Researchers have long sought electrically conductive materials for economical energy-storage devices. Two-dimensional (2D) ceramics called MXenes are contenders.
Polymer nanocomposites mix particles billionths of a meter (nanometers, nm) in diameter with polymers, which are long molecular chains.
Barely wider than a strand of human DNA, magnetic nanoparticles—such as those made from iron and platinum atoms—are promising materials for next-generation recording and storage devices like hard drives.
The US Department of Energy announced today that it will invest $16 million over the next four years to accelerate the design of new materials through use of supercomputers.
When physicists Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Muller discovered the first high-temperature superconductors in 1986, it didn’t take much imagination to envision the potential technological benefits of harnessing such materials.
Neutron scattering and computational modeling have revealed unique and unexpected behavior of water molecules under extreme confinement that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states.
In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researcher
Steady progress in the development of advanced materials has led to modern civilization’s foundational technologies—better batteries, resilient building materials and atom-scale semiconductors.
In the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, the state of the art of materials science defined technology’s zenith and accelerated economies.
Andrew Stack, a geochemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, advances understanding of the dynamics of minerals underground.
Scientists who bridge disciplines often take research in new directions.