News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have unveiled a new technique that could help advance the development of quantum technology. Their innovation provides an unprecedented look at how quantum materials behave at interfaces. “This technique allows us to study surface phonons — the collective vibrations of atoms at a material’s surface or interface between materials,” said Zhaodong Chu, one of the scientists involved in this study. ​“Our findings reveal striking differences between surface phonons and those in the bulk material, opening new avenues for research and applications.” Some of the research activities were performed at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility. 

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Villanova University; Northwest Missouri State University; Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Germany; the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany; the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, Germany; the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies in Milano, Italy; and Politecnico di Milano in Italy have observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around fullerene (C60) molecules. Researchers measured this dance with unprecedented precision, achieving the first measurement of its kind at the sub-nanometer scale. The synchronized dance of electrons, known as plasmonic resonance, can confine light for brief periods of time. While they’ve been studied extensively in systems from several centimeters across to those just 10 nanometers wide, this is the first time researchers were able to break the field’s “nanometer barrier.”

Researchers from Oregon State University, The Ohio State University, and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, have helped characterize a novel electrocatalyst developed by collaborators at Yale University and helped explain its improved efficiency for deriving methanol from carbon dioxide. The researchers’ dual-site catalyst is the result of combining two different catalytic sites at adjacent locations, separated by about 2 nanometers, on carbon nanotubes. The new design increases the methanol production rate, and less of the electricity used to catalyze the reaction is wasted. “The hybrid catalyst was found to exhibit unprecedented high catalytic efficiencies, nearly 1.5 times higher than observed before,” said Zhenxing Feng, one of the scientists involved in this study.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the University of California, Berkeley; Pennsylvania State University; Stanford University; Rice University; the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India; the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute in Sayo, Japan; RIKEN SPring-8 Center in Sayo, Japan; and the University of Tokyo in Japan are investigating a material with a highly unusual structure – one that changes dramatically when exposed to an ultrafast pulse of light from a laser. At the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne, the scientists used a technique called transient absorption spectroscopy to detect photocarrier activity within the material. This approach helped them determine how much charge gets released and how quickly the charge decays. 

Most optical sensors record data from light and then transmit all of the raw data to a computer for processing. This typically consumes more energy than necessary, because in most applications, only a small amount of information relative to the raw data is needed. So, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Texas at Arlington are developing a less power-hungry approach, in which some data processing is conducted in the sensor itself, before the data is sent to a computer or processed by edge computing devices. The new sensor, called a “nanoscale hybrid,” stitches together nanostructures, such as nanotubes and nanowires. It is highly sensitive in part because the sensor’s nanoscale components are smaller than the wavelength of light. 

Engineers from Purdue University and GRIMM Aerosol Technik Ainring GmbH & Co. in Germany have found that chemical products from air fresheners, wax melts, floor cleaners, and deodorants can rapidly fill the air with nanoparticles that are small enough to get deep into our lungs. These nanoparticles form when fragrances interact with ozone, which enters buildings through ventilation systems. "Our research shows that fragranced products are not just passive sources of pleasant scents—they actively alter indoor air chemistry, leading to the formation of nanoparticles at concentrations that could have significant health implications," said Nusrat Jung, one of the engineers involved in this study.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, as well as Northern Illinois University have discovered that superconducting nanowire photon detectors, which are used for detecting photons (the fundamental particles of light) could potentially also function as highly accurate particle detectors, specifically for high-energy protons used as projectiles in particle accelerators. The ability to detect high-energy protons with superconducting nanowire photon detectors has never been reported before, and this discovery widens the scope of particle detection applications.

Researchers from Rutgers University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT, and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute in Piscataway, NJ, have shown that microplastic and nanosplastic particles in soil and water can significantly increase how much toxic chemicals plants and human intestinal cells absorb. Using a cellular model of the human small intestine, the researchers found that nano-size plastic particles increased the absorption of arsenic by nearly six-fold compared with arsenic exposure alone. The same effect was seen with boscalid, a commonly used pesticide. Also, the researchers exposed lettuce plants to two sizes of polystyrene particles – 20 nanometers and 1,000 nanometers – along with arsenic and boscalid. They found the smaller particles had the biggest impact, increasing arsenic uptake into edible plant tissues nearly threefold compared to plants exposed to arsenic alone.

Researchers from Rice University, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shed light on how the extreme miniaturization of thin films affects the behavior of relaxor ferroelectrics — materials with noteworthy energy-conversion properties used in sensors, actuators, and nanoelectronics. The findings reveal that as the films shrink to dimensions comparable to internal polarization structures within the films, their fundamental properties can shift in unexpected ways. More specifically, when the films are shrunk down to a precise range of 25–30 nanometers, their ability to maintain their structure and functionality under varying conditions is significantly enhanced.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed ultra-thin materials, called metasurfaces, that can amplify and interact with light regardless of its polarization. The metasurfaces are made of tiny nanoantennas that can both amplify and control light in very precise ways and could replace conventional refractive surfaces in eyeglasses and smartphone lenses. The polarization-independent metasurfaces have what’s known as a high quality factor, which means they trap light over a narrow band of resonant frequencies for a long time, generating a strong response to external stimuli.