Experiments at SLAC and Berkeley Lab uproot long-held assumptions and will inform future battery design

19-Sep-2018

Over the past three decades, lithium-ion batteries, rechargeable batteries that move lithium ions back and forth to charge and discharge, have enabled smaller devices that juice up faster and last longer. Now, X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ...

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17-Apr-2018

If you combine two or three metals together, you will get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns. But once in a while, under just the right conditions, you get something entirely new: a futuristic alloy called metallic glass. The ...

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Scientists see numerous uses

02-Aug-2017

Some of the world's tiniest crystals are known as "artificial atoms" because they can organize themselves into structures that look like molecules, including "superlattices" that are potential building blocks for novel materials. Now scientists from the Department of Energy's SLAC National ...

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30-Mar-2016

Printing has come a long way since the days of Johannes Gutenberg. Now, researchers have developed a new method that uses plasma to print nanomaterials onto a 3-D object or flexible surface, such as paper or cloth. The technique could make it easier and cheaper to build devices like wearable ...

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13-Jan-2016

Scientists at three Department of Energy national laboratories have discovered how to keep a promising new type of lithium ion battery cathode from developing a crusty coating that degrades its performance. The solution: Use a simple manufacturing technique to form the cathode material into tiny, ...

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06-Nov-2015

A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory combined powerful magnetic pulses with some of the brightest X-rays on the planet to discover a surprising 3-D arrangement of a material's electrons that appears closely linked to a mysterious phenomenon ...

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06-Aug-2013

Scientists have spent decades trying to build flexible plastic solar cells efficient enough to compete with conventional cells made of silicon. To boost performance, research groups have tried creating new plastic materials that enhance the flow of electricity through the solar cell. Several ...

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18-Mar-2013

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used LCLS, together with computerized simulations, to reveal surprising details of a short-lived early state in a chemical reaction occurring at the surface of a catalyst sample. The study offers important ...

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18-Mar-2013

What happens when a chemical bond is broken? That question was recently answered with the help of a so-called free electron x-ray laser, which makes it possible to follow in real time how bindings in a molecule are changed and broken. The study, published in Science, found, among other things, ...

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13-Feb-2007

Picking a relatively simple system, an international team of scientists at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC (Stanford, USA), including two members of Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching), used advanced tools to see the very first instants of change in a solid brought to the ...

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