TAYLOR BOROWETZ

The Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan has been home to multiple new discoveries and developments that could help move scientists toward the nanotechnology of the future.

Research over the past summer has been filled with new insights, including the examination of graphene. Graphene is a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. It has been a growing topic of interest for scientists since the substance was first isolated in 2004.

Swathi Iyer, a post-doctoral fellow at the CLS, and her team studied the nanostructure using the synchrotron and other experimental facilities. In a news release, Iyer mentioned that there is potential for graphene-based nanodevices, which because of the structure and capabilities of the material could even enable futuristic electronics to be flexible.

Another international team of researchers, including members from the University of British Columbia, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, University of Würzburg, the Leibniz Institute IFW, McMaster University, the University of California and the CLS, has focused on a different facets of new electronic devices that could be developed with transition-metal oxides, according to another news release. Until recently, the phenomena that occurs on the atomic level when the materials were layered was not understood, because existing measurement techniques are either lacking in detail or would destroy the film while trying to analyze it.

The release states that the team developed a new technique using the synchrotron based on resonant X-ray that allows them to view these layers at the atomic level: X-rays with a wavelength of a few nanometers are reflected off the different interfaces in the structure that overlap, like the way holography uses visible light, and provides a depth-resolved picture of the structure.

Understanding how these materials work opens doors for the development of greatly improved electronic devices that may one day become a part of many areas of our daily lives.

The CLS is a global centre of excellence in synchrotron science and its applications, and Canada’s national centre for synchrotron research. Since beginning operations in 2005, it has hosted over 2,000 researchers from academic institutions, government and industry from 10 provinces and two territories, delivered over 32,000 experimental shifts, received over 83,000 user visits and provided a service critical in over 1,000 scientific publications.

Synchrotrons work by accelerating electrons to nearly the speed of light through a tube using radio frequency waves and powerful magnets. Through this manipulation of electrons, scientists can select different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum to conduct their experiments.

Fundamentally, they can probe the structure of matter, which can have useful applications in nearly any scientific field.

Advantages of synchrotron research to conventional methods include minimal sample preparation, trace detection of impurities and non-destructive analysis of the structures and devices being examined.