diffraction – Page 2 – Lightsources.org

A designed material untangles long-standing puzzle

2018/07/242018/08/06

This approach could lead to new materials with emergent physics and unique electronic properties, supporting broader research efforts to revolutionize modern electronics.

When atoms or molecules assemble to form bulk matter, new properties (such as conductivity and ferromagnetism) that didn’t exist in the constituent parts can emerge from the whole. Similarly, stacking atomically thin layers into nanostructures (heterostructures) can give rise to a rich variety of emergent phases not found in bulk materials.

Materials that exhibit emergent phenomena (“quantum materials”) often feature multiple phases with simultaneous phase transitions. A great deal of effort is currently being expended to disentangle such transitions, to discover what drives them and to ultimately harness them in new materials with desired functionalities. Most of these efforts have relied on external perturbations (light, pressure, etc.) to decouple the transitions. In this work, researchers found a way to do this intrinsically, through layer-by-layer design of stacking sequences with mismatched periodicities.

Image: (a) Rare-earth (RE) nickelates (RENiO₃) host multiple types of entangled orderings. This illustration depicts a magnetic ordering (spin directions indicated by yellow arrows) and a charge ordering (a checkerboard of two nickel oxidation states, indicated by sphere size and color) in bulk RENiO₃ (RE and O atoms omitted for clarity).
Please find the entire image here.

X-Ray Experiment confirms theoretical model for making new materials

2018/07/022018/07/11

By observing changes in materials as they’re being synthesized, scientists hope to learn how they form and come up with recipes for making the materials they need for next-gen energy technologies.

Over the last decade, scientists have used supercomputers and advanced simulation software to predict hundreds of new materials with exciting properties for next-generation energy technologies.

Now they need to figure out how to make them.

To predict the best recipe for making a material, they first need a better understanding of how it forms, including all the intermediate phases it goes through along the way – some of which may be useful in their own right.

Now experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have confirmed the predictive power of a new computational approach to materials synthesis. Researchers say that this approach, developed at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could streamline the creation of novel materials for solar cells, batteries and other sustainable technologies.

Image: In an experiment at SLAC, scientists loaded ingredients for making a material into a thin glass tube and used X-rays (top left) to observe the phases it went through as it was forming (shown in bubbles). The experiment verified theoretical predictions made by scientists at Berkeley Lab with the help of supercomputers (right).
Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Dark-field X-ray microscopy provides surprising insight on ferroelectrics

2018/06/252018/07/04

Thanks to the unique capabilities of in-situ dark-field X-ray microscopy, scientists have now been able to see the complex structures hidden deep inside ferroelectric materials. The results, published today in Nature Materials, contradict previous studies in which only the surface was studied. This revolutionary new technique will be the main feature of a new beamline for the new EBS machine currently being built at the ESRF.

“Until now we could only see the surface of the material; dark-field x-ray microscopy is like creating a window to its interior”, explains Hugh Simons, assistant professor at the Technical University of Denmark and corresponding author of the study. “It provides incredible contrast for even the subtlest structures inside these materials, giving us a much clearer picture of how they work”, he adds.

Simons, together with the team of ID06 – the beamline where the technique is being developed – studied the ferroelectric material BaTiO₃, which is used every day in cars, computers and mobile phones. By imaging their internal structure at the same time as they applied an electric field on it, they could see how these internal structures behave and change dynamically.

Image: (extract) Crosssectional dark-field x-ray microscopy maps of the embedded BaTiO₃ grain. (…) the reconstructed strain map reveals the structural relationship between domain clusters. Full picture here.
Credit: H. Simons.

Enlightening yellow in art

2018/06/212018/06/21

Scientists from the University of Perugia (Italy), CNR (Italy), University of Antwerp, the ESRF and DESY, have discovered how masterpieces degrade over time in a new study with mock-up paints carried out at synchrotrons ESRF and DESY. Humidity, coupled with light, appear to be the culprits.

The Scream by Munch, Flowers in a blue vase by Van Gogh or Joy of Life by Matisse, all have something in common: their cadmium yellow pigment. Throughout the years, this colour has faded into a whitish tone and, in some instances, crusts of the paint have arisen, as well as changes in the morphological properties of the paint, such as flaking or crumbling. Conservators and researchers have come to the rescue though, and they are currently using synchrotron techniques to study in depth these sulphide pigments and to find a solution to preserve them in the long run.

“This research has allowed us to make some progress. However, it is very difficult for us to pinpoint to what causes the yellow to go white as we don’t have all the information about how or where the paintings have been kept since they were done in the 19^th century”, explains Letizia Monico, scientist from the University of Perugia and the CNR-ISTM. Indeed, limited knowledge of the environmental conditions (e.g., humidity, light, temperature…) in which paintings were stored or displayed over extended periods of time and the heterogeneous chemical composition of paint layers (often rendered more complex by later restoration interventions) hamper a thorough understanding of the overall degradation process.

>Read more on the ESRF website

Image: Some of the mock-up paints, prepared by Letizia Monico. Credits: C. Argoud.

The enigma of Rembrandt’s vivid white

2018/06/112018/06/18

Some of Rembrandt’s masterpieces are at the ESRF for some days, albeit only in minuscule form. The goal: to unveil the secrets of the artist’s white pigment.

Seven medical students surround a dead body while they attentively look at how the doctor is dissecting the deceased. The scene is set in a dark and gloomy environment, where even the faces of the characters show a grey tinge. Strangely, the only light in the scene is that coming from their white collars and the white sheet that partially covers the body. The vivid white creates a perplexing light-reflecting effect. Welcome to painting The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, a piece of art displaying the baffling technique of the impasto, of which Rembrandt, its author, was a master.

Impasto is thick paint laid on the canvas in an amount that makes it stand from the surface. The relief of impasto increases the perceptibility of the paint by increasing its light-reflecting textural properties. Scientists know that Rembrandt achieved the impasto effect by using materials traditionally available on the 17^th century Dutch colour market, namely the lead white pigment (mix of hydrocerussite Pb₃(CO₃)₂.(OH)₂ and cerussite PbCO₃), chalk (calcite CaCO₃) and organic mediums (mainly linseed oil). The precise recipe he used is, however, still unknown.

>Read more on the European Synchrotron website

Image: The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, by Rembrandt.