A team headed by Ames Lab physicist Alan Goldman has been awarded $2.8 million to begin construction of a beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a new synchrotron radiation facility that produces extremely brilliant x-ray beams for research.
The Department of Energy awarded the grant to the Midwest Universities Collaborative Access Team (MUCAT), which, in addition to Ames Laboratory, consists of Iowa State University, the University of Missouri at Columbia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Kent State University, SUNY at Stony Brook, Washington University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Michigan State University.
The beamline will be one of two in MUCAT's "sector" of the APS, and researchers will initially use it to investigate the magnetic and surface properties of materials. "It used to be that neutrons were the only tool around to study the magnetic ordering of materials," says Goldman, "but it turns out that you can use x-rays also, and they have some desirable properties compared to neutrons. They can be used to study very small samples -- down to micron size range -- and they can be used to study samples that are essentially opaque to neutrons, such as some of the technologically important rare-earth elements."
Surface studies will also benefit from the beam brilliance at the APS. For example, the brilliant beam will make it possible to study the growth of thin films in real time, a capability of particular interest to the semiconductor industry.
After more than 30 years, Karl Gschneidner Jr. has stepped down as director of Ames Lab's Rare-earth Information Center (RIC), and with his departure comes the appointment of a new director and an expanded mission for the Center, which collects, stores, evaluates and disseminates information about the rare-earth elements (scandium, yttrium and the lanthides) to the scientific and industrial communities.
Ames Lab senior metallurgist Bill McCallum will head the Center for Rare Earths and Magnetics (CREM), an expanded version of RIC. Other units in CREM are the Rare-Earth Technology Unit and the Magnetics Research Unit.
RIC maintains the world's largest database of information about the rare-earth elements, their alloys and compounds, and retrieves, interprets and evaluates this information for those working with rare earths. For more information about RIC and CREM, phone (515) 294-2272.
An Ames Laboratory scientist hopes to take his research to new heights, outer space in this case.
Rohit Trivedi, a senior metallurgist at the Lab and a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University, has won two grants worth $1.2 million from NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Division to study the behavior of materials in near-zero-gravity conditions.
One award is for a ground-based experiment, and the other is for a flight experiment on board the space shuttle. Of the more than 200 proposals that were submitted to NASA, only 53 were selected for ground-based research, and only 10 were selected for flight.
In both research projects, scientists will study "microstructure selection" in the solidifications of molten metals, with the goal of improving quantitative models of this process. Ultimately, a better understanding of the process may allow for the manufacture of new materials with specific properties. "Before, metallurgists would take a microstructure and measure its properties," Trivedi says. "Today we want to be able to alter processing conditions to yield a microstructure with the desired properties. This requires a firm understanding of the physical factors that govern microstructure selection."
Ames Lab is bringing the world to its doorstep through a new World Wide Web page. To access the Lab's WWW page, type http://www.external.ameslab.gov. Laboratory research capabilities, technical services and user facilities, and Laboratory highlights and accomplishments are just some of the stops on your Ames Lab tour.
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Last revision: 4/17/98 sd
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