First realistic portraits of squishy layer that’s key to battery performance
Cryo-EM snapshots of the solid-electrolyte interphase, or SEI, reveal its natural swollen state and offer a new approach to lithium-metal battery design.
This month marks the 30-year anniversary of the first website in North America, launched at SLAC. In this Q&A, one of the Wizards recalls the motivation that spawned the development and how it has changed the work of scientists.
South Pole telescope seeks signs of primordial gravitational waves
The latest results from the BICEP3 telescope experiment at the South Pole have tightened the bounds on models of cosmic inflation, a process that in theory explains some of the perplexing features of our universe.
A simple way to get complex semiconductors to assemble themselves
Much like crystallizing rock candy from sugar syrup, the new method grows 2D perovskites precisely layered with other 2D materials to produce crystals with a wide range of electronic properties.
Scientists capture a ‘quantum tug’ between neighboring water molecules
The work sheds light on the web of hydrogen bonds that gives water its strange properties, which play a vital role in many chemical and biological processes.
A fast, accurate system for quickly solving stubborn RNA structures from pond scum, the SARS-CoV-2 virus and more
SLAC and Stanford scientists used a new system to zoom in on an iconic RNA catalyst and a piece of viral RNA that’s a potential target for COVID-19 treatments.
SLAC partners with national labs and scientific publishing organizations on inclusive name-change process for published papers
The process, which also facilitates name changes for religious, marital and other reasons, allows researchers of all genders to own their academic work by updating their names on previous publications.
In a virtual visit to the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Jennifer Granholm toured the lab’s powerful X-ray laser, looked at the construction of the world’s largest digital camera and discussed climate research, industries of the future, and diversity, equity and inclusion in the sciences.
First nanoscale look at a reaction that limits the efficiency of generating clean hydrogen fuel
With a new suite of tools, scientists discovered exactly how tiny plate-like catalyst particles carry out a key step in that conversion – the evolution of oxygen in an electrocatalytic cell – in unprecedented detail.
Dark Energy Survey physicists open new window into dark energy
The universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, and while no one is sure why, researchers with the Dark Energy Survey (DES) at least had a strategy for figuring it out: They would combine measurements of the distribution of matter, galaxies and galaxy clusters to better understand what’s going on.
First closeups of how a lithium-metal electrode ages
Scientists have documented a process that makes these next-gen batteries lose charge – and eventually some of their capacity for storing energy – even when a device is turned off.
A new hands-off probe uses light to explore the subtleties of electron behavior in a topological insulator
Just as pressing a guitar string produces a higher pitch, sending laser light through a material can shift it to higher energies and higher frequencies. Now scientists have discovered how to use this phenomenon to explore quantum materials in a new and much more detailed way.
Scientists launch quest to develop quantum sensors for probing quantum materials
SLAC and Stanford partner with two Illinois universities to create the Center for Quantum Sensing and Quantum Materials, which aims to unravel mysteries associated with exotic superconductors, topological insulators and strange metals.
