Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource

Because they are highly efficient, low maintenance, and light, lithium-ion batteries have grown in popularity. Their use has improved the functionality of many electronics, such as allowing our cell phones to be more portable and our electric cars to travel longer distances. However, some precious metal components of these batteries are in short supply, prompting researchers to develop “beyond lithium-ion” alternatives that use elements more abundant on Earth, yet have the qualities that make lithium-ion batteries so useful. Attention has turned to using common divalent metals, such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc, at the anode for a new type of battery.

Most solar panels use technology that employs a silver-silicon interface. Because silver is expensive and the lead used in the creation of this interface is toxic, researchers are interested searching for other materials that could work instead of these components. A team of scientists are working to understand the process involved in the silver-silicon contact formation so that alternatives that perform the same function can be found.

The widespread adoption of renewable energy in many applications, such as electric cars, is dependant on the development of better batteries. A lithium ion battery can be made to have a higher capacity, better thermally stability, and lower cost by changing the cobalt component of the battery cathode (usually LiCoO₂) to a mixture of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. While providing great benefits, this material, known as NMC, also has a downside: increased reactivity at the cathode resulting in a shorter battery lifetime. To counteract this reactivity, scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado developed a coating for the NMC cathode.

Carbon-based materials are extremely lightweight and have thermal, mechanical and electrical properties that are of great interest for use in functional devices. Carbon materials can be manufactured in virtually any shape and even with dimensions on the micro- and nanoscales. Recent research is now aimed at exploiting the spin and magnetism of carbon-based materials for data storage devices – a field called spintronics.

Films of semiconducting organic polymers are major candidates for new materials, with industrial applications ranging from lighting equipment to solar cells to electronic devices. In order to fully exploit these materials, scientists must first understand how polymer films transport electric charge.

Scientists have for the first time used an extremely short and intense coherent soft x-ray laser pulse to successfully obtain a high-resolution image of a nano-scale object before the sample was destroyed by the energy impact of the pulse. The experiment, conducted at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg by a collaboration that included researchers from the Photon Science Directorate at SLAC, also set a speed record of 25 femtoseconds for the duration of the x-ray pulse used to acquire the image. The results are published in the November 12 online edition and the December printed edition of Nature Physics.

Dramatic improvements in energy storage devices are essential to meet the increasing need to move away from fossil fuels and toward clean, renewable energy. Rechargeable lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries hold great potential for high-performance energy storage systems because they have a high theoretical specific energy, low cost, and are eco-friendly; but a better understanding of how the battery functions is required to design improvements for higher efficiency and capacity.

A collaboration between scientists at SSRL and the department of Applied Physics at Stanford University has determined the phase diagram of a new family of prototypical charge density wave (CDW) compounds. These compounds have the chemical formula RTe₃, where R represents a rare earth element from La to Tm. In research, the collaborators have used X-ray diffraction and resistivity measurements to determine the factors affecting the symmetry of the CDW state, specifically whether the CDW runs in one direction or two.

Recent advances in materials research are setting the stage for macroelectronics to have a disruptive effect on everyday technology. While microelectronics focuses of the miniaturization of electronic devices (think of the shrinking iPod), macroelectronics is the replication and integration of microelectronic devices onto large areas such as display backplanes (big screen TVs and electronic billboards), large-area photovoltaics (flexible solar cells) and radio frequency ID tags. One class of materials that has demonstrated great promise as the semiconducting layer in these macroelectronics devices is polymer semiconductors, which allow for potentially inexpensive manufacturing from solutions.

Currently, organic or plastic solar cells are relatively inexpensive to make, yet they are also relatively inefficient. Researchers from Princeton University and SSRL recently studied the structure of organic solar cells that were manufactured and processed in different ways to better understand the causes of the inefficiencies.

Organic semiconductors could usher in an era of foldable smart phones, better high-definition television screens and clothing made of materials that can harvest energy from the sun needed to charge your iPod or iPad, but there is one serious drawback: Organic semiconductors, while inexpensive, do not conduct electricity very well.