SSRL in SLAC Today

Phrase of the Week: Organic Semiconductor

Fri, 2012/01/06 - 6:30am

by Diane Rezendes Khirallah

Simply put, an organic semiconductor is an organic material whose conductivity can be switched on and off at will. This helpful property gives semiconductors a critical role in the on-off switches at the heart of digital devices.

Today: SSRL Scientist to Discuss Work with Fossils at San Francisco Exploratorium

Thu, 2012/01/05 - 6:55am

SSRL Helps Stanford Scientists Study Enhanced Organic Semiconductor

Tue, 2012/01/03 - 6:30am

by Andrew Myers

By packing molecules closer together, chemical engineers at Stanford have dramatically improved the electrical conductivity of organic semiconductors. The advance could herald flexible electronics, more efficient solar panels, and perhaps even better television screens.

Herding Electrons into Bright Bunches at SSRL

Tue, 2012/01/03 - 6:20am

by Daniel Ratner

Though the linac excels at producing tight bunches of electrons, each stretch of the linac can produce only 120 bunches of electrons per second. With researchers around the world hungry for research time at LCLS, even 120 X-ray pulses per second is not enough.

Postdoc Eric Verploegen Energized by Experiences, Mentoring at SLAC

Wed, 2011/12/07 - 6:55am

by Lori Ann White

If the excitement and enthusiasm of young scientists like Eric Verploegen could be pumped directly into the power grid, the world's energy problems could be solved tomorrow. It can't, though. So Verploegen has made it his goal to channel his energy into looking for solutions the old-fashioned way – hard work, and lots of it.

If the excitement and enthusiasm of young scientists like Eric Verploegen could be pumped directly into the power grid, the world's energy problems could be solved tomorrow.

SSRL Team Reports Sought-After Magnetic Properties in Common Alloy

Thu, 2011/11/03 - 7:10am

In a paper published Nov. 2 in Nature Communications, a team of researchers led by University of Maryland's Ichiro Takeuchi, in collaboration with Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource's Apurva Mehta, reported the discovery of large magnetostriction in an iron/cobalt alloy — in other words, the alloy shows a mechanical strain when a magnetic field is applied.