News Articles

Results 76–100 of 101
Date Inputs. Currently set to enter a start and end date.
–

Quantum-accurate multiscale modeling in highly compressed metals  
June 22, 2023 • Lasers are used to align diagnostics and hardware prior to shooting on Sandia's Z machine, the world's most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source. The development of equations-of-state and transport models in areas such as shock compression and fusion energy science is critical to DOE programs. Notable shortcomings in these...
Lasers are aligning diagnostics and hardware.

Improving predictive capability in REHEDS simulations with fast, accurate, and consistent nonequilibrium material properties 
June 22, 2023 • Sandia scientist Stephanie Hansen was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society by its Division of Plasma Physics. (Photo by Randy Montoya) Predictive design of experiments in Radiation, Electrical, and High Energy Density Science (REHEDS) requires knowledge of material properties (e.g., equations of state (EOS), transport coefficients, and radiation physics). Interpreting...
Sandia scientist Stephanie Hansen

Understanding the effects of radiation on reconfigurable phase change materials
June 22, 2023 • David Adams was elected Fellow and President of American Vacuum Society: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing in 2023. Chalcogenide thin films that undergo reversible phase changes show promise for next-generation nanophotonics, metasurfaces, and other emerging technologies. This general class of thin films can be switched rapidly between...
David Adams was elected Fellow and President of American Vacuum Society: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing in 2023.

Wide-bandgap semiconductors benefit from development of single-photo sources in gallium nitride 
June 8, 2023 • Single-photon sources based on atom-like features in solid-state materials offer the prospect for integrated, on-demand solid-state platforms and are being intensively explored for numerous mission-related quantum information technologies. Gallium nitride (GaN) is a very hard, mechanically stable wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor that permits devices to operate at much higher voltages, frequencies,...
A graphic showing a model of an atom over a wide-bandgap semiconductor

Understanding molecular-scale effects on fracture can inform resource extraction and help maintain the nation’s infrastructure 
June 8, 2023 • Three images show liquid nanoindentation setup, the indentation site, and water inside the crack tip in a molecular dynamics simulation. Subcritical fracture controls deformation and permeability of rocks and degradation of manmade materials. To further understand the chemical mechanisms controlling subcritical fracture, this three-year project created nanomechanical and continuum-scale mechanics...

New 2.5D neuromorphic discovery platform will enable AI-enhanced co-design 
June 7, 2023 • AI-enhanced co-design will be enabled through Sandia’s 2.5D neuromorphic discovery platform. Novel material and device concepts previously took years for iteration. Discoveries in this LDRD project will now allow them to be iterated on in weeks thanks to a new easy fabrication substrate platform for novel devices. The team designed...
A segmented graphic design showing six elements of Sandia’s 2.5D neuromorphic discovery platform.

Fin-ion tunable transistor for ultra-low power computing 
June 7, 2023 • Work on this project revealed fundamental principles of electrochemical random access memory and established a viable path toward its integration with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor. Data-heavy workflows such as AI require in to increase system efficiency. Work on this memory computing, so this LDRD team focused on creating analog resistive nonvolatile...
NM - 218372 - Ulta Low Power Computing.png

Biometric calcification for carbon sequestration from seawater 
June 7, 2023 • Numerous objectives are involved in helping researchers work on biomimetic calcification for carbon sequestration from seawater. An integrated data science and experimental approach is being taken to the challenges of direct capture of CO2 from the ocean. A large group of marine microalgae, coccolithophores, produce calcium carbonate (calcite) plates referred...
A circular diagram with the research project goal broken into three objectives being worked on by researchers.

Optimizing machine learning decisions with prediction uncertainty
May 9, 2023 • Digital background depicting innovative technologies in (AI) artificial systems, neural interfaces and internet machine learning technologies While ML classifiers are widespread, output is often not part of a follow-on decision-making process because of lack of uncertainty quantification. Through this project, the team developed decision analysis methods that combined uncertainty estimates...
Digital background image of brain connectors

Accelerating multiscale materials modeling with machine learning
May 9, 2023 • Multiscale materials modeling fundamental insight into microscopic mechanisms that determine materials properties in nuclear stockpile applications that leverage radiation harden semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, shock compression, and energetic materials. This LDRD team including three postdoctoral researchers developed a new ML surrogate model for density functional theory using deep neural networks to...
A cube with balls represents atoms configured on a grid.

Using nonlocal interface problem allows for 7x speedup in large-scale simulations
May 9, 2023 • Multimaterial problems exist in mission applications such as mechanics and subsurface transport. To capture effects arising from long-range forces at the microscale and mesoscale that aren’t accounted for by classical partial differential equations, the MAThematical foundations for Nonlocal Interface Problems (MATNIP) project team developed a mathematically rigorous interface theory employing...
Analytic solutions u 2D 0,0 for s = 0.4 and u 2D 1,1 for s = 0.6. The behaviour (3.17) close to the boundary is apparent.

Enabling fully predictive simulations using disruptive computational mechanics and novel diagnostics
April 10, 2023 • Sandia Researcher Rekha Rao Accurately capturing solidification of fluids and the development of residual stress is critical for fully predictive simulations for numerous applications in geoscience, nuclear safety, manufacturing, energy production, and bioscience. Researchers on this LDRD project developed, implemented, and demonstrated advanced constitutive models with yield stress to represent...
A female engineer

Using machine learning to create rapid stronglink mechanisms
April 10, 2023 • Computer aided design (CAD) to simulation workflows for nuclear deterrence (ND) have shown dramatic performance improvements with ML. This work targets some of the most inefficient, tedious, and error-prone bottlenecks using new ML-based methods. Common mechanisms such as fasteners and springs can now be quickly identified and reduced to simulation-ready...
A CAD model

Detonation in multilayer explosives: Effects of characteristic length scale of mixing
April 10, 2023 • Predicting explosive performance at length scales near the minimum needed for a detonation to propagate is often a challenge—surrounding materials, non-ideal interfaces, sample geometry, and local microstructure variations can all significantly impact explosive output. For accurate predictions of performance, reactive burn models are needed that can capture the details around...
A graphic indicates testing measurements

Predicting catastrophic failure and collapse in infrastructure
March 20, 2023 • The team, led by Sandia principal investigator Jessica Rimsza, developed new modeling capabilities for evaluating multiphase phenomena in cement-based materials in energy and infrastructure applications, a chemo-mechanical model for cement fracture, identified sources of uncertainty in cement degradation and concrete fracture, and created six new capabilities for modeling brittle fracture...
A large urban suspension bridge

Imaging the visible emissions from plasmas in pulsed power experiments
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

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

Secure bioscience design project expands CRISPR molecular toolkit
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...

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

The study of Z-pinches with engineered defects
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

Elongated ring polymers get tied up in knots
October 13, 2022 • Many polymer liquids flow easily when stretched gently but become viscous and solid-like when stretched rapidly. This phenomenon, known as strain hardening, happens when the liquid is deformed so fast that individual polymer chains become elongated at the molecular scale. Understanding the physics of strain hardening is important for a range...

Using the power of “super-small” to solve large-scale scientific problems
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...
Results 76–100 of 101