The Advanced Photon Source
a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility

How to 3D-Print One of the Strongest Stainless Steels:  Many critical technologies contain a remarkably strong and corrosion-resistant alloy called 17-4 precipitation hardening stainless steel. Based on high-speed data obtained using high-energy x-rays from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source researchers identified particular 17-4 steel compositions that, when printed, match the properties of the conventionally manufactured version.

A New Focus Emerges for Barocaloric Cooling Research:  Barocaloric cooling is one of several new technologies promising improved efficiency and reduced emissions. Experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source showed that order-disorder transitions of hydrocarbons within the organic bilayers of select two-dimensional metal-halide perovskites can be tuned to achieve colossal barocaloric effects.

Understanding Phase Separation Could Impact Treatment of Neurodegenerative Disease:  Recent work that relied on data gathered at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source will provide important information about the causes of diseases like ALS.

Researchers Develop a Cobalt-Free Cathode for Lithium-Ion Batteries:  Researchers using three U.S. Department of Energy x-ray light source user facilities, including the Advanced Photon Source, have devised a way to make lithium-ion battery cathodes without using cobalt, a mineral plagued by price volatility and geopolitical complications.

Studying Unique Alloy Allies for Better Device Technology:  Better alloys lead to better devices. Additive manufacturing allows engineers to make finely tuned alloys with previously unattainable combinations of properties. Researchers used the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source to look at an alloy of copper and iron under extremely high pressures. Their results confirmed computational models of iron and copper alloys, and show how to precisely tailor alloys at high pressures.

Quantum Leap: Advancing High-Temperature Superconductor Research:  Researchers have discovered that nickel, a neighbor of copper on the periodic table, can also superconduct as an oxide, but so far only as an atomically thin film. Data collected at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source may help explain why these crystals do not superconduct and how they might be coaxed into this exotic quantum state.

New Research May Enhance Disease Resistance in Plants:  By combining cryo-EM with x-ray crystallography at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source researchers has uncovered new avenues for engineering disease resistance in crops while explaining decades of previous research on a master regulator of plant immunity.

Diamonds and Rust at the Earth's Core-Mantle Boundary:  Experiments replicating conditions at Earth’s core-mantle boundary using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source found that water and metal react and make iron oxides and iron hydroxides, just like rusting at Earth’s surface, but unlike rusting at Earth’s surface, carbon comes out of the liquid iron metal alloy and forms diamond.

Fine-Tuning Breast Cancer Treatment to Overcome Drug Resistance:  Recent findings based on data from studies at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source may lead to the design of new second-line breast cancer treatments or to strategies for fine-tuning the sequencing of treatments to optimize the characteristics of different drugs to avoid resistance mechanisms.

Targeting Cancer at the Level of DNA Expression:  Research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source based on the discovery that DNA in the promoter region of many genes forms higher order structures that could provide unique druggable targets for intervention, extends our structural knowledge of three important mutated genesinvolved in uncontrolled cell growth or activation of cellular signaling; inhibiting these mutated genes has proven to be effective in stopping the growth of many cancers.

Better-Educated Neural Networks for Nanoscale 3-D Coherent X-ray Imaging:  One of the inescapable realities of various imaging techniques is called the phase problem: the loss of phase information in imaging methods such as x-ray diffraction. Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source have demonstrated a new approach to this perennial obstacle: a deep-learning neural network with enhanced accuracy to perform fast 3-D nanoscale imaging from coherent x-ray data.