Industry Partnerships
Research Areas
As one of the newest, most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world, NSLS-II enables its growing research community to study materials with nanoscale resolution and exquisite sensitivity by providing cutting-edge capabilities. By creating this new, deeper understanding of materials, these research teams advance our knowledge in a wide range of scientific disciplines such as life sciences, quantum materials, energy storage, advanced materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology.
Advanced Manufacturing
With the promise of faster and more cost-effective production of parts, advanced manufacturing has progressed in both industrial processes, as well as in the greater research community. The additive nature of the production process opens a wide variety of research and development questions such as reproducibility, process-properties relationships, and more.
NSLS-II offers non-destructive research tools to investigate the properties of manufactured parts, as well as to study the additive manufacturing process. It is possible to measure the structural changes in a part during printing or curing and compare these to the final mechanical properties of the product. Further possible investigations include strain, stress, surface finishes, and material discontinuities.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Phase diagrams
- Stress profiles
- Strain mapping for creep
- Morphological and rheological evolution in high temporal and spatial resolution
- Shear thinning and recovery
- Shear-induced alignment of filler
- Polymerization during curing
- Road-to-road inter-diffusion
- Structure characterization correlated with performance
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Chemical state and local atomic structure for corrosion
- Element specific for elemental segregation
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- 3D morphology for strain analysis
- Curvature analysis to reveal stress distribution
- Microstructural evolution and distribution in 3D
- Chemical mapping
- Elemental specification
Advanced Materials
Novel materials synthesis, engineering, processing, and modeling allows us to create advanced or emerging materials with properties that go beyond the ordinary to meet challenging applications and environments. Since advanced materials include all material types such as metals, ceramics, polymers, biomaterials, smart materials, quantum and complex materials, and nanoengineered materials, researchers need a collection of tools to understand and control the behavior of these materials.
NSLS-II provides a series of unique capabilities to investigate the nanoscale electronic, atomic, and molecular interactions as well as the emergent electrical, magnetic, thermodynamic, and mechanical properties of advanced materials.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Heterogeneities
- Nano strain distribution
- In situ/operando synthesis with on time structure characterization
- In situ/operando structural characterization under extreme conditions such as temperature or pressure and under working conditions
- Identification of metastable phases
- Electronic texture and dynamics of composite materials
- Nano and meso scale characterization of bulk and interfacial structures
- Antiferromagnetic domain and boundaries study
- Orbital ordering
- Nanostructure of self-assembly
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Charge stripes in relations with superconductivity
- Defects induced electronic structure relations with efficiency in LEDs
- Electron behavior study in quantum materials
- Growth pathway at the atomic level
- Thermal radiation properties
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- 3D morphological evolutions
- Structural heterogeneity from nano- to micro-scales
- Species migration
- Ultra-high spatial resolution imaging
- Nanostructure at grain boundaries
- Size distribution
- Elemental tracking
Biological and Environmental Research
Climate change, pollution, and environmental contamination are challenges affecting our daily lives in many areas, such an energy security, health, and food security. The increasing demand for sustainable solutions in industrial sectors such as agriculture, mineral mining, oil drilling, food manufacturing, and human health increases the research interest into biological, environmentally friendly materials, as well as into the underlying processes that cause these challenges.
NSLS-II provides various unique and advanced x-ray technologies to help understand the fundamental physics and chemistry of heterogeneous environmental and biological systems. We also offer expertise in sample preparation and experimental design for more challenging problems.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Rheological properties under extreme pressure and temperature
- Mineral phase transitions, melting, acoustoelastic effect
- Hierarchical structure and chemical property of mineral interfaces in waste storage and environmental transport
- Relationship of contaminant to the components, which they interact with
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Contaminant distribution and speciation
- Nitrogen speciation of soils, trace element identification and distribution in the environment
- Composition of complex agglomerates
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- Morphology and mobility of nutrients, pollutants, and contaminants
- Structure of biofilms formed by microorganisms
- Radionuclide interactions with environmental materials
- Nuclear waste speciation
Energy Storage & Renewable Energy
Energy storage and conversion are essential in our modern lives. The demand for more efficient and cost-effective energy systems increases on an almost daily basis. In turn, this creates the need for more and more research and development take place to improve existing technologies, such as fuel cells, rechargeable batteries, solar cells, and photovoltaics. To fully comprehend the function and chemistry during energy storage and conversion, researchers need specialized tools that enable investigation during working conditions, such as charging and discharging.
NSLS-II offers a wide array of beamlines with specialized techniques to study materials for energy storage in real time under working conditions, providing insights into electrochemical reaction mechanisms of materials, and identifying causes of performance failure.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Phase transformation during charging and discharging under working conditions
- Structural transformation as a function of growth time of particles inside batteries and fuel cells
- Phase propagation in real time inside energy storage at system scale
- In situ time-resolved formation of nanoparticles
- Grain structure, orientation
- Stress, strain distribution
- Domain and interface structure during film deposition
- Surface and interface structure of photovoltaics
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Electrochemical reactions in electrode materials of batteries during charging and discharging
- Catalytic reaction in fuel cells
- Degradation mechanism during cycling
- Reaction pathways
- Element specific identification
- Local environment around specific elements
- Charge transfer process
- Decrepitation of materials when hydrogenated
- Thermal decomposition during heating
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- 3D internal structure at nanometer resolution during cycling
- 2D chemical mapping during charging and discharging
- In situ 3D morphological evolution
- 3D elemental mapping
- Strain distribution
- Porosity and tortuosity
- Dynamic dendrite growth
- Crack and stress mapping
Microelectronics
With the rapid development of computing and communication devices, the design, manufacturing, and global distribution of microchips have brought security to the forefront. The ever-decreasing size of chips, down to the nanoscale, makes manufacturing variability (or inconsistencies) and an increased security threat for integrated circuits much more commonplace throughout the world. To fulfill the urgent need for safety and reliability of microchips, researchers need specialized tools to investigate these chips in a non-destructive way at the nanoscale.
NSLS-II offers a wide range of research methods to study the internal structure, electronic properties, and function of microchips. Beyond structural and electronic studies, these capabilities also include 2D and 3D mapping and visualization.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Anomalous lattice expansion of coherently strained SrTiO3 thin films grown on silicon
- Agglomeration control by controlling d-spacing of lattice planes in the film
- Metastable phase information
- Microstructure phase transition
- Grain size engineering
- In-plane stress gradients on Cu films by capping layer
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Local atomic and chemical environment of the strain-induced ferroelectric phase transition in SrTiO3 thin films on Si
- Electronic structure in nanofilm, changes in band structure
- Phase transition for aging
- Molecular composition, sensing molecules at metal surfaces
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- 3D structure and chemical mapping at nm resolution
- 3D strain mapping
- 2D/3D composition mapping
- Electromigration at nm resolution
- Defect identification
- Doping distribution
- Microfeature strain
- Strain modeling: Si3N4/SOI
- Phase transition at ultra-high resolution
- Structure changes from ferroelectric switch
Petrochemicals/Catalysis
Reducing greenhouse gas emission, turning greenhouse gases into useful chemicals, and managing corrosion is an ever-increasing challenge in our modern world. To keep greenhouse gases at manageable levels, researchers work to improve techniques such as absorption, adsorption, membrane separation, and conversion to carbon monoxide. In a similar fashion, corrosion management is being moved forward through development of corrosion resistant materials, coatings, and environmentally friendly inhibitors. In both cases, researchers require tools that allow them to model the synthesis of nanoporous materials, or study novel materials and conversion processes, for chemical agents of interest.
NSLS-II offers these capabilities and additional tools for analyzing the structural evolution during polymer synthesis with active-additives.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- Structure of MOF, mechanism of adsorption and reaction
- Phase diagram and effects of the environment
- Nanoparticle identification and structure
- Interface and alloy components
- Interference, atomic disorder
- Interparticle correlation
- Modeling for design
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Chemical state and local atomic structure
- Identifying active components
- Electronic structure influence
- Validating catalytic process
- Clarifying the path of active reaction
- Precision of synthesis improvement
- Chemical structure effect
- Surface defects effect
- Adsorption and decomposition
- Surface modulation
- Mechanism for reversible
Imaging and microscopy capabilities
- Chemical phase distribution in 3D
- Microstructural evolution
- Dendrite growth
- Correlation between performance and properties
Pharmaceuticals
Many of our modern developments in medicine and biotechnology have been made possible through our understanding of how biological structures interact with each other. During the development of pharmaceuticals, researchers need a variety of information such as the 3D structure of the drug target.
NSLS-II provides an effective way to solve macromolecular structures at atomic resolution for drug discovery. We have highly automated instruments that are designed for high throughput and handling extremely small crystals by using micro-focused x-ray beams. Beyond structural analysis, NSLS-II also has the capability to study active ingredients, impurities, and amorphous dispersion of drugs with polymers to improve drug solubility and bioavailability.
Research Possibilities
Diffraction and scattering capabilities
- 3D structural analysis for proteins and protein complexes
- Structure of active ingredients
- Impurity phases from drug substance
- Structure of amorphous dispersions of drug combined with polymers
Spectroscopy capabilities
- Structure and dynamics of macromolecules in solution
In addition to the protein crystallography to solve macromolecular structure, NSLS-II also provides state-of-the-art Cryo-EM to solve structures of macromolecules at similar resolution as crystallography.
