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

What Bacterial Pathogens Can Teach Us about Protein Folding:  Protein folding is one of the fascinating unanswered questions in biology. The authors of studies carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source believe their work will provide important information toward understanding basic questions of protein folding and test long-held theories about how this remarkable biological process works.

Multi-Scale Experiments Inform Modeling of Titanium Alloy Durability:  Titanium alloys have been widely used in the biomedical and aerospace industries for decades, but the mechanisms associated with their deformation and the ensuing mechanical properties are still not well understood. Experimental data obtained at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source hold promise for improving in the time-dependent fatigue behavior of alloy components.

New Structures of SARS-CoV-2 Lead to Improved Understanding of Viral Replication Engine:  Researchers conducting experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source make significant strides in understanding the structures, active sites, and reactivity of SARS-CoV-2, which may lead to a better understanding of why SARS-CoV-2 is much more transmittable in comparison to other coronaviruses like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.

Fine Tuning Single-Atom Catalysts with LCSCs:  Single-atom catalysis offers possibilities to increase catalyst selectivity and efficiency, but stability can be a problem.  One solution is the use of ligand-coordinated supported catalysts.  Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source demonstrated that the strategy stabilizes the structure and activity of single-atom metal centers and allows them to be tuned and engineered for specific catalytic applications.

Frustrated Antiferromagnet Jarosite Collapses under Pressure:  Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source and National Synchrotron Light Source II investigating the pressure-temperature phase diagram of jarosite at pressures up to 121 GPa found that it’s antiferromagnetic magnetic order disappeared at ~45 GPa and probed for an explanation of this surprising behavior.

Kitaev Quantum Spin Liquid Revealed by Phonons:  An international research team using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source has demonstrated a new technique for detecting exotic quantum states in crystalline materials, demonstrating that phonons can be used to identify quantum spin liquids and other quantum states, providing scientists a powerful new tool for probing a wide variety of promising materials for these exotic phenomena.

Catching Proteins in the Act of Unfolding:  The process by which proteins fold and unfold is vital to most cellular functions. An international team of scientists using x-ray data they obtained at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source demonstrated the success of their method for detailing the structures as a protein unfolds in real time, opening a new avenue for studying this crucial process.

Measuring Cartilage Dynamics at Nanoscale:  Researchers used high brightness x-rays at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source to advance our understanding of cartilage dynamics and demonstrate a valuable new research tool. 

Carbonate-induced Melting in the Deep Upper Mantle:  This research, carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, will foster a better understanding of the role of carbon in the Earth’s geochemical and geophysical systems.

Taking Lessons from a Sea Slug, Study Points to Better Hardware for Artificial Intelligence:  A new study by researchers who carried out experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source has found that a material can mimic the sea slug’s most essential intelligence features. The discovery is a step toward building hardware that could help make AI more efficient and reliable for technology ranging from self-driving cars and surgical robots to social media algorithms.

Proteins of a Feather Come Together to Create Color:  Biologists would like to understand how and why birds are brightly colored. Some materials scientists look to nature to find better ways to recreate such colors. A study conducted using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source points to possible answers to both those questions and represents the first directly self-assembled single gyroid crystals known to science, potentially opening new photonic technologies.