ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers want airports, border checkpoints and others to detect homemade explosives made with hydrogen peroxide without nabbing people whose toothpaste happens to contain peroxide. That’s part of the challenge faced in developing a portable sensor to detect a common homemade explosive called a FOx (fuel/oxidizer) mixture, made by mixing […]
Tag Archives: chemistry
Fertilizer that fizzles in a homemade bomb could save lives around the world
April 23, 2013 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A Sandia engineer who trained U.S. soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can’t detonate a bomb. It’s an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan. Sandia has decided not […]
Alloy developed at Sandia has potential for electronics in wells
March 19, 2013 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An alloy that may improve high-temperature electronics in oil and geothermal wells was really a solution in search of a problem. Sandia National Laboratories first investigated the gold-silver-germanium alloy about 15 years ago as a possible bonding material in a new neutron tube product. But a design change forced Sandia to shelve […]
Keeping tabs on the world’s dangerous chemicals
February 15, 2013 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – In the chemistry labs of the developing world, it’s not uncommon to find containers, forgotten on shelves, with only vague clues to their origins. The label, if there is one, is rubbed away. Left alone for years, some chemicals can quietly break down into explosive elixirs, and what was once an innocent […]
Four technology transfer awards go to Sandia Labs
October 22, 2012 – 10:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has won four awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Sandia’s efforts to develop and commercialize innovative technologies. The FLC’s Far West/Mid-Continent regional awards recognized Sandia’s technology transfer work with crystalline silico-titanates (CSTs), biomimetic membranes, the i-Gate Innovation Hub and DAKOTA software. “It is always gratifying when the […]
Fiery research: Sandia computers model rocket fuel fires
July 31, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Walt Gill of Sandia National Laboratories’ Fire & Aerosol Sciences Department calls it a pancake — a disk more than a foot in diameter covered with what looks like the debris you’d scrape off a particularly messy barbecue grill. It’s actually a crunchy, baked-on mixture of aluminum, aluminum oxide, carbon and other […]
National workshop brings career development help to Sandia postdocs, student interns
July 17, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The American Chemical Society’s ACS on Campus is bringing career development workshops for scientists and engineers to Sandia National Laboratories’ postdoctoral fellows and interns, only the second time the program has come to a national laboratory. ACS on Campus will kick off the evening of July 19 with a Science Café presentation […]
Small worlds come into focus with new Sandia microscope
June 11, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Paul Kotula recently told a colleague that Sandia’s new aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (AC-STEM) was like a Lamborghini with James Bond features. The $3.2 million FEI Titan G2 8200 is 50 to 100 times better than what came before, both in resolution and the time it takes to analyze a sample, […]
Sandia Labs’ unique approach to materials allows temperature-stable circuits
May 31, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Steve Dai jokes that his approach to creating materials whose properties won’t degenerate during temperature swings is a lot like cooking — mixing ingredients and fusing them together in an oven. Sandia has developed a unique materials approach to multilayered, ceramic-based, 3-D microelectronics circuits, such as those used […]
Sandia Labs technology used in Fukushima cleanup
May 29, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia National Laboratories technology has been used to remove radioactive material from more than 43 million gallons of contaminated wastewater at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Sandia researchers had worked around the clock following the March 2011 disaster to show the technology worked in seawater, which was pumped in […]
New model of geological strata may aid oil extraction, water recovery and Earth history studies
May 23, 2012 – 5:00 am
‘Largest known chemical wave’ caused previously unrecognized effects, said Sandia researcher ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia modeling study contradicts a long-held belief of geologists that pore sizes and chemical compositions are uniform throughout a given strata, which are horizontal slices of sedimentary rock. By understanding the variety of pore sizes and spatial patterns in strata, geologists […]
Sandia National Laboratories researchers find energy storage “solutions” in MetILs
February 17, 2012 – 8:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia researchers have developed a new family of liquid salt electrolytes, known as MetILs, that could lead to batteries able to cost-effectively store three times more energy than today’s batteries. The research, published in Dalton Transactions, might lead to devices that can help economically and reliably incorporate large-scale intermittent renewable energy sources, […]
Sandia chemists find new material to remove radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel
January 23, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Research by a team of Sandia chemists could impact worldwide efforts to produce clean, safe nuclear energy and reduce radioactive waste. The Sandia researchers have used metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to capture and remove volatile radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel. “This is one of the first attempts to use a MOF for iodine […]
Sandia researchers, UK partners publish groundbreaking work on Criegee intermediates in Science magazine
January 13, 2012 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — In a breakthrough paper (full text/PDF) published in this week’s issue of Science magazine, researchers from Sandia’s Combustion Research Facility, the University of Manchester and Bristol University report direct measurements of reactions of a gas-phase Criegee intermediate using photoionization mass spectrometry. (Click here to see a short video of Sandia combustion chemists discussing […]