Samples returned to Earth from the asteroid Ryugu revealed that the building blocks of life formed 4.6 billion years ago in the extreme cold of space, followed by reaction with water. The dark, coal-like organic matter in the carbonaceous asteroid could have contributed to the formation of habitable planetary environments. Read more »
Increasing the Energy Density of Hybrid Supercapacitor Electrodes
Hybrid supercapacitors (HSCs) integrate the merits of batteries with those of supercapacitors. However, the fraction of active material in HSC electrodes has remained too low for commercial requirements. Now, researchers have found a clever way to increase the active-mass ratio to achieve dramatic improvements in key measures. Read more »
Vertical Gradient of Size-Resolved Aerosol Compositions over the Arctic Reveals Cloud Processed Aerosol in-Cloud and above Cloud
Vertical distribution of size-resolved chemical composition of Arctic aerosol particles was investigated in different cloud layers. Multimodal microspectroscopy analysis reveals a broadening of chemically-specific size distribution above the cloud top. Read more »
Sub-4 nm mapping of donor–acceptor organic semiconductor nanoparticle composition
We report, for the first time, sub-4 nm mapping of donor : acceptor nanoparticle composition in eco-friendly colloidal dispersions for organic electronics. This technology shows great promise for the optimization of organic semiconductor blends for organic electronics and photocatalysis and has further applications in organic core–shell nanomedicines. Read more »
Macromolecular organic matter in samples of the asteroid (162173) Ryugu
We investigated the macromolecular organic matter in samples of the asteroid Ryugu—brought to Earth by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft—measuring its elemental, isotopic, and functional group compositions along with its small-scale structures and morphologies. Analytical methods used included spectro-microscopies, electron microscopy, and isotopic microscopy. Read more »
An automated size and time-resolved aerosol collector platform integrated with environmental sensors to study the vertical profile of aerosols
Researchers present the vertical distribution of size-resolved aerosol composition over an agricultural site by deploying a newly developed lightweight automated size- and time-resolved aerosol collector (STAC) platform integrated with environmental sensors on unmanned aerial systems (e.g., tethered balloon systems). Read more »
New Insight into Titan’s Hazy Atmospheric Chemistry
Researchers simulated the complex chemistry that may be occurring in the hazy atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and analyzed the reaction products at the ALS. The work provided new insights into what future Titan probes may encounter upon arrival and what the atmosphere of Earth may have been like eons ago. Read more »
Machine-Learning Team Receives 2021 Halbach Award
This year’s Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation at the ALS went to a team of accelerator physicists and computer scientists who were able to use machine-learning techniques to solve a problem that has plagued third-generation light sources for a long time: fluctuations in beam size due to the motion of insertion devices. Read more »
The Inside‐Outs of Metal Hydride Dehydrogenation: Imaging the Phase Evolution of the Li‐N‐H Hydrogen Storage System
Hydrogen absorption and release in lithium amide involves chemical and structural change. Scanning transmission x‐ray microscopy visualizes this phase evolution inside particles, showing a core‐shell architecture, with the more hydrogenated species as the shell for hydrogenation and, more surprisingly, for dehydrogenation as well. Read more »
Machine Learning Helps Stabilize Synchrotron Light
Researchers showed that machine learning can predict noisy fluctuations in the size of beams generated by synchrotron light sources and correct them before they occur. The work solves a decades-old problem and will allow researchers to fully exploit the smaller beams made possible by recent advances in light source technology. Read more » 