People use diamonds to cut concrete, sharpen knives, and jumpstart wedding plans. As a member of Brookhaven’s Instrumentation Division, I’m on a team that found that diamond also fits the bill for new components in cutting-edge tools we are designing for upgrades for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), future linear-accelerator light sources, the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), and NSLS-II– facilities that researchers from around the world are using to understand more about how the natural world works and how we can solve the nation’s energy challenges, too.

Why Diamond and Why Now?

Diamond is a crystalline form of carbon. Among all known natural materials, these crystals of carbon are the hardest and also the best at transferring heat. Diamond is also highly transparent to x-rays. Jewelers who tell you that no two diamonds are alike are right. If you want a diamond for a symbol of undying love, you might prefer a natural, unique diamond. When you need diamonds to produce 50 instrumentation devices, you don’t want the diamonds to be unique, you want them to be uniform. Less expensive synthetic diamonds — which have only become usable for our needs in the past 10 years — provide the uniformity we require and contain far fewer impurities than their natural counterparts.These extreme properties, and the availability of uniform crystals, have made diamond the material of choice for development of tools called electron amplifiers and x-ray beam monitors.

If you direct an electron beam through a diamond electron amplifier, you can increase the electron beam’s current more than 300 times. This kind of amplification would be particularly useful for linear accelerators, or linacs, including the energy recovery linac that is being developed for RHIC and eRHIC, the proposed electron ion collider. Diamond electron amplifiers would also benefit next-generation linac light sources.

In addition to its fantastic electrical and thermal properties, diamond has a low x-ray absorption rate. This combination means that diamond can be used in monitoring devices that can measure the position, flux, and timing of x-ray beams at NSLS and NSLS-II.

More to the Story Than Tools and ‘Bling’

Our work with these diamond-based tools illustrates the benefits of working at a multidisciplinary lab like Brookhaven. We’ve taken measurements to study diamond using 20 different beamlines at Brookhaven’s NSLS. Components for the beam position monitors have been fabricated at the Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials. We were doing research with diamond for the Lab’s Collider-Accelerator Department when we recognized additional potential uses for Photon Sciences.

Realizing the different uses for these new developments occurred because the Instrumentation Division collaborates so well with our partners across the Lab. This reduces overlap and prevents redundant work, increasing our efficiency for discovery.

— John Smedley
Physicist, Instrumentation Division ]]> http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/2012/12/20/beyond-the-bling-diamonds-for-cutting-edge-tools/feed/ 0 http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/2012/12/03/xbox-x-rays-and-cutting-edge-optics/ http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/2012/12/03/xbox-x-rays-and-cutting-edge-optics/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:08:40 +0000 Justin Eure http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/?p=406

Ever imagined that an Xbox controller could help open a window into the nanoworld of groundbreaking physics? Well, check out the video above.

Brookhaven scientist Ray Conley designed that one-of-a-kind machine to grow (through a technique called sputtering deposition) atomically precise lenses that can focus x-rays to within one billionth of one meter, revealing the internal nanoscale structure of materials such as electric vehicle fuel cells.

When tweaking his recipe for these multilayer Laue lenses (MLL), Conley used to have to manually enter commands into a computer to move a crucial transport car along tracks tightly sealed inside a vacuum chamber. This meant walking back and forth between the machine and computer, eating up time and sacrificing precision. Conley asked his assistant to look into getting an industrial joystick, but that  option proved to be too expensive.  So they went the life–hacking videogame route: a wireless Xbox controller.

The controller arrived one morning, and by that afternoon it was already programmed to interface with all of that custom machinery and complex computing. Conley now uses the Xbox controller to move the transport car at variable speeds based upon which analog joystick he uses, control plasma deposition with different buttons, and even get variable rumble feedback to let him know the speed of the transport car as it travels through the sealed chamber.

The completed MLLs will be deployed at Brookhaven Lab’s forthcoming National Synchrotron Light Source II, one of the world’s most advanced light sources, to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Bonus trivia: The massive lens-building machine is nicknamed Megatron and features a Decepticon sticker on its side. During construction, an engineer mistakenly called a magnetron device “megatron,” and the name stuck.

See the way those smooth, amorphous blobs rapidly transform into textured honeycombs? Something similar is probably happening right now inside your laptop or smartphone’s battery, providing you with portable power.

But the cherished efficiency and portability of those compact lithium-ion batteries comes with a cost: each cycle of discharge/recharge degrades the material’s essential structure and ultimate longevity – you’ve probably noticed that your older electronics just don’t hold a charge like they used to. Preventing this persistent degradation requires insight into a process that plays out on the elusive scale of just billionths of a meter.

Fortunately, Brookhaven scientists just demonstrated a breakthrough transmission electron microscopy technique that captures live action lithium-ion reactions with nanoscale precision.

“We’ve opened a fundamentally new window into this popular technology,” said physicist and lead author Feng Wang. “The live, nanoscale imaging may help pave the way for developing longer-lasting, higher-capacity lithium-ion batteries. That means better consumer electronics, and the potential for large-scale, emission-free energy storage.”

These real-time experimental observations, including the movie above, revealed that the lithium ions swept rapidly across the surface of iron fluoride nanoparticles in a matter of seconds. The transformation then moved slowly through the bulk in a layer-by-layer process that split the compounds into distinct regions (similar to spinodal decomposition).

Imagine watching a fire spread across the surface of a log and then steadily eating its way through the layers of wood—only rather than smoke, the lithium ion reaction forms trails of new molecules. Just as burnt wood reveals fundamental characteristics of fire, the changes in morphology and structure in these individual nanoparticles provided crucial information about the lithium reaction mechanisms.

Get the full story at the official press release.

And way down at the fundamental level, HTS gets weird. Physicists at Brookhaven Lab just probed HTS fluctuations, and they got some unexpected results.

Water, way less exotic and much better understood, can help decode the findings. On its way to a rollicking boil, water develops isolates bubbles of gas – these appear suddenly along the bottom of a pot and then float up through the liquid. This is an in-between zone, the transition space between two very different phases of matter. Water doesn’t transform instantaneously into vapor, instead exhibiting fluctuations across a wide threshold.

As it turns out, as copper-oxide insulators cool down, they exhibit similarly fleeting “bubbles” of superconductivity. Inside that superconductor-insulator transition zone, intermittent islands flit in and out of existence. And that’s not even the strangest part. Cooled down even closer to absolute zero, these superconducting fluctuations vanish entirely – and that’s what really surprised physicists.

This unexpected quenching of superconductivity finds a useful analog, again, in water. Imagine that the flow of electricity between electrodes resembles the motion of a river rushing downhill. Custom-built conductors act as a channel designed to carry electric current as efficiently as possible, just as a smoothly engineered canal carries water.

If the canal is poorly constructed, full of sudden and jagged pits, the water level directly impacts the quality of the flow. A high volume of water will race along continuously, even if occasionally given to the turbulence of crashing whitewater. If, however, the water level falls below some critical value, the current will tumble into those pits, slowing to a trickle or stopping completely.

Physicist Ivan Bozovic with his custom-built Atomic Layer-by-Layer Molecular Beam Epitaxy (ALL-MBE) system, which grows atomically precise materials.

In these HTS experiments, the scientists measured the flow of electricity to discern the structure of custom-built copper-oxide “canals.” The water volume corresponds to the density of electrons in the system, which was  fine-tuned with that giant device seen to the right. While atomically smooth, the materials contained deliberately built-in defects – randomly distributed strontium atoms. Once super-cold, these imperfections acted like pits that trapped flowing electrons, rendering them immobile.

“The traps are there all the time, but the electrons only become stuck at extremely low temperature,” said Brookhaven physicist Ivan Bozovic. “This behavior, called electron localization, makes the material insulating. With some heating, however, the electrons gain enough kinetic energy to jump out of the holes and maintain metallic conductivity – and, in the present case, superconductivity.”

There’s (at least) one more layer of weird to add to these frigid traps. The researchers not only discovered that the fluctuations vanish beyond that super-cold threshold, but that the trapping pattern changes with each test. Resistivity depends not just on temperature, but also on the material’s memory – how and where the electrons were previously trapped. This phenomenon, called hysteresis, strongly indicates that the underlying mechanism behind the superconductor-insulator transition is tied to electron localization.

The study unveiled new characteristics of high-temperature superconductivity, and it offers another step in the ongoing quest to understand and harness the phenomenon. Get the full story in the official press release, and get deep into the full electron-doping chemistry in the scientific paper.

Ben Babst has seen things that no one else has ever seen before. A plant biologist in Brookhaven Lab’s Biosciences Department, Babst is among pioneering researchers who are some of the first in the world to study plants using a technique called positron emission tomography or PET imaging, which is more commonly used to diagnose cancer and study brain activity. With this innovative use of PET imaging technologies, Babst has actually watched plants shift nutrients from their leaves down to their roots while under attack by gypsy moth caterpillars — the plants safeguarding energy from their furry, leaf-chomping assailants. This, along with Babst’s other investigations of transport and metabolism in plants, show much promise toward enhancing plants’ abilities to make substances for biofuels that could someday power vehicles, homes, and industry.

Ben Babst with a prototype of a positron emission tomography (PET) device for imaging plants.

What is the focus of your research?

Plants can’t run away from insect attacks and they can’t escape from drought like that suffered in the Midwest this summer. To suit changing environmental conditions, they adjust internal processes such as metabolism and “vascular” transport, which circulates resources throughout the plant. The goal of my research is to provide basic biological information about these adaptations, which are needed to develop crops dedicated for bioenergy — crops that grow large and fast, can be converted to fuel efficiently, and can grow vigorously on less-than-ideal lands to avoid a scenario of competition for real estate to produce both food and fuel.

At Brookhaven, I use radioisotopes and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to see and quantify how biochemicals are distributed throughout an entire plant. This is “basic” research that supports DOE’s bioenergy mission through its Biomass program.

What’s “cool” or interesting about that?

It’s very cool to be the first person to actually see various phenomena happening in plants. Watching video created in our lab that shows the movement of sugars and plant hormones is an eye opener. It’s also rewarding to contribute toward solutions to the energy crisis that is facing us in the U.S.

What are you working on now?

I am addressing several areas of plant biology, including hormone signaling in grass stem growth and fundamental mechanisms of vascular transport. For example, I am trying to understand the mechanisms that control how nutrients, including sugars, are allocated to different parts of the plant — roots, stems, and leaves. Sugars can be produced in leaves through photosynthesis, and then distributed to stems and roots, where they are metabolized to release energy that the plant needs to grow. We can tap those sugars for our energy needs — for both food and fuel. Converting sugars to biofuel is a very efficient process, because sugars can be fermented directly.

In one of my current projects, I am working to determine how sugars accumulate in stems of certain grasses, such as sugarcane and sweet sorghum. Sorghum is a relative of corn, and compared to sugar cane, it is much better adapted to grow in the temperate climate that is prevalent in much of the United States. Understanding the mechanisms that drive sugar accumulation in sweet sorghum will lead to new ideas for increasing sugar yields, not only for sorghum plants, but for other bioenergy crops as well.

Why do this at Brookhaven Lab?

This plant biology research for bioenergy requires specialized equipment and expertise. PET technology has been used for medical studies for decades, but there are only a few groups in the world, so far, that use it for plant research. Since much technology for PET imaging was developed at Brookhaven Lab, the Lab is unique in the world. Here, we have the specialized equipment as well as people with electronics and chemistry expertise. Applications for plant science are still fairly young, so it is invaluable for me to work with a team of experts who can help find solutions when new challenges arise.

Have your efforts contributed to any discoveries?

Yes. In earlier work, we found evidence that plants may defend themselves from damage, such as a gypsy moth caterpillar attack, by bunkering nutrients below ground to the roots. It has long been known that plants can make toxins to repel herbivorous insects, but our studies suggested a broader whole-plant response to a harmful environmental condition.

More recently, my studies with corn, or maize, mutant plants have raised new questions about the phloem that transports the sugars plants need to grow from the leaves to the roots, stem, and flowers. Right now, plant biologists think that sugar loading into the phloem is what drives nutrient-containing sap to flow. The maize mutant plants I am working with export very little sugar. But surprisingly, we found that the flow of sap in the phloem is only reduced moderately compared to “normal” plants in the wild. That means something else, not sugar loading alone, is helping to drive sap flow in these plants. Identifying that something else is what we need to address now. I think the results of this research will ultimately lead to revisions in plant biology textbooks.

Greetings from Honolulu! I had a wonderful trip over – mostly calm seas (we had a bit of rock and roll the last day out, but it wasn’t too bad), nice weather, some nice clouds to observe, and MAGIC data! In port in LA was busy, as usual, with MAGIC personnel getting off and on the ship, and others coming in for installation. Most of the instruments are up and running well, and of course there are a few that are being a bit problematic, but that’s not unusual for this point in a deployment.

Weather balloon launches have been quite successful, with most of the balloons reaching heights of 25,000 meters (about 15 miles) or more before bursting. There have been clouds of all varieties, and the sky changes over very short times from completely clear to completely overcast, with an array of cloud coverage and types between these two extremes. Some of the nights have been completely clear, with the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon.

Ernie Lewis and one of the mobile SeaTainer units now installed aboard the Horizon Spirit, a 272-meter cargo ship that will take atmospheric measurements during a yearlong climate study.

The techs have been wonderful. Pat, the lead tech on this leg, is a great choice for this position. He gets along with everyone and never seems flustered, regardless of the situation. He’s also tenacious – on the first day out, a pump went out and we worked on it for the better part of a day. I would have given up long before that, but stayed with it until he got it fixed. The other techs, Brett and Rob, refer to him as “Zeus” – need I say more? I met Brett in port a few weeks back when he came to LA to help set up. He’s eager and creative, and he’s pretty good with his hands – he’s made several improvements in the vans that will make daily living better. Rob is a trained meteorologist, is already familiar with some of the instruments, and has considerable time at sea from previous jobs – all good traits for the tasks at hand.

Our vans are on the bridge deck, which is one level above the cabin deck, which is one level above the upper deck, which is one level above the main deck, where my room is located. Thus, I get my workout doing stairs during the day. One level below the main deck is the second deck, where we dine. The food on this trip has been great, and some of our biggest challenges have been deciding between two wonderful choices at mealtime. The worst news we’ve had on the trip so far is that the cook is getting off in Hawaii; I hope her replacement is half as good.

We’ve had some fun with the time zone changes. All our data is recorded in UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) which was formerly called Greenwich Mean Time (and still called Zulu time by some). We also have some events (such as balloon launches) that are regularly scheduled on UTC. As getting good data is the top priority (yes, even ahead of meals), I set my clock to UTC. The ship runs on local time, but this varies between Los Angeles and Hawaii. Los Angeles is currently 7 hours behind UTC (it will be 8 hours behind next month, when Daylight Savings Time, or DST, ends), and Hawaii is 10 hours behind (as Hawaii doesn’t observe DST, it’s always 10 hours behind UTC). The confusion comes in several forms. First, some events that happen during one day are recorded on the next day, as that’s what it is in UTC land (it’s currently Tuesday, Oct. 10, but our next balloon launch in two hours is on Oct 11 UTC). Also, we are constantly confused about when meal times are because we have trouble keeping up with the time changes. We set our clocks back an hour the first, second and fourth nights out; that’s three time changes, but there aren’t three time zones. We all spent quite a while looking for that other time zone between Alaska (which is one hour from LA) and Hawaii (which is three hours from LA). We named it the Twilight Zone, but it doesn’t exist – it’s that Daylight Savings Time thing; the ship doesn’t make a 2-hour jump between Alaska time (which is on DST) and Hawaii (which isn’t), but splits this into two changes of one hour each. Now that we have it figured out, it’ll be backwards on the return, and sure to lead to more confusion.

-This post was written by Brookhaven Lab atmospheric scientist Ernie Lewis, a principal investigator on the MAGIC project . Get more info in the latest press release on the launch of the yearlong climate study.

This polar phenomenon is caused by ferromagnetism, a defining quality of some particles that gives them an intrinsic polarity – what scientists call a dipole moment. And remarkably, that magnetic moment can be manipulated. Applying an external magnetic field to ferromagnetic materials can flip the orientation, turning north into south, attraction into repulsion.

That ferromagnetic flip is happening rapidly inside computer hard drives right now. Magnetic polarization can translate directly into computer code: north and south become the binary building blocks that underlie nearly the entire digital world. Computers apply a field to toggle between the two states, signifying 1 or 0 – this is how data is written, read, and rewritten on hard disk drives. Ferromagnetics are ideal candidates for this because they’re non-volatile, meaning that they retain orientation even when a device powers down.

But magnets aren’t the only game in town. Electricity also enjoys polar play in the form of positive and negative charges, and they’ve got their own class of non-volatile materials: ferroelectrics. These materials also feature a dipole moment that can be flipped, but by an external electric field. This then easily corresponds to binary computer code. And when you take this down to the billionth of a meter scale, exciting things happen that could shake up the next generation of computers.

“Ferroelectric materials can retain information on a much smaller scale and with higher density than ferromagnetics,” said Brookhaven physicist Yimei Zhu, one of the authors on a breakthrough paper published in Nature Materials. “We’re looking at moving from micrometers (millionths of a meter) down to nanometers (billionths of a meter). And that’s what’s really exciting, because we now know that on the nanoscale each particle can become its own bit of information.”

Direct polarization images of individual ferroelectric nano cubes captured with electron holography. The fringing field, or “footprint” of electric polarization, can be seen clearly in (a), but it vanishes when the material is subjected to high temperatures (b). The lower images show that no fringing field can be observed before application of electricity (c), but a clear field emanates after current is applied (d).

Brookhaven Lab scientists  demonstrated a method to “see” into the atomic structure of ferroelectrics, revealing the source of their unique data-storage potential, and laying the foundation for future electronic data devices. The new study also tested nanoscale integrity and probed ferroelectric stability with a range of electric voltages and temperature conditions.

The electron holography techniques employed (see the Predator-vision image to the right) clearly captured the ferroelectric field and its remarkable origin: atomic displacement. Each ferroelectric particle features an internal asymmetry, or polar ordering, that gives rise to its electric polarization. When the charge flips, the structure of the particle itself changes. The study also revealed that ferroelectric particles require about five nanometers of critical elbow room when scaled up to prevent polarity interference that could corrupt data in electronics.

Read more about the research at Brookhaven’s press release, including more on ferroelectric footprints and the incredibly precise electron holography techniques employed by scientists.

Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) smashes particles together to recreate the incredible conditions that only existed at the dawn of time. The 2.4-mile underground atomic “racetrack” at RHIC produces fundamental insights about the laws underlying all visible matter. But along the way, its particles also smashed a world record.

Guinness World Records, no longer encumbered by “book of,” recognized Brookhaven Lab for achieving the “Highest Man-Made Temperature.” When RHIC collides gold ions at nearly the speed of light, the impact energy becomes so intense that the neutrons and protons inside the gold nuclei “melt,” releasing fundamental quarks and gluons that then form a nearly friction-free primordial plasma that only existed in Nature about a millionth of one second after the Big Bang. RHIC discovered this primordial, liquid-like quark-gluon plasma and measured its temperature at around 4 trillion degrees Celsius – that’s 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun.

“There are many cool things about this ultra-hot matter,” said physicist Steven Vigdor, who leads Brookhaven’s nuclear and particle physics program. “We expected to reach these temperatures – that is, after all, why RHIC was built – but we did not at all anticipate the nearly perfect liquid behavior.”

As it turns out, this surprising phenomenon occurs at both extremes of the temperature spectrum.

“Other physicists have now observed quite similar liquid behavior in trapped atom samples at temperatures near absolute zero, ten million trillion times colder than the quark-gluon plasma we create at RHIC,” Vigdor said. “This is just one among many unexpected connections we’ve found between RHIC physics and other scientific forefronts. The unity of physics is a beautiful thing!”

Speaking of unity in physics, a much larger collider is also probing quark-gluon plasma and generating sun-shaming temperatures. The 17-mile Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Europe’s CERN laboratory smashes lead ions together in its own super-hot recreations of the Big Bang. And the LHC’s ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) may be positioned to trump RHIC’s record.

“The energy density at the LHC is a factor of three higher than at RHIC,” said CERN physicist Despina Hatzifotiadou. “This translates to a 30 percent increase in absolute temperature compared to the value achieved by RHIC. So I would say that ALICE has the record!”

But despite ALICE’s prowess, the collaboration has not published an official temperature measurement of its quark-gluon plasma, and the Guinness team is nothing if not official. For the time being, RHIC reigns, having driven physics forward by creating that revelatory multi-trillion degree matter many billions of times. But as with all records, RHIC’s Guinness is destined to be broken.

For a quick overview of the RHIC breakthrough, take a look at the video below:

These little lobster cousins, usually between 4 and 12 inches long, are capable of beating their way through the hard shells of armored animals, such as crabs and clams. That so small an animal can crack shells, split fishermen’s thumbs, and fracture aquarium glass is an extraordinary mechanical feat in its own right.

But there’s another seldom-explored angle to these underwater pugilists: how can a bare fist survive ballistic-level impacts? Put another way, how does the mantis shrimp fire the same armor-piercing bullet 50,000 times?

This peacock mantis shrimp shows off its durable weapons, the two oval-shaped hammers at the end of its arms. Photo by Silke Baron.

A team of researchers from several institutions investigated the remarkable composition, mechanics, and effective durability of what they called a “biological hammer” – the results are detailed in a new study published in the journal Science. 

“Nature spends thousands of years trying out a variety of solutions to a problem, and only the best solutions survive,” said Brookhaven Lab physicist and study coauthor Kenneth Evans-Lutterodt. “We wanted to understand how Nature managed to build such an incredibly robust structure that is still lightweight.”

Ultra-bright x-rays from Brookhaven Lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source probed the mineral composition of the dense mantis shrimp clubs. The results revealed a multi-tiered structure that uniquely combines two crystal forms of the hard mineral hydroxyapatite (found in human bones and teeth) with shock absorption from flexible chitin (a complex sugar) fibers.

“That detailed information was then input by other collaborators into precise mechanical simulations that helped demonstrate how the structure remains intact in the face of the huge stresses that the club undergoes,” Evans-Lutterodt said. As it turns out, the structure allows for tiny fissures and cracks to open up within the hammers, preventing the kind of rigidity that might lead to more substantial fractures.

Proposed applications for this Nature-tech include developing lighter materials for airplanes, electric cars, and military body armor.

More info can be found at the Brookhaven Lab press release. The research paper, published online June 8, includes details on electron density mapping, x-ray diffraction imaging, exterior structural analysis, and more about the full collaboration.

It’s also worth reading the Wikipedia page on stomatopods. In addition to the mantis-fist combat style, they also have the world’s most advanced eyes, often mate for life, and come in dazzling peacock patterns.

Even Isaac Newton, credited with the dawn of the Age of Reason, felt the mystical draw of alchemy, working in secret to transform one element into another. Centuries later we still can’t conjure gold from lead, sure, but what if it was possible to combine a handful of elements to very closely mimic gold? What if scientists engineered a synthetic Midas Touch that tricked base metals into performing like gold, thereby conquering the hurdles of rarity and price?

Now forget the alchemist’s dream of gold and consider the equally precious noble metal platinum – hovering right around $50,000 per kilogram – which may be the key to building a sustainable energy future. Now, using advanced technology and elements that cost 1000 times less, researchers at Brookhaven National Lab have created a high-performing pauper’s platinum from nanoscale building blocks.

Beyond the silver sheen of the metal, platinum sets the gold standard (forgive the pun) for catalytic performance, improving a reaction’s efficiency while remaining largely unchanged. The electrolysis of water, or splitting H2O into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2), requires external electricity and an efficient catalyst to break chemical bonds while shifting around protons and electrons. Once isolated, hydrogen gas offers one of the most promising renewable alternatives to dependence on a limited fossil fuel supply.

For a catalyst to facilitate an efficient reaction, it must combine high durability, high catalytic activity, and high surface area. Platinum knocks this out of the park, but its price discourages heavy investment from industry. The challenge, then, is to find what one Brookhaven chemist called a “Goldilocks” compound – the performance of platinum and the abundance of affordable non-noble metals.

This magnified image from a transmission electron microscope reveals the nanosheet structure of the breakthrough electrocatalyst, seen here as dark, straight lines.

The Brookhaven team first combined nickel ($20 per kilogram) and molybdenum ($32 per kilogram), and then used high-temperature ammonia to infuse the compound with bolstering nitrogen. Then something unexpected happened.

The scientists expected discrete, sphere-like particles, but the resulting low-cost compound, NiMoN, took the surprising form of two-dimensional (atom-thin) nanosheets. The catalytic activity then exceeded expectations, in part because of that huge boost in surface area – just consider the difference between a bed sheet balled up and one laid out flat. Their results were published online this week in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

This electrocatalyst does not address all of the barriers to developing a hydrogen-based energy economy. The electricity required to perform water-splitting remains high and, right now, impractically expensive. But overcoming the high price and limited supply of platinum makes hydrogen more attractive than ever as a renewable fuel source. It also marks a major victory for the almost alchemical transformations possible in nanoscience.

Learn more about this new nanosheet compound in the official press release: Nanosheet Catalyst Discovered to Sustainably Split Hydrogen from Water

This post was written by Brookhaven Lab science writer Justin Eure.