Research Highlights

Understanding Rare Earth Element Adsorption

Theoretical exploration of solvation phenomena of bare rare-earth (RE) cations in room-temperature ionic-liquid (RTIL) to visualize the solvation mechanism of RE cations in RTIL at the molecular level.

Batch Scale Production of 3D Printed Extraction Sorbents

A cost-effective modification to a desktop resin 3D printer was demonstrated to produce polymeric ionic liquid (PIL) extraction devices.

Mechanistic Understanding of Rare-earth Element (REE) Capture

MCM-22 synthesis with varying Si:Al ratios is a model aluminosilicate for ytterbium (Yb) capture and also serves as a synthetic clay mimic to obtain in-depth mechanistic understanding of the capture.

Structure of Active Sites in Silica-Alumina Revealed

Scientists show that the catalytic active sites in silica-alumina are bridging and mirror those found in zeolites

Metasurfaces for broadband quadratic phase

Ultra-thin metasurfaces with a specific multi-resonant response can enable simultaneously arbitrarily strong and arbitrarily broadband dispersion compensation, pulse (de)chirping, & compression or broadening with low loss.

Reshaping of nanocrystals: Failure of classical nucleation theory

Development of an appropriate theory for the stochastic reshaping processes based on the exact mater equations for this process.

Dissecting the Heaviest Fermion

Chemo-Microbial Conversion of Polyethylene Wasteinto Silk-Protein

We report the development of a new strain of Pseudomonas bacteria capable of converting depolymerized polyethylene into high value recombinant protein products.

DME-driven fractional crystallization: 2023 R&D 100 Award

CMI researchers from Idaho National Laboratory and Ames National Laboratory conducted the research for this highlight.

CMI researcher named R&D Technician of the Year

CMI researchers from Ames National Laboratory conducted the research for this highlight.