2020 New's Items

Metal wires of carbon complete toolbox for carbon-based computers

September 24, 2020
Robert Sanders |College of Chemistry

“Using chemistry, we created a tiny change, a change in just one chemical bond per about every 100 atoms, but which increased the metallicity of the nanoribbon by a factor of 20, and that is important, from a practical point of view, to make this a good metal.”

Transistors based on carbon rather than silicon could potentially boost computers’ speed and cut their power consumption more than a thousandfold — think of a mobile phone that holds its charge for months — but the set of tools needed to build working carbon circuits has remained incomplete until now.

A team of...

https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/news/metal-wires-carbon-complete-toolbox-carbon-b…

Peidong Yang awarded 2020 Global Energy Prize

September 10, 2020
College of Chemistry

Peidong Yang, S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, has been recognized as one of three laureates of the 2020 Global Energy Prize(link is external) for the pioneering invention of nanoparticle based solar cell and artificial photosynthesis.

Professor Yang joins Nobel Laureate ...

https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/news/peidong-yang-awarded-2020-global-energy-priz…

New $115 Million Quantum Systems Accelerator to Pioneer Quantum Technologies for Discovery Science

August 26, 2020
Dan Krotz | Berkeley Lab

The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $115 million over five years to the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), a new research center led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that will forge the technological solutions needed to harness quantum information science for discoveries that benefit the world. It will also energize the nation’s research community to ensure U.S. leadership in quantum R&D and accelerate the transfer of quantum technologies from the...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/26/quantum-systems-accelerator/

Kristin Persson Named LBNL, Molecular Foundry Director

August 5, 2020
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

Kristin Persson, a senior faculty scientist in the Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division within the Energy Technologies Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and director of the Materials Project, has been named director of the Molecular Foundry. Her new appointment is effective August 15, 2020. She will continue to hold an appointment as a professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. The announcement follows an international search.

“Kristin...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/05/persson-director-molecular-foundry/

Paul Alivisatos Wins Priestley Award

July 2, 2020
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

Paul Alivisatos, an internationally renowned chemist who holds joint appointments with the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, has been awarded the 2021 Priestley Medal, the highest honor of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Alivisatos is the seventh Berkeley Lab scientist to win the award.

Alivisatos, who is receiving the award for his “foundational contributions to the chemistry of nanoscience, development of nanocrystals as nanotechnology building blocks, and leadership in the chemistry and nanoscience communities,” is...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/07/02/alivisatos-wins-priestley-award/

MSD's Lanzara and Orenstein Awarded Moore Foundation Grants

May 28, 2020
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded grants to support twenty U.S. scientists as experimental investigators in the Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) Initiative. Each investigator will receive $1.6 million of unrestricted support over the next five years to pursue innovative, risky research with a potential for significant advances in the concepts and methods used to investigate quantum materials. The collective impact of these investigators will produce a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental organizing principles of complex quantum matter in solids...

https://www.moore.org/article-detail?newsUrlName=new-awards-to-enable-experiment…

This COVID-19 Detector Has Berkeley Lab Robots

May 21, 2020
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

A technology spun from carbon nanotube sensors discovered 20 years ago by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists could one day help health care providers test patients for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

When Alex Zettl, Marvin Cohen, and their research teams at Berkeley Lab first demonstrated...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/05/21/covid-19-detector/

Q&A With Materials Project Director Kristin Persson

May 8, 2020
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

Kristin Persson is at the helm of a materials revolution.

Since 2011, she has led the Materials Project, an open-access online database that virtually delivers the largest collection of materials properties to scientists from every corner of the globe who are searching for the next big thing in batteries, solar cells, and computer chips.

Harnessing the power of supercomputers at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/05/08/materials-project-qa-persson/

Capturing 3D Images of Nanoparticles, Atom by Atom

April 9, 2020
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

Since their invention in the 1930s, electron microscopes have helped scientists peer into the atomic structure of ordinary materials like steel, and even exotic graphene. But despite these advances, such imaging techniques cannot precisely map out the 3D atomic structure of materials in a liquid solution, such as a catalyst in a hydrogen fuel cell, or the electrolytes in your car’s battery.

Now, researchers at Berkeley Lab, in collaboration with the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea, Monash University in Australia, and UC Berkeley, have developed a technique that...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/04/09/3d-nanoparticles-atom-by-atom/

On Mars or Earth, Biohybrid Can Turn CO2 Into New Products

March 31, 2020
Robert Sanders | Berkeley News

If humans ever hope to colonize Mars, the settlers will need to manufacture on-planet a huge range of organic compounds, from fuels to drugs, that are too expensive to ship from Earth.

University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) chemists have a plan for that.

For the past eight years, the researchers have been working on a hybrid system combining bacteria and nanowires that can capture the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into building blocks for organic molecules. Nanowires are thin silicon wires about...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/31/on-mars-or-earth-biohybrid-can-turn-co2-int…