LSU faculty will lead a new three-year research initiative focused on expanding the understanding of advanced materials. The project will be done in conjunction with researchers from Tulane University, University of New Orleans and Louisiana Tech, funded with a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
The Energy Department has awarded the grant to the Louisiana Consortium for Neutron Scattering (LaCNS), which includes LSU and the other Louisiana universities that will be collaborating on the research project.
“This research promises to have a long-term impact on everything from the amount of memory available in your computer and the speed at which it can be accessed, the efficiency of power transmission lines and the cost and efficiency of devices that convert sunlight to electricity, as well as the discovery of new materials with unexpected properties,” LaCNS principal investigator and LSU physics professor John DiTusa says in a press release. “All of these aspects need fundamental discoveries to make advances toward new and better devices.”
The grant will finance the research for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students at all four Louisiana universities. At LSU, it will fund 10 faculty, eight graduate students, six post-doctoral researchers and one visiting faculty member. LSU Materials Science and Engineering faculty in the departments of physics and astronomy, chemistry and chemical engineering will be leading the research.
“Part of our mission is to excite and train the next generation of scientists who will be experts in both the science and neutron scattering techniques,” DiTusa says.
Neutron scattering is one of the few techniques available that can probe the structure and dynamics of materials over a broad range of time, length and energy scales, DiTusa says. LaCNS researchers will use the equipment and facilities at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee, as well as collaborate with the scientific staff, to run experiments for the research initiative. LSU has more details on the grant award and research initiative.
