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Accelerating phase field simulations to understand liquid-metal dealloying

News Article, March 3, 2025 • Liquid metal dealloying. The initial species fields (cA and cB at t=0) are contaminated with low-amplitude random white noise (left fields). Given the chaotic nature of the dealloying process, the initial noise perturbation eventually leads to widely different solid phase fields at late time (e.g., right fields, at t=6⁢μs, after 6 million time steps). When...

Catherine Mageeney is seeking a “kill shot” in bacterial pathogens

News Article, January 17, 2023 • Catherine Mageeney, a senior member of Sandia’s technical staff in bioengineering and biotechnology, has expertise in phage biology and genetics with broad applications and implications for scientific research. Phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, are the most numerous and diverse biological-organism in Earth’s biosphere. With approximately 1031 existing phages to be...
Catherine Mageeney in front of Sandia’s Thunderbird logo.

Deeper insight into radiation-formed defects

News Article, March 3, 2025 • Scientists at Sandia have created a new way to create atomic structures that show the important features of different materials. In the past, scientists could only recreate certain characteristics, like how atoms are arranged in a random mixture, using small crystal structures. Now, they have introduced a new method called...

Enhancing metasurface performance potential

News Article, March 3, 2025 • By rotating the 𝐶3 symmetry breaking deformation ( 𝜑), the angular positions of the Dirac points and the corresponding polarization singularities for both bands can be controlled. New uses for metasurfaces in both regular and quantum optics are creating a need for better control over how light is polarized, especially...

Exascale Earth System Model will harness the next level of supercomputer

News Article, October 12, 2022 • Sandia visualization experts are working with climate scientists to visualize complex simulation results from the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) as part of a DOE project sponsored by the Office of Science. The Sandia team has developed visualization workflows that incorporate DOE open-source visualization tools like ParaView with commercial...
Image of Exascale Earth System Model

High-quality feedstocks address sustainability challenges associated with rising global demand for protein

News Article, January 23, 2023 • RuBisCO variants increase Methionine and Lysine content. (Graphic courtesy of Sandia Licensing and Technology Transfer.) Ryan Davis, a principal member of Sandia’s technical staff in Bioresource and Environmental Security, and his team developed a high-quality feedstock to address sustainability challenges to meet the growing global demand for protein. RuBisCO (Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate...
Image of a male scientist looking at a test tube

Imaging gas-phase methyl radicals

News Article, March 3, 2025 • Positive and negative correlations of measured gas-phase methyl and formaldehyde with predicted surface coverages Scientists at Sandia are studying how certain chemical reactions happen on surfaces, especially when using special techniques that allows them to see what is occurring while the reactions are taking place. This is important because many...

Imaging the visible emissions from plasmas in pulsed power experiments

News Article, March 16, 2023 • The center section of Sandia's Z Machine Low density plasmas are predicted to impact Sandia’s Z machine experiments in a variety of ways. Magnetic Resonance Tomography instability development during the target implosion can lead to broad trailing density profiles and potentially redistribute current away from the on-axis stagnation region. Low...
A technician gets a target ready for the center section in the Z machine pulsed power facility

Lignin processing with machine learning approaches

News Article, March 3, 2025 • The schematic diagram for screening of solvents for lignin dissolution. Using ionic liquids (IL) to break down and make use of lignin is really important for creating eco-friendly energy sources and a sustainable economy. Scientists at Sandia, who are part of the Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), are looking closely at...

Secure bioscience design project expands CRISPR molecular toolkit

News Article, January 17, 2023 • The Intrinsic Control for Genome and Transcriptome Editing in Communities (InCoGenTEC) project team, exploiting the CRISPR-associated (CRISPR-Cas) system in bacteria, developed a novel variant of the Cas13 enzyme by fusing it to translation Initiation Factor IF3, enhancing protein expression 21.3-fold above Cas13 alone. InCoGenTEC, led by NTESS for DOE’s Biological...

Stability of disconnections in solute atmosphere

News Article, March 3, 2025 • Disconnections, such as the disconnection dipole shown here from relaxed molecular dynamics simulations, are found on many grain boundaries and postulated to regulate boundary mobility. (b) An atomic-scale map of the segregation energy of dilute Ag atoms in a Cu matrix illustrating a zone of strong segregation (blue) for preferred...

The study of Z-pinches with engineered defects

News Article, October 13, 2022 • 3D-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of electrothermal instability growth by studying Z-pinches with engineered defects Electrothermal instability (ETI) is driven by Joule heating and arises from the dependence of resistivity on temperature. When a metal is Joule-heated through the boiling point, ETI drives azimuthally correlated surface density variations or “strata,” which provide the dominant seed...
3D-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of electrothermal instability growth by studying Z-pinches with engineered defects

Using the power of “super-small” to solve large-scale scientific problems

News Article, October 13, 2022 • Sandia builds a testbed for powerful quantum computing hardware and scientific applications. Try this thought experiment: imagine a small measurable quantity of something—perhaps a grain of sand or a point of light—then cut it in half, again and again. When you reach the smallest quantity, such as a photon of...