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National labs top list of R&D 100 award recipients
R&D Magazine hosts the R&D 100 Awards, which are presented annually to researchers who have developed the year’s 100 most outstanding advances in applied technologies. ACerS just learned that 49 out of the 100 awards were presented to U.S. national labs. The labs competed in an international pool that included universities, start-ups and large corporations.
Winners on the list that may be of particular interest include:
- Ultrasensitive Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry Source and Interface, Pacific Northwest National Lab
- FemtoScope: a time microscope, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
- High-temperature Silicon Carbide Power Module, Sandia National Lab
- Argonne/Envia Composite Electrode Material Technology to Enable Plug-in Hybrids and All-Electric Vehicles, Argonne National Lab
- Nanocrystal Solar Cells, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
- Clay-Liquid CO2 Removal Sorbent, National Energy Technology Lab
- Fire-Resistive Phase Change Material, Oak Ridge National Lab
- NanoCoral Dendritic Platinum Nanostructures for Renewable Energy Applications, Sandia National Lab
- Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe, Argonne National Lab
- Hyperspectral Confocal Fluorescence Microscope System, Sandia National Lab
- Spectral Sentry—Protecting High-Intensity Lasers from Bandwidth-Related Damage, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
- Superhard and Slick Coating, Argonne National Lab
- Rhombohedral Single Crystal SiGe, NASA Langley Research Center
The DOE is particularly pleased with the awards. “The Department of Energy’s national laboratories are incubators of innovation, and I’m proud they are being recognized once again for their remarkable work,” says DOE Secretary Steven Chu. “The cutting-edge research and development being done in our national labs is vital to maintaining America’s competitive edge, increasing our nation’s energy security and protecting our environment. I want to thank this year’s winners for their work and congratulate them on this award.”
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Video of the week - The sight of individual carbon atoms in motion
This is a brief video. Maybe I am overwhelmed by this because of my chemistry background, but in my opinion, this video documents what truly should be “wow”-level historical type of moment in material-related sciences. As the folks at the Lawrence Berkeley Nation Lab note, this is equivalent to the first biologist who peered through a microscope and saw a cell divide.
To summarize, this video is no more, or less, than watching for the first time, in real-time, individual carbon atoms being knocked off the edges of a hole in a sheet of graphene while other atoms break and recreate bonds as they shift around in response, looking for the most stable position. The video also contains a simulation of what is occurring (created using a Monte Carlo simulation method to “orchestrate” which carbon atoms leave and which shift).
And, like all really great movies, it’s hard to tell who deserves more credit: The actors or the director and cinematographers? The analogy isn’t perfect, but as awesome as this movie is, what is equally amazing is the incredible electron microscope behind the movie - TEAM 0.5.
TEAM 0.5, which just recently became operational, is the world’s most powerful electron microscopy. The technology behind TEAM 0.5 come from a team that includes the Berkeley, Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs, the Frederick Seitz Materials Lab of the University of Illinois, and two electron microscopy companies, FEI (Portland) and CEOS of (Heidelberg).
In some ways, researchers are just starting to “play” with TEAM and are already planning on using it on other structures and materials. Nevertheless, this first video is providing new leads and confirmations to those studying spin properties in atoms.
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Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source
In a post earlier this week I made reference to materials analysis assistance provided by ANL’s Advanced Photon Source facility. This video, created by the lab, provides a nice overview of how APS works and examples of where these capabilities are starting to pay off.
The APS, a national synchrotron X-ray research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Science, and provides the “brightest x-ray beams in the Western Hemisphere to more than 5,000 scientists worldwide”
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Group tackles tougher turbine coatings
Coated turbine blades
The Argonne National Lab website has a nice article discussing the work of a research team from Northwestern University, Rolls-Royce and ANL to improve the performance of materials used in power-generating turbines, improvements that can decrease weight, increase temperature tolerance, extend component life and, thus, increase the overall efficiency of these units that are expected to play an increasing role in future power grid planning. In particular, the group is addressing problems related to environmental barrier coatings that are applied to silicon-based ceramic substrates, such as silicon carbide, to limit oxidation and other types of degradation. The coatings generally work, but there have been concerns related to “mismatches” between the EBCs and the substrates as they are exposed to huge temperature and pressure changes
However, as temperatures are raised and lowered during the combustion cycle, internal mismatch stresses arise as the coatings and substrate expand and shrink at different rates. This is especially problematic in turbine engines, since temperatures can change over 1200º C in a single cycle. Stresses are exacerbated over tens of thousands of hours of operation, so even small mismatches in expansion can cause fractures in coatings and subsequent component failure. Minimization of these stresses is critical to protecting the materials.
ANL houses the Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, so the researchers used the high-energy synchrotron radiation at the APS to measure these stresses using combinations of materials to learn which ones reduce the mismatch.
Results from the studies demonstrated that coating mismatch stresses could be minimized in a three-layer coating system heat-treated to provide a low-expansion equilibrium topcoat. The heat treatment also served to heal many of the cracks formed during coating deposition. It was determined that the low stress levels made the heat-treated coating an ideal system to withstand the harsh environments of gas-turbine engines.
Kang N. Lee, Senior Specialist of Materials, Processes and Repair Technology at Rolls-Royce told ANL, “These studies shed light on the development of next generation EBCs, enabling the implementation of silicon-based ceramic components in turbine engines.” Lee is a co-author (along with B. J. Harder, J. D. Almer, C. M. Weyant and K. T. Faber) of a paper about this research that appeared in the February 2009 edition of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
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