The second phase of a major upgrade project is now online at SLAC’S Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). On Saturday, scientists ushered an electron beam through a new undulator to produce “soft” X-rays (left). This follows the upgraded facility’s first...
An illustration shows polarons – fleeting distortions in a material’s atomic lattice ––in a promising next-generation energy material, lead hybrid perovskite.
As this animation shows, polaronic distortions start very small and rapidly expand outward in all directions to a diameter of about 5 billionths of a meter, which is about a 50-fold increase. This nudges about 10 layers of atoms slightly...
In this illustration, the pairs of red spheres are escaping oxygen atoms and purple spheres are metal ions. This new understanding could lead to new ways to minimize the problem and improve battery performance.
