water molecules in a sampling of diamonds.

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In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Lille in France, chemists have explored protactinium’s multiple resemblances to more completely understand the relationship between the transition metals and the complex chemistry of the early actinide elements.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a microbial detection technique so sensitive that it allows them to detect as few as 50-100 bacterial cells present on a surface. What’s more, they can test samples more efficiently — up to hundreds of samples in a single day.

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U of A researchers used powerful computer simulations to demonstrate a novel method of creating and transmitting electrical current.

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A scientific team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a new way to take the local temperature of a material from an area about a billionth of a meter wide, or approximately 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.

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A new method to produce large, monolayer single-crystal-like graphene films more than a foot long relies on harnessing a “survival of the fittest” competition among crystals. The novel technique, developed by a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, may open new opportunities for growing the high-quality two-dimensional materials necessary for long-awaited practical applications.

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Working together, Miller, Boehme, Vardeny and their colleagues have shown that an organic-based magnet can carry waves of quantum mechanical magnetization, called magnons, and convert those waves to electrical signals. It’s a breakthrough for the field of magnonics (electronic systems that use magnons instead of electrons) because magnons had previously been sent through inorganic materials that are more difficult to handle.

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Scientists with the University of Chicago and Cornell revealed a technique to "sew" two patches of crystals seamlessly together at the atomic level to create atomically-thin fabrics. This could lead to better solar cells and other electronics with new functions, like flexibility.

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Electronic and structure richness arise from the merger of semiconducting molecules of carbon buckyballs and 2-D graphene.

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Tracking atoms is crucial to improving the efficiency of next-generation perovskite solar cells.

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An international team led by researchers at Berkeley Lab used advanced techniques in electron microscopy to show how the ratio of materials that make up a lithium-ion battery electrode affects its structure at the atomic level, and how the surface is very different from the rest of the material.

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New "smart glass" technology developed at the University of Delaware could make curtains and blinds obsolete. This isn't the first "smart glass," but it's one-tenth the price of other versions and more transparent in its transparent state and more reflective in its reflective state than competitors.

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Researchers have discovered more details about the way certain materials hold a static charge even after two surfaces separate, information that could help improve devices that leverage such energy as a power source.

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Iron may be more valuable than platinum. Sometimes.

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Article describes use of new diagnostics to advance understanding of the plasma nanosynthesis of widely used nanoparticles.

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New research from Arizona State University shows that using a 3-dimensional layer of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) can mitigate dendrite formation and stands to both dramatically extend battery life and diminish safety risks.

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While it may be the era of supercomputers and “big data,” without smart methods to mine all that data, it’s only so much digital detritus. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have come up with a novel machine learning method that enables scientists to derive insights from systems of previously intractable complexity in record time.

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Columbia Engineers are the first to miniaturize dual-frequency combs by putting two frequency comb generators on a single millimeter-sized silicon-based chip. This could lead to low-cost, portable sensing and spectroscopy in the field in real-time. “This is the first time a dual comb has been generated on a single chip using a single laser,” says Electrical Engineering Prof. Michal Lipson who led the team with Applied Physics Prof. Alexander Gaeta. (Science Advances)

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The Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a funding opportunity totaling $3 million to support projects between U.S. industry and DOE national laboratories related to improving materials in severe or complex environments through the new High Performance Computing for Materials in Applied Energy Technologies (HPC4Mtls) Program.

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Engineers from the University of Maryland created a non-flammable battery from ceramic materials by using a 'melty' layer that, when cool, unites a solid-state battery.

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Today, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) will award 179 grants totaling $30 million to 149 small businesses in 36 states.

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Scientists have discovered a novel chemical state, first proposed about 90 years ago, that enables a high-performance, low-cost sodium-ion battery. The battery could quickly and efficiently store and distribute energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines across the electrical grid.