News Releases

Critical Materials Institute: Shining new and better light on research and industry collaborations

It was, in a manner of speaking, the ultimate light bulb moment when General Electric’s Lighting business and the Critical Materials Institute first joined forces in 2013 to solve a manufacturing challenge. The partnership resulted in new materials, new patents, and new processes to make GE’s lighting more efficient and less reliant on difficult-to-find raw materials.

What is the pairing “glue” for electrons in iron-based high-temperature superconductors? Scientists now have more clues.

Newly published research from a team of scientists led by Ames Laboratory sheds more light on the nature of high-temperature iron-based superconductivity.

Advanced NMR at Ames Lab captures new details in nanoparticle structures

Advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques at Ames Laboratory have revealed surprising details about the structure of a key group of materials in nanotechology, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs), and the placement of their active chemical sites.

Critical Materials Institute wins TechConnect National Innovation Award

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) led by Ames Laboratory has been selected as a 2019 TechConnect National Innovation Awardee for the innovation “Additive Manufacturing of Bonded Permanent Magnets using a Novel Polymer Matrix.”

2D insulators with ferromagnetic properties are rare; researchers just identified a new one

Collaborating scientists at Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Princeton University have discovered a new layered ferromagnetic semiconductor, a rare type of material that holds great promise for next-generation electronic technologies.

Ames Laboratory scientist Patricia Thiel elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Patricia Thiel, an Ames Laboratory scientist and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy announced its 2019 class of new members today.

Ames Laboratory postdoc receives ACS Young Investigator Award

Georgiy Akopov, a postdoctoral research associate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, has won a Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society Division of Inorganic Chemistry.

New microscopy method provides more details about nanocomposites

Scientists at Ames Laboratory have developed a new microscopy approach for imaging gel nanocomposites in their natural state, which will reveal more useful information about their assembly and properties.

Squeezed nanocrystals: A new model predicts their shape when blanketed under graphene

In a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Northeastern University, scientists have developed a model for predicting the shape of metal nanocrystals or “islands” sandwiched between or below two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene. The advance moves 2D quantum materials a step closer to applications in electronics.

Scientists capture live, atomic-level detail of nanoparticle formation

Scientists at the Sensitive Instrument Facility of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory achieved real-time atom rearrangement monitoring using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy during the synthesis of intermetallic nanoparticles (iNPs).