CFN

The following guest post was written by Wei-Qiang Han, a materials scientist working at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials. Wei-Qiang Han With gasoline prices still hovering near $4 per gallon, scientists at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) are helping to develop electric vehicles capable of driving hundreds of miles on a single charge. A new compound of five tin atoms and one iron atom (FeSn5) created at the CFN is another development along the road to higher capacity lithium-ion batteries for those vehicles of the future. Compared to other…
Thanks to the smart nano detectives out there who took a stab at solving yesterday's picture puzzle. Mystery image #1, aka the "Nano Vortex," shows the different magnetization directions of an arrangement of nickel and nickel oxide. Captured by Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) scientist Yimei Zhu, this photo reveals the local distribution of electromagnetic potential. The ability to directly observe electromagnetic properties at the nanoscale may help scientists engineer new materials that rely on magnetic spin - rather than just electric charge - to control electric current. Such "…