Watching electrons at work

Looking inside nanocrystals

06-Dec-2023 - Researchers from ETH Zurich, Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology, and Stanford have taken snapshots of the crystal structure of perovskite nanocrystals as it was deformed by excited electrons. To their surprise, the deformation straightened out the skewed crystal ...

X-rays uncover a hidden property that leads to failure in a lithium-ion battery material

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 ...

Watching 'artificial atoms' assemble into perfect lattices

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 ...

X-ray laser reveals structure of blood pressure regulator

Promising step towards new and better medication

28-Apr-2015 - With a sophisticated X-ray analysis, a US-German team of scientists has solved the molecular structure of an important regulator for blood pressure in the human body. The study gives new insights into the function of this regulator and could aid the development of new medication with less ...

Real time observation of chemical reaction at catalyst

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 ...

X-ray laser reveals chemical reaction

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, ...

To the Edge of Melting

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 ...