Some of the world’s tiniest crystals are known as “artificial atoms” because they can organise themselves into structures that look like molecules, including “superlattices” that are potential building blocks for novel materials. Now scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have made the first observation of these nanocrystals rapidly forming s...

In recent years, perovskites have taken the solar cell industry by storm. They are cheap, easy to produce and very flexible in their applications. Their efficiency at converting light into electricity has grown faster than that of any other material – from under 4% in 2009 to over 20% in 2017 – and some experts believe that perovskites could eventually outperform the most common solar cell material, silicon. But despite thei...

Biological samples studied with intense X-rays at free-electron lasers are destroyed within nanoseconds after they are exposed. Because of this, the samples need to be continually refreshed to allow the many images needed for an experiment to be obtained. Conventional methods use jets that supply a continuous stream of samples, but this can be very wasteful as the X-rays only interact with a tiny fraction of the injected material.

Theoretical physicists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used computer simulations to show how special light pulses could create robust channels where electricity flows without resistance in an atomically thin semiconductor. If this approach is confirmed by experiments, it could open the door to a new way of creating and controlling this desirable property in a wider range of materials than is possible today.

  Researchers at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a tough new catalyst that carries out a solar-powered reaction 100 times faster than ever before, works better as time goes on and stands up to acid.

An ultrafast "electron camera" at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has made the first direct snapshots of atomic nuclei in molecules that are vibrating within millionths of a billionth of a second after being hit by a laser pulse. The method, called ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), could help scientists better understand the role of nuclear motions in light-driven processes that naturally occur on extremely fas...

  Researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have created a nanostructured device, about half the size of a postage stamp, that disinfects water much faster than the UV method by also making use of the visible part of the solar spectrum, which contains 50% of the sun's energy.

Plans begin decades in advance for a tremendous effort such as the first manned mission to Mars. The details are as fine – and essential – as how astronauts will breathe and eat and track their health. "There's no doubt that the transportation is taken care of. The spacecraft will be developed," says Ram Gandhiraman, a scientist with Universities Space Research Association at NASA Ames Research Center.

In experiments at two Department of Energy national labs – SLAC and Lawrence Berkeley – scientists at HPE have experimentally confirmed critical aspects of how a new type of microelectronic device, the memristor, works at an atomic scale. This result is an important step in designing these solid-state devices for use in future computer memories that operate much faster, last longer and use less energy than today's flash memory. T...

Researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China have developed a method that could open up scientific avenues by making the light from powerful X-ray lasers much more stable and its colour more pure. The idea behind the technique is to "seed" X-ray lasers with regular lasers, whose light already has these qualities.

A team led by scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has reached another milestone in developing a promising technology for accelerating particles to high energies in short distances: They created a tiny tube of hot, ionised gas, or plasma, in which the particles remain tightly focused as they fly through it.

Prototyping of an ultrasensitive "eye" for dark matter is making rapid progress at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: Researchers and engineers have installed a small-scale version of the future LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) detector to test, develop and troubleshoot various aspects of its technology. When LZ goes online in early 2020 at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, hopes are that it will detect so-ca...

Construction begins on a major upgrade to a unique X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The project will add a second X-ray laser beam that's 10,000 times brighter, on average, than the first one and fires 8,000 times faster, up to a million pulses per second. The project, known as LCLS-II, will greatly increase the power and capacity of SLAC's LCLS for experiments that sharpen our view of how nature wor...