Measuring Planck's constant, watt balance brings world closer to new kilogram

22-Jun-2016 - A high-tech version of an old-fashioned balance scale at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just brought scientists a critical step closer toward a new and improved definition of the kilogram. The scale, called the NIST-4 watt balance, has conducted its first ...

Scientists gain new insights into atomic disordering of complex metal oxides

09-Mar-2016 - A study led by the University of Tennessee and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could soon pay dividends in the development of materials with energy-related applications. Three UT researchers—Maik Lang, assistant professor of nuclear engineering ; Haidong Zhou, assistant ...

Fuel cells in operation: A closer look

11-Oct-2010 - Measuring a fuel cell's overall performance is relatively easy, but measuring its components individually as they work together is a challenge. That's because one of the best experimental techniques for investigating the details of an electrochemical device while it's operating is x-ray ...

Watching electrons move in real time

28-Sep-2010 - At its most basic level, understanding chemistry means understanding what electrons are doing. Research published in The Journal of Chemical Physics not only maps the movement of electrons in real time but also observes a concerted electron and proton transfer that is quite different from any ...

Nano antenna concentrates light

Intensity increases 1,000-fold in Rice lab's experiment

23-Sep-2010 - Everybody who's ever used a TV, radio or cell phone knows what an antenna does: It captures the aerial signals that make those devices practical. A lab at Rice University has built an antenna that captures light in the same way, at a small scale that has big potential. Condensed matter physicist ...

Highest X-ray energy used to probe materials

27-Jul-2010 - Scientists for the first time have dived into the effect that an intense X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) has on materials. Using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) facility at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore scientists probed nitrogen gas at X-ray energies of up ...

The search for improved carbon sponges picks up speed

01-Jun-2010 - Jeffrey Long's lab will soon host a round-the-clock, robotically choreographed hunt for carbon-hungry materials. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory chemist leads a diverse team of scientists whose goal is to quickly discover materials that can efficiently strip carbon dioxide from a power ...

Nanotechnologists from Penn collaborate to form near-frictionless diamond material

03-Mar-2010 - Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and IBM Research-Zürich have fabricated an ultra sharp, diamond-like carbon tip possessing such high strength that it is 3,000 times more wear-resistant at the nanoscale than silicon. The end result is a ...

Miniature X-ray source using wiggling electrons

02-Oct-2009 - A team at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics of Ludwig Maximilian's University of Munich and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching has succeeded in reducing X-ray sources of typically several kilometres in size to the dimensions of a dining table. This involved a new method using ...

World's smallest semiconductor laser heralds new era in optical science

01-Sep-2009 - Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have reached a new milestone in laser physics by creating the world's smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule. This breakthrough, described in an advanced online ...