News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

For decades, scientists have struggled to develop inexpensive ways to use methane without also producing carbon dioxide, both of which are #GreenhouseGases. Among the possible solutions is dry reforming, a process that has the potential to convert both methane and carbon dioxide into chemical feedstocks. But dry reforming of methane isn't commercially viable using existing nickel-based catalysts, which stop functioning because their catalytically active particles become covered with carbon deposits (coking) or combine into larger, less active particles (sintering). Now, researchers from the University at Buffalo and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab have developed a one-step process to make nanoshell catalysts, which resist both coking and sintering. 

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), together with collaborators from JILA – a joint institute of the University of Colorado and NIST in Boulder – have, for the first time, demonstrated that they can trap single atoms using a novel miniaturized version of “optical tweezers” – a system that grabs atoms using a laser beam. In the new design, instead of typical lenses, the NIST team used unconventional optics – a square glass wafer about 4 millimeters in length imprinted with millions of pillars only a few hundreds of nanometers in height that, collectively, act as tiny lenses. 

A team of researchers from Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has created nanocrystals and nanofibers of chitin from waste shrimp shells. (Crab, shrimp and lobster shells are made up of about 20–30% chitin.) When these tiny bits of chitin were added to cement paste, the resulting material was up to 40% stronger. Also, set time for the cement, or how long it takes to harden, was delayed by more than an hour, a desired property for long-distance transport and hot-weather concrete work.

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M University, the University of California Los Angeles, Rice University, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials. High-entropy alloys are composed of five or more elements in near-equal proportions and offer the ability to create a near-infinite number of unique combinations for alloy design.

Scientists from the University of Virginia, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and South China University of Technology in Guangzhou have used DNA to perform astonishingly precise structural engineering – construction at the level of individual molecules. The result was a lattice of carbon nanotubes that could be used to create a room-temperature superconductor.

Using biomimetic proteins patterned on squid ring teeth, researchers at Penn State and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have created composite layered 2D materials that are resistant to breaking and are extremely stretchable. The materials can also have unique thermal conduction regimes, spreading heat in one direction more strongly than at 90 degrees. These 2D composites could be used for flexible circuit boards, wearable devices, and other equipment that requires strength and flexibility.

For decades, a textbook process known as "Ostwald ripening" has guided the design of new materials including nanoparticles. According to this theory, small particles dissolve and redeposit onto the surface of large particles, and the large particles continue to grow until all of the small particles have dissolved. But now, new video footage captured by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore reveals that nanoparticle growth is directed not by difference in size but by defects.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Washington University in St. Louis, and OmniVision Technologies, Inc., highlight the latest nanostructured components integrated on image sensor chips that are most likely to make the biggest impact in multimodal imaging. The researchers describe a promising approach to detect multiple-band spectra by fabricating an on-chip spectrometer. These developments could enable autonomous vehicles to see around corners instead of just a straight line, biomedical imaging to detect abnormalities at different tissue depths, and telescopes to see through interstellar dust.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have used neutron scattering to determine whether a specific material's atomic structure could host a novel state of matter, called a spiral spin liquid. By tracking tiny magnetic moments, known as "spins," on the honeycomb lattice of a layered iron trichloride magnet, the team found the first 2D system to host a spiral spin liquid. The discovery provides a test bed for future studies of physics phenomena that may drive next-generation information technologies.

By using a suite of advanced spectroscopic tools, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and The University of Texas at Austin have, for the first time, captured snapshots of a light-induced metastable phase hidden from equilibrium. By using single-shot spectroscopy techniques on a 2D crystal with nanoscale modulations of electron density, they were able to view this phase transition in real-time.