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ALS Technique Gives Novel View of Lithium Battery Dendrite Growth

Lithium-ion batteries, popular in today’s electronic devices, could gain significant energy density if their graphite anodes were replaced with lithium metal anodes. But there’s a major concern with substituting lithium—when the battery cycles, microscopic fibers of the lithium anodes (“dendrites”) form on the surface of the lithium electrode and spread across the electrolyte until they reach the other electrode, possibly leading to short circuiting. Researchers have recently discovered that the x-ray microtomography capabilities at ALS Beamline 8.3.2 can give them a novel view of dendrite growth that’s likely to provide the insight needed to stop it. Read more »PPT-icon-35

Ken Goldberg, Deputy Director of the Center for X-Ray Optics

Kenneth Goldberg, deputy director of the Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), has been a part of the ALS since 1993, when he began setting up one of the first experiments on the floor, a project in coherent EUV optics. After completing his PhD in physics at Cal in 1997, Goldberg joined CXRO as a staff scientist. Read more »

Peter Nico, UEC Chair

Peter Nico, recently appointed chair of the UEC, brings a varied user perspective to his new post: like many environmental science users, Nico has worked at a number of different ALS beamlines, from hard x-ray tomography to x-ray diffraction to STXM to infrared. It’s the combination of these multiple capabilities that he sees as one of the greatest assets the ALS has to offer users. Read more »

IBM Probes Material Capabilities at the ALS

Vanadium dioxide, one of the few known materials that acts like an insulator at low temperatures but like a metal at warmer temperatures, is a somewhat futuristic material that could yield faster and much more energy-efficient electronic devices. Researchers from IBM’s forward-thinking Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps) recently used the ALS to gain greater insight into vanadium dioxide’s unusual phase transition. Read more »PPT-icon-35 PDF-icon-35

Marc Allaire, Beamline Scientist, BCSB

Marc Allaire, the newest member of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) team, joined the ALS in October as beamline scientist for Sector 5, which consists of Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3. Allaire came to the ALS from Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he had been responsible for macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines and the biological small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) program. Read more »

Minding the Gap Makes for More Efficient Solar Cells

Using novel materials to develop thin, flexible, and more efficient photovoltaic cells is one of the hottest topics in current materials research. A class of transition metals undergoes a dramatic change that makes them ideal for solar energy applications. Read more »

Crystal Nucleation and Near-Epitaxial Growth in Nacre

Nacre–the iridescent inner lining of many mollusk shells– has a unique strcuture that is remarkably resistant to fracture. The nacre featured on this cover is from Haliotis laevigata with average layer thickness 470-nm. The colors represent crystal orientationthe crystal lattice tilts across tablets.left stack all tablets are yellow, hence all aragonite crystals are co-oriented. Read more »