MAY 7, 2020 — New study led by Dr. Gang Liu from HPSTAR reported a new type of morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) in relaxor-PbTiO3 crystals. Such a novel MPB, referred as “diffused MPB”, results in both high piezoelectricity and thermal stability simultaneously, which is critical for the applications of ferroic materials. This work redefines the core concept in ferroelectrics, and opens a new way ...
2020-05-14
APRIL 26, 2020 — The search for polyhydride materials at high pressure has produced numerous predictions focused almost entirely on metallic superconductors. Intriguingly, a series of independent studies have postulated the anomalous emergence of semiconducting and semimetallic polyhydrides unique to the group 8 metals Fe, Ru, Os. Despite extensive study these materials have remained entirely...
2020-05-12
MAY 11, 2020 — How does nanostructured silicon deform has been the subject of a long-standing debate over the past decade. Now recent research from a team of scientists led by Dr. Zhidan Zeng from HPSTAR clarifies that pressure-induced phase transitions play a key role in the plastic deformation of compressed silicon nanoparticles. Their findings are reported in Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.11...
2020-05-11
MARCH 5, 2020 — New study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Qingyang Hu and Prof. Shengcai Zhu from Sun Yat-sen University found a quasi-reconstructive phase transition in ZnTe under different stress conditions. While phase transitions come in either displacive or reconstructive type, it occurs simultaneously in ZnTe when it was under pressure. The special type of phase transition reveals a...
2020-03-05
FEBRUARY 25, 2020 — According to the well-known Hall-Petch relationship, the strength of nanometals decreases when the grain size is smaller than 10 to 15 nanometers. New high-pressure compression study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Bin Chen from HPSTAR and Prof. Xiaoxu Huang from Chongqing University detected the strengthening in nano-grained nickel down to 3 nanometers. The yield strength...
2020-02-25
JANUARY 18, 2020 — New study from a team of scientists co-led by Dr. Duckyoung Kim from HPSTAR synthesized a new iron-based 2D ferromagnetic metal material, Fe4GeTe2 with the help of theoretical design. This new 2D ferromagnetic metal shows a nearly room temperature ferromagnetic order, together with a large magnetization and high conductivity and these properties could be retained in cleaved...
2020-01-18
JANUARY 17, 2020 — Metallic glasses are disordered alloys with many properties superior to conventional crystalline metals. Unlike crystalline materials that follow strict atomic-packing rules and imposed symmetry, in principle, metallic glasses have a high degree of freedom to arrange their atoms with almost infinite possibilities in their configuration space. However, in practice, effectively...
2020-01-17
JANUARY 3, 2020 — New work from a team of scientists led by Dr. Yang Ding from HPSTAR discovered a novel superstructure in 1T-type vanadium diselenide (VSe2) that converts sample from two-dimensional to three-dimensional at pressures >16 GPa (room temperature). They revealed that the pressure-induced superstructure is driven by the Fermi-surface nesting and at the same time enhanced by vanadium...
2020-01-03
DECEMBER 17, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists co-led by Drs. Qingyang Hu and Ho-kwang Mao from HPSTAR, discovered that stishovite — a major mineral in deep mantle, can incorporate large amounts of water in its crystal structure and the hydrous stishovite may be a key phase for transporting and storing water in earth lower mantle. The research is published in the recent issue of the...
2019-12-17
DECEMBER 15, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Huiyang Gou of HPSTAR reported the synthesis of high-quality single crystal of molybdenum boride by multianvil technique, which enables the understanding of long-standing uncertainties in structure and composition about this highest boride in Mo-B system. The superior mechanical properties and superconductivity were revealed...
2019-12-17
DECEMBER 14 — After long-term ploughing and weeding on functional materials with anti-perovskite structure, a joint group of scientists co-led by Dr. Yonggang Wang from HPSTAR, published a review paper on anti-perovskites with exceptional functionalities on Adv. Mater. (doi:10.1002/adma.201905007). This Review summarized recent advances in novel anti-perovskite materials with exceptional...
2019-12-16
DECEMBER 10, 2019 — Understanding the mechanism of volume collapse phenomena in rare-earth materials remains an important challenge in part due to lack of direct information on 4f electronic structures at highpressures. A group of scientists led by Dr. Yang Ding of HPSTAR, reported the first high-pressure inelastic x-ray scattering measurement on elemental cerium (Ce) metal. Their work revealed...
2019-12-10
DECEMBER 3, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists co-led by Dr. Cheng Ji and Dr. Ho-kwang Mao from HPSTAR performed the first combined infrared-Raman experiments on hydrogen phase IV, up to 280 GPa. By utilizing an advanced spectroscopy system which incorporates synchrotron Infrared (IR) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility and toroidal diamond anvils...
2019-12-10
OCTOBER 2, 2019 — Hydrogen-rich superhydrides are very promising candidates to achieve superconductivity close to room temperature. Most of the superhydrides stabilize at very high pressures. A team of scientist led by Dr. Nilesh P. Salke at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR) has discovered the cerium superhydride CeH9 at 80-100 GPa with laser heating....
2019-11-29
New work from a team led by HPSTAR’s Dr. Mingqiang Hou confirmed that aragonite — a high-pressure mineral form of CaCO3, will turn to a stable amorphous phase at the subduction zone conditions. This study proposed that the amorphous calcium carbonate may help cycle carbon to the surface. Their findings are published in recent Nature Communications.
2019-11-21
OCTOBER 7, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Xiaojia Chen from HPSTAR found that pressure can improve the ability of materials to turn heat into electricity and could potentially be used to create clean generators. The work is published in Nature Materials.
2019-10-08
SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 — An international team led by HPSTAR director Dr. Ho-Kwang Mao succeeded in determining how hydrogen molecules are packed at extremely high pressures. Their work solved the long-standing mystery of what is the structure of the dense form of hydrogen, called phase IV (Roman numeral four). This work is published in Nature.
2019-09-26
AUGUST 15, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Lin Wang of HPSTAR find pressure can effectively tune the photoreponses of nano heterojunction. They found a reversible inverse photoconductivity transition in WO3/CuO heterostructure under high pressure. Their study may provide an applicable tool with enhanced performance for photovoltaic devices, functioning as a switch, controller...
2019-08-16
JUNE 20, 2019 — New study from a team of scientists led by Dr. Lin Wang of HPSTAR applied high pressure to tune the physical properties of 2D hybride perovskite (C4H9NH3)2PbI4. They found that pressure can tremendously improve the performace of 2D perovskite — the band gap is narrowed by~54% and the carrier lifetime is 20 times longer for (C4H9NH3)2PbI4 (BA2PbI4) compared to the value at ambient ...
2019-08-12
JULY 22, 2019 — Extra capacity can be achieved by the redox of oxygen anions in addition to the redox of transition metals (Li/Na rich cathodes). However, the challenges remain in Li/Na rich cathodes are the reversible oxygen redox and the voltage decay/ hysteresis. A team of scientists co-led by Dr. Mingxue Tang from HPSTAR systematically investigated the mechanism behind the highly reversible...
2019-07-22