Self-assembly approach to engineer nanoscale metamaterials

09-Jan-2017 - A research team has developed a novel self-assembly approach to fabricate nanoscale metamaterials made of metallic nanopillars in oxide matrices. This method enables control over the density, size, and alignment of nanopillars instead of a random distribution of particles in the oxide matrix. ...

New model predicts once-mysterious chemical reactions

30-Jun-2016 - A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Curtin University in Australia developed a theoretical model to forecast the fundamental chemical reactions involving molecular hydrogen (H2), which after many decades and attempts by scientists had remained largely unpredicted and ...

Efficient hydrogen production made easy

15-Jun-2016 - In the 2015 movie “The Martian,” stranded astronaut Matt Damon turns to the chemistry of rocket fuel, hydrazine and hydrogen, to create lifesaving water and nearly blows himself up. But if you turn the process around and get the hydrazine to help, you create hydrogen from water by changing ...

Machine learning accelerates the discovery of new materials

11-May-2016 - Researchers recently demonstrated how an informatics-based adaptive design strategy, tightly coupled to experiments, can accelerate the discovery of new materials with targeted properties. “What we’ve done is show that, starting with a relatively small data set of well-controlled experiments, it ...

Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories develop more affordable fuel cell components

03-Mar-2016 - Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories have teamed up to support a DOE initiative through the creation of the Electrocatalysis Consortium (ElectroCat), a collaboration devoted to finding an effective but cheaper alternative to platinum in ...

Nanoscale, multidimensional artificial magnet created

Applications might range from developing sensors to information encoding.

28-Oct-2015 - Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, in collaboration with a group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source and with other researchers nationwide, have realized a nanoscale, artificial magnet by arranging an ...

'Fore!' heads up, wide use of more flexible metallic glass coming your way

Advances in glass alloys lead to strength, flexibility

06-Mar-2014 - What do some high-end golf clubs and your living room window have in common? The answer is glass, but in the golf clubs' case it's a specialized glass product, called metallic glass, with the ability to be bent considerably and spring back into its original form. Your windows, as you know, aren't ...

New insights into f-element bonding trends

11-Jan-2013 - Scientists in the US have reported a new insight into the understanding of the bonding trends within, and the differences between, the 4f and 5f element series with soft donor atom ligands. The coordination chemistry and differing bond lengths explain the covalency of different 4f and 5f ...

Say hello to cheaper hydrogen fuel cells

Los Alamos scientists document utility of non-precious-metal catalysts

29-Apr-2011 - Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have developed a way to avoid the use of expensive platinum in hydrogen fuel cells, the environmentally friendly devices that might replace current power sources in everything from personal data devices to automobiles. In a paper published in Science, Los ...

Scientists produce transparent, light-harvesting material

08-Nov-2010 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory have fabricated transparent thin films capable of absorbing light and generating electric charge over a relatively large area. The material, described in the journal Chemistry of ...