Austria

It is common knowledge that batteries degrade with usage. Exactly how this happens and how could it be mitigated is cutting-edge research. Details of an important step forward have just been published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.

Using neutron spectroscopy data taken at ILL, researchers achieved a novel understanding of molecular movement at the nanoscale, providing new insights that may impact the design of future materials and technologies. The study has just been published in the Nature Portfolio open access journal Communications Chemistry – and is featured (as a banner) on the journal homepage.

The global need to transition to a sustainable and clean energy future has brought hydrogen to the forefront as a promising clean energy carrier. Efficient and safe storage is a key challenge and hydrogen storage in activated carbons is a promising option. Investigating the fundamental interactions between hydrogen and nanoporous carbon at the atomic level can provide vital information for enhancing the storage efficiency of these materials. Neutron scattering is sensitive to hydrogen, thus opening the possibility for many different insights. This paper reports on a SANS (Small-Angle Neutron Scattering) study using ILL’s highly versatile neutron diffractometer D16 to investigate hydrogen and deuterium adsorption in nanoporous activated carbon cloth as a function of (micro)pore size. These findings will contribute to a better understanding of the processes involved and will influence the design of materials for efficient hydrogen storage devices working at realistic cryogenic conditions and low pressures.

Understanding the interactions of biomolecules such as proteins or drugs with the membrane of cells is important in biomedical research and for the pharmaceutical industry. The sensitivity of neutrons to hydrogen atoms make neutron scattering a unique probe.

© Nobel Prize Outreach The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 jointly to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneeri…

Breakthrough in neutron physics: A team from TU Vienna, INRIM Turin and ILL Grenoble has succeeded for the first time in building a neutron interferometer from two separate crystals.