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Sandia Labs News Releases

Category Archives: Nanotechnology

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Sandia awarded for outstanding work in technology transfer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One of Sandia National Laboratories’ core missions is to help the world through innovation. However, transferring some of that innovation from the Labs to industry isn’t always an easy process. Through hard work and ingenuity, some Sandia employees are excelling at moving technology to market, a feat that is now being honored […]

Great Minds in STEM salutes Sandia Labs engineer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories mechanical engineer Frank DelRio likes to think small — microscopically small. His groundbreaking work in nanomechanics and nanotribology earned him a trip to Pasadena, California, recently for the 2022 Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference, where he was honored for his technical achievements. “Through nanomechanics, we look at how […]

Most Promising Engineer of the Year honor goes to Sandia scientist

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories research and development manager Bishnu Khanal was recently honored with the Most Promising Asian American Engineer of the Year award for his work in next-generation optical lithography process development for numerous technologies, along with his deep-reaching community service. According to Asian American Engineer of the Year, Khanal was selected […]

Through the quantum looking glass

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An ultrathin invention could make future computing, sensing and encryption technologies remarkably smaller and more powerful by helping scientists control a strange but useful phenomenon of quantum mechanics, according to new research recently published in the journal Science. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of […]

Guangping Xu employs a digital optical microscope

Seashell-inspired Sandia shield protects materials in hostile environments

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Word of an extraordinarily inexpensive material, lightweight enough to protect satellites against debris in the cold of outer space, cohesive enough to strengthen the walls of pressurized vessels experiencing average conditions on Earth and yet heat-resistant enough at 1,500 degrees Celsius or 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit to shield instruments against flying debris, raises […]

Foreground: Two men, one passing a nickel-sized wafer. Background: A device for testing the diodes on the wafer and a computer screen showing an array of dots/diodes

Record-breaking, ultrafast devices step to protecting the grid from EMPs

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have announced a tiny, electronic device that can shunt excess electricity within a few billionths of a second while operating at a record-breaking 6,400 volts — a significant step towards protecting the nation’s electric grid from an electromagnetic pulse. The team published the fabrication and testing results […]

Look who’s turning 25

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is celebrating 25 years of research conducted at its Z Pulsed Power Facility — a gymnasium-sized accelerator commonly referred to as Z or the Z machine. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only a limited number of former leaders of the pulsed power program at Sandia will gather Friday to share […]

Battery Team

The hidden culprit killing lithium-metal batteries from the inside

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For decades, scientists have tried to make reliable lithium-metal batteries. These high-performance storage cells hold 50% more energy than their prolific, lithium-ion cousins, but higher failure rates and safety problems like fires and explosions have crippled commercialization efforts. Researchers have hypothesized why the devices fail, but direct evidence has been sparse. Now, […]

World’s smallest, best acoustic amplifier emerges from 50-year-old hypothesis

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have built the world’s smallest and best acoustic amplifier. And they did it using a concept that was all but abandoned for almost 50 years. According to a paper published May 13 in Nature Communications, the device is more than 10 times more effective than the earlier […]

Michael Goldflam, Sandia National Laboratories

Seeing infrared: Sandia’s nanoantennas help detectors see more heat, less noise

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —  Sandia National Laboratories researchers have developed tiny, gold antennas to help cameras and sensors that “see” heat deliver clearer pictures of thermal infrared radiation for everything from stars and galaxies to people, buildings and items requiring security. In a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, a team of researchers developed a nanoantenna-enabled […]

Katherine Jungjohann

Thwarting oil-pipeline corrosion by identifying a nanoscale villain

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Steel pipes rust and eventually fail. To preempt disasters, oil companies and others have created computer models to predict when replacement is needed. But if the models themselves go wrong, they can be modified only through experience, a costly problem if detection comes too late. Now, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, the […]

Ed Bielejec

Quantum research gets a boost at Sandia

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Department of Energy has awarded Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories $8 million for quantum research — the study of the fundamental physics of all matter — at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. The award will fund two three-year projects enabling scientists at the two labs to build advanced tools for […]

Fighting Friction

Most wear-resistant metal alloy in the world engineered at Sandia National Laboratories

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If you’re ever unlucky enough to have a car with metal tires, you might consider a set made from a new alloy engineered at Sandia National Laboratories. You could skid — not drive, skid — around the Earth’s equator 500 times before wearing out the tread. Sandia’s materials science team has engineered […]

Hongyou Fan

Large supercrystals promise superior sensors

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Using an artful combination of nanotechnology and basic chemistry, Sandia National Laboratories researchers have encouraged gold nanoparticles to self-assemble into unusually large supercrystals that could significantly improve the detection sensitivity for chemicals in explosives or drugs. “Our supercrystals have more sensing capability than regular spectroscopy instruments currently in use, just like a […]

Tiny rectangular chip with etch patterns next to a plasma shere.

Generating electrical power from waste heat

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Directly converting electrical power to heat is easy. It regularly happens in your toaster, that is, if you make toast regularly. The opposite, converting heat into electrical power, isn’t so easy. Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have developed a tiny silicon-based device that can harness what was previously called waste heat and […]

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