• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Sunday, August 3, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Rice, DOE labs tackle knowledge gap in materials science research

by
August 1, 2024
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

HOUSTON – (August 1, 2024) – Materials behave differently in different size regimes, and researchers tend to cluster their efforts either at the nanoscale, examining materials in atom-level detail, or at the microscale, looking at structures between three and five orders of magnitude greater.

Lane Martin

Credit: (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

HOUSTON – (August 1, 2024) – Materials behave differently in different size regimes, and researchers tend to cluster their efforts either at the nanoscale, examining materials in atom-level detail, or at the microscale, looking at structures between three and five orders of magnitude greater.

However, less is known about what happens in the “in-between” realm spanning from 10 billionths to 1 millionth of a meter.

“We call this the mesoscale,” said Rice University materials scientist Lane Martin, who together with collaborators at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, focused on this overlooked interval for insight into how a piezoelectric material transforms a voltage into a change in shape and vice versa.

“We examined a piezoelectric material called a relaxor ferroelectric and uncovered an exciting connection between the nanoscale features of its atomic structure and its macroscopic material properties,” said Martin, who is a corresponding author on a study about the research published in Science. “Our insights into the mesoscale structures provide a new approach to the design of smaller electromechanical devices that work in ways not thought possible.”

The research could inform applications in high-efficiency energy storage and conversion, next-generation electronics, lasers and sensors.

The focus of the study is an oxide made of a complex mixture of lead, magnesium, niobium and titanium, and it is characterized by tiny pairs of positive and negative charges, or dipoles, that group into clusters called polar nanodomains. Under an electric field, these dipoles align in the same direction, causing the material to change shape, or strain. Similarly, applying a strain can alter the dipole direction, creating an electric voltage.

“If you analyze a material at the nanoscale, you only learn about the average atomic structure within an ultrasmall region,” said Yue Cao, an Argonne physicist who is also a corresponding author on the study. “But materials are not necessarily uniform and do not respond in the same way to an electric field in all parts. This is where the mesoscale can paint a more complete picture bridging the nano- to microscale.”

To test the material under operating conditions, Martin, Rice’s Robert A. Welch Professor, professor of materials science and nanoengineering and director of the Rice Advanced Materials Institute, developed a fully functional relaxor device composed of a thin film (55 nanometers) of the material sandwiched between nanoscale layers that served as electrodes used to apply a voltage and generate an electric field.

Using beamlines in sectors 26-ID and 33-ID of Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne team members mapped the mesoscale structures within the relaxor. Key to success was a specialized capability called coherent X-ray nano-diffraction, available through the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (Sector 33-ID) operated by the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne and the APS. Both are DOE Office of Science-user facilities.

The results showed that under an electric field, the nanodomains self-assemble into mesoscale structures consisting of dipoles that align in a complex tilelike pattern (see image). The team identified the strain locations along the borders of this pattern and the regions responding more strongly to the electric field.

“These submicroscale structures represent a new form of nanodomain self-assembly not known previously,” noted John Mitchell, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow. “Amazingly, we could trace their origin all the way back down to underlying nanoscale atomic motions; it’s fantastic!”

“The brighter and more coherent X-ray beams now possible with the recent APS upgrade will allow us to continue to improve our device,” said Hao Zheng, the lead author of the research and now a beamline scientist at the APS. “We can then assess whether it has application for energy-efficient microelectronics such as neuromorphic computing modeled on the human brain.”

Low-power microelectronics are essential for addressing the ever-growing power demands from electronic devices around the world, including cell phones, desktop computers and supercomputers.

The research was supported by the DOE (DE-AC02-06CH11357, DE-AC02-06CH11357, DE-SC-0012375), the Army Research Laboratory (W911NF-24-2-0100), the Army Research Office (W911NF-21-1-0118) and the National Science Foundation (2329111).

Content adapted from an article by Joseph E. Harmon, Argonne National Laboratory. The content in this press release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the supporting institutions.

-30-

This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Peer-reviewed paper:

“Heterogeneous field response of hierarchical polar laminates in relaxor ferroelectrics” | Science | DOI: 10.1126/science.ado4494

Authors: Hao Zheng, Tao Zhou, Dina Sheyfer, Jieun Kim, Travis Frazer, Zhonghou Cai, Martin Holt, Zhan Zhang, J.F. Mitchell, Lane Martin and Yue Cao

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado4494

Image downloads:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2024/08/LMartin.jpg
CAPTION: Lane Martin is the Robert A. Welch Professor, professor of materials science and nanoengineering and director of the Rice Advanced Materials Institute at Rice University.(Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2024/08/ferroelectric.jpg
CAPTION: Vector field (left) representing the spatial distribution of projected lattice tilt in the relaxor ferroelectric material, where different orientations of the lattice tilt are labeled with different colors. Alignments of dipole directions (right) in mesoscale structures within a zoomed in region of the material. (Image courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

About Rice:

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of architecture, business, continuing studies, engineering, humanities, music, natural sciences and social sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,574 undergraduates and 3,982 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction, No. 2 for best-run colleges and No. 12 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.



Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ado4494

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Heterogeneous field response of hierarchical polar laminates in relaxor ferroelectrics

Article Publication Date

27-Jun-2024

COI Statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Metal–Sulfur Sites Boost MOF Hydrogenation Catalysis

Metal–Sulfur Sites Boost MOF Hydrogenation Catalysis

August 3, 2025
Bright Excitons Enable Optical Spin State Control

Bright Excitons Enable Optical Spin State Control

August 3, 2025

Flame Synthesis Creates Custom High-Entropy Metal Nanomaterials

August 2, 2025

Innovative Acid-Base Bifunctional Catalyst Enhances Production of Essential Lithium-Ion Battery Material

August 1, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • Blind to the Burn

    Overlooked Dangers: Debunking Common Myths About Skin Cancer Risk in the U.S.

    60 shares
    Share 24 Tweet 15
  • Neuropsychiatric Risks Linked to COVID-19 Revealed

    52 shares
    Share 21 Tweet 13
  • Dr. Miriam Merad Honored with French Knighthood for Groundbreaking Contributions to Science and Medicine

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Study Reveals Beta-HPV Directly Causes Skin Cancer in Immunocompromised Individuals

    38 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 10

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Micro- and Nanoplastics Threaten Early-Life Health: Risks

PI-RADS v2.1 Plus Amide Transfer Boosts Detection

Satellite and AI Unite to Estimate Underwater Sound Speed

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.