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Scientists are using Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, to discover how we can detoxify our electronic gadgets. Results published in the journal Applied Physics Letters on 1st October reveal the potential for new artificial materials that could replace lead-based components in everyday products from inkjet printers to digital cameras.
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The experiment undertaken on I16 showed strong evidence of twinning, from the ‘speckled’ Bragg peaks of manganites crystallites. This was consistent with a new theory of the connection between ab-twinning, a classic disorder mode of these layered materials, and the phase of the domain that contributes to a given Bragg peak.
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We show that small quantities of 1,3:2,4-di(4- chlorobenzylidene) sorbitol dispersed in poly(ε- caprolactone) provide a very effective self-assembling nanoscale framework which, with a flow field, yields extremely high levels of polymer crystal orientation. We have used the small-angle X-ray scattering beamline I22 at Diamond to follow in a time resolving manner the formation of the particles and the subsequent crystallisation of the polymer. During modest shear flow of the polymer melt, the ...
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Why do some fossils preserve soft tissue in very fine detail while others most of the detail is lost? After death there is a race against time between soft tissue destruction and mineralisation of the carcass. In some cases soft tissue becomes mineralised in a state similar to the living animal; in others, only bone survives. One theory is that if the body is allowed to dehydrate, for example during a period of drought, and later rehydrated, for example during a flood, the soft tissue may be ...
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Better understanding of the distribution of elastic and plastic strains in deformed polycrystalline, multiphase materials is important for structural engineering. The deformation response depends upon the interaction of grains of different orientations, and the anisotropy associated with each phase. Strain partitioning and tensile-compressive hardening asymmetry arises due to mismatches in modulus and ductility between grains and phases in alloys such as Ti-6Al-4V, or Ni-base superalloys ...
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Chirality, the property of an object to exist as distinguishable mirror image forms (known as enantiomers), is ubiquitous. Intriguingly, the chemistry of life is intrinsically homochiral, as biological molecules such as sugars, amino acids and DNA exist almost exclusively as only one enantiomer. Identifying potential mechanisms for such asymmetry is therefore of tremendous interest, not least because those mechanisms may also allow more efficient asymmetric synthesis of pharmaceuticals. In a ...
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Electronic devices are getting smaller all the time, and the challenge is to make the individual components as small as possible without affecting how they function. This includes the need for nanometre scale wires to be placed on electrically insulating substrates. We used a technique called metal vapour deposition to grow palladium nanostructures on a dielectric support. We then used Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) to identify two distinct structures: roughly hexagonal islands and ...
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We have demonstrated the use of a new technique for determining absolute crystal chirality by resonant X-ray diffraction of circularly polarized X-rays from a crystal of tellurium. The new approach is based on studies of ‘forbidden’ reflections, which, as the name implies, are normally considered not to exist. With the high-intensity X-ray beam available on Diamond beamline I16 such signals gain considerable intensity and are exceptionally sensitive to the chirality (handedness) of the ...
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Diamond Light Source has been used to profile a new zeolitic microporous solid, created via a process that had previously been thought impossible. Using beam line I15 researchers were able to perform high-pressure synchrotron X-ray diffraction analysis of a material known as a zeolite ITQ-29, and were able to study how it transitioned into a new zeolite. The research also showed that the daughter zeolite is a more efficient adsorber for carrying out the separation of propene from mixtures ...
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In 2006 the Stardust mission returned to Earth with the first bona fide samples of a short period comet 81P/Wild2. Micron – sized dust samples were collected from the coma of the comet at a closing velocity of 6 km/s. The Stardust sample analyses including the work carried out by us at Diamond has shown that the traditional ideas of all comets being predominantly a mixture of low temperature material with a high proportion of interstellar grains and secondly of a rigid distinction between ...
