Active Projects - FY 2016
New LDRD Projects
Lead Scientist: John Bargar
This LDRD will develop capabilities to produce functional proteins and their complexes from environmental matagenomes, and characterize the structures of these proteins. In so doing, it will develop a new research competency strategically aligned with SLAC and DOE-BER missions.
Lead Scientist: William Chueh
This work investigates novel electrochemical heat engines for converting heat to electricity and for cooling that decouple charge transport from heat transport. If successfule, this work will seed a major initiative at SLAC for waste heat recovery and thermal management that goes significantly beyond the current state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials, and develops a team towards future Energy Frontier Research Centers.
Lead Scientist: Kent Irwin
This two-year effort seeks to develop the key technologies for a full stage-2 hidden photon search program based on a hidden photon radio with quantum-limited superconducting amplifiers, and to set important new model-independent limits on hidden-photon dark matter.
Lead Scientist: Chris Kenney
Most of the science performed at SLAC, throughout the DOE complex, and beyond is enabled by sophisticated electronic systems. Almost all of these electrical systems require interconnections among components and with the outside world for information and energy exchange. This project seeks to develop the next generation of interconnects and assembly technology at SLAC by making use of the edges of semiconductor chips to extend systems into the third dimension.
Lead Scientist: Young Lee
The purpose of this project is to develop research capabilities for investigating the fundamental physics of quantum materials with a comprehensive effort involving X-ray and neutron scattering, crystal growth, and thermodynamic measurements. This effort seeks to develop capabilities along two fronts: growing crystals of important quantum materials and preparing them for specialized X-ray and neutron scattering experiments. The overall theme of the research is to understand the phases of quantum matter such as exotic superconductors and quantum spin liquids. An important direction in synthesis pursuits is to investigate whether doping a spin liquid with charge carriers can result in a superconducting state.
Lead Scientist: Emilio Nanni
This work pursues the first demonstration of a THz optical parametric amplifier (OPA) with full phase and amplitude control. The center frequency of the amplifier is 0.5 THz with a peak power of 1.25 MW, a pulse length of 10 ns and an instantaneous bandwidth of 50 GHz. The repetition rate is 120 Hz and the average THz power is 1.5 W.
Lead Scientist: Alfred Spormann
This research pursues the unexplored interface of two technologies that are individually well established and examine the potential and bottlenecks of combining electrocatalyic synthesis of small metabolizable molecules with a microbial fermentation platform for CO2-neutral production of fuels and chemicals.
Lead Scientist: Christopher Tassone
This project will develop a first-of-a-kind toolset to access real time monitoring and process control for nanocrystal synthesis in situ at high temperature. It will consist of a flow reactor nanocrystal synthesis that will be integrated to the simultaneous small and wide angle scattering capabilities of SSRL beamline 1-5.
Lead Scientist: Jelena Vuckovic
This work investigates the silicon-vacancy (SiV) center in diamond for applications in both quantum technologies and in high resolution imaging. The material approach is based on diamond CVD growth performed at Stanford by the groups of Nick Melosh and ZX Shen, including growth of nanodiamonds and diamond films from moleculardiamond templates, and growth of diamond epilayers on diamond substrates.
