Frank Bates didn't start out expecting to find a fundamental property of nature, but that's what he may have done.

Bates is a chemical engineer and materials scientist at the University of Minnesota. He makes block copolymers — a kind of plastic. Copolymer means they're made from two different plastics, the end product having the best properties of both.

"We had synthesized these molecules and wanted to know how they were organized down at the molecule scale," says Bates.

So he and his students went to the [DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team beamline at Sector 5 of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory], where there is a particularly powerful X-ray source, and shined a beam of X-rays on the block copolymers.

"We found something that was simply inexplicable," he says. They had a shape that no one had ever seen in a plastic before.

To read the rest of this NPR “Morning Edition” story, and listen to the broadcast, go to the NPR site here. (Copyright 2010 NPR)

See: Sangwoo Lee, Michael J. Bluemle,* Frank S. Bates*, “Discovery of a Frank-Kasper [sigma] Phase in Sphere-Forming Block Copolymer Melts,” Science 330(6002), 349 (15 October 2010). DOI: 10.1126/science.1195552

Author affiliation: University of Minnesota

Correspondence: *bates@cems.umn.edu

This work was supported by the Department of Energy through a subcontract to UT-Battelle (4000041622), the National Science Foundation through grant DMR-0704192, and the University of Minnesota Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). Portions of this work were performed at the DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT) located at Sector 5 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS). DND-CAT is supported by E. I. Dupont de Nemours & Company, the Dow Chemical Company, and the State of Illinois. Use of the APS was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. Parts of this work were carried out in the University of Minnesota I.T. Characterization Facility, which receives partial support from NSF through the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network program.

See also: “Recasting Metal Alloy Phases with Block Copolymers,” Mihai Peterca and Virgil Percec, Science Perspectives, Science 330(6002), 333 (15 October 2010). DOI: 10.1126/science.1196698]

The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DOE-BES). The APS is the source of the Western Hemisphere’s brightest high-energy x-ray beams for research in virtually every scientific discipline. More than 3,500 scientists representing universities, industry, and academic institutions from every U.S. state and several foreign nations visit the APS each year to carry out applied and basic research in support of the BES mission to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels in order to provide the foundations for new energy technologies and to support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security. To learn more about the Office of Basic Energy Sciences and its x-ray user facilities.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.