[Images above] Credit: NIST


NANOMATERIALS

‘Seeing’ previously unseen nano-level glass damage

Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University used hyperspectral near-field optical mapping to observe subsurface structural changes of silica glass due to nanoscale wear and damage.

New type of atomically thin carbon material

Researchers at University of Marburg and Aalto University found a new carbon network that is atomically thin like graphene but composed of squares, hexagons, and octagons that form an ordered lattice. It behaves like a metal even at small scales.


ENERGY

Solid-state batteries line up for better performance

Researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Xerion Advanced Battery Corp. demonstrated how control over the atomic alignment of solid materials can improve the cathode-solid electrolyte interface and stability in solid-state batteries.

New step in development of solid-state lithium-ion batteries

Researchers of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University developed an approach to determine best electrode materials composition for solid-state lithium-ion batteries. They focused on the nickel-cobalt oxide system.

Wake steering potentially boosts energy production at US wind plants

National Renewable Energy Laboratory researchers illustrate how wake steering can increase energy production for a large sampling of commercial land-based U.S. wind power plants. Wake steering is a strategy that involves misaligning upstream turbines with the wind direction to deflect wakes away from downstream turbines.

Sandwich structure improves efficiency of next-generation solar panels

Researchers at the University of Melbourne, together with collaborators at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Shandong University, provided evidence that the 2D thin films used in some perovskite solar cells closely resemble a sandwich rather than gradient structure.

Liquid-like motion in crystals could explain their promising behavior in solar cells

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and Duke University, along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other collaborators, studied the inner workings of a perovskite material using X-ray scattering. They observed a liquid-like motion in perovskites that may explain how they efficiently produce electric currents.

Researchers develop advanced model to improve safety of next-generation reactors

Texas A&M University researchers developed a coupled computational fluid dynamics–discrete element methods model to account for the flow-induced motion and friction in pebble-bed reactors, a new fourth-generation nuclear reactor.


BIOMATERIALS

Diamonds engage both optical microscopy and MRI for better imaging

A University of California, Berkeley, researcher showed that microscopic diamond tracers can provide information via MRI and optical fluorescence simultaneously, potentially allowing scientists to get high-quality images up to a centimeter below the surface of tissue, 10 times deeper than light alone.


ENVIRONMENT

Building materials that effectively protect from radiation

Ural Federal University researchers created clay bricks that are able to attenuate ionizing radiation to a level that is safe for the human body. They did so by alloying the bricks with heavy metals that come from wastes in the metallurgical industry. These substances have pronounced radiation-protective properties.


MANUFACTURING

Fast, affordable solution proposed for transparent displays and semiconductors

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials under the Ministry of Science and ICT developed a roll-based damage-free transfer technique that allows 2D nanomaterials to be transferred into wafer scale without damage.


OTHER MATERIALS

Spintronics: Improving electronics with finer spin control

Researchers at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology found they could control the alignment state of magnetic atoms in an antiferromagnetic material by simultaneously applying mechanical vibration and a magnetic field. They say the process can replace the conventional heating and cooling approach.

Electric cars: Special dyes could prevent unnecessary motor replacements

Researchers from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg developed a new process that enables the dyes in electric motors to be directly integrated into the insulation. By changing color, they reveal how much the insulating resin layer around the copper wires has degraded.

New type of particle accelerator: Electrons riding a double wave

An international research group made significant progress in the further development of compact plasma accelerators by combining two different plasma technologies. The concept could, in the long term, become the basis of highly brilliant X-ray sources for research and medicine.

Less wastage during production of marble slabs in the Roman imperial period than today

Researchers discovered that the material loss during marble slab production in ancient Roman times was likely lower than it is today. They did so by using a special software normally used for the 3D modeling of geological structures.

Materials breakthrough enables twistronics for bulk systems

Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, together with colleagues at MIT and National University of Singapore, showed the same phenomena leading to formation of moiré superlattices in 2D systems can be translated to tune optical properties of 3D, bulk-like hexagonal boron nitride, even at room temperature.

Author

Lisa McDonald

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  • Weekly Column: “Other materials”