Up Close: Innovative Materials Development, Preparation, and Testing at Ames Laboratory
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Ames Laboratory, operated by Iowa State University for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), was established in 1947 to conduct basic research with particular emphasis on new materials. Like the other national laboratories, Ames Laboratory was created in consequence of contributions made to the Manhattan Project. It was in Ames, early in World War II, that two college professors and a group of graduate students resolved a problem that had proved intractable to industry. Within months of Pearl Harbor, Frank Spedding and Harley Wilhelm devised a practical method for the largescale production of pure uranium. While teaching industry how to do it, Ames furnished 1,000 tons of uranium for the Manhattan Project.
copper oxides that are focusing media attention on solid state physics furnish a timely illustration. Superconducting Materials
In the postwar years, processes were developed at Ames Laboratory for the production of metals such thorium, vanadium, and chromium that were considered exotic at the time. The processes were adopted by industry and most are still in use today. Based on Spedding's earlier research, a pilot plant was built at Ames that produced 100-pound batches of the 15 rare earth elements in unprecedented purity. To tap a research source of 15 new metals, for these elements were hardly known before, would have been a triumph; but because each one in this family of the "fraternal fifteen" differs from its neighbor by a single electron, the research prospect revealed was virtually unbounded.
Because pure materials are the cornerstone of superconductivity research, Ames Laboratory materials have for decades been routinely tested for superconductivity. Long before public familiarity with the concept, and while the materials still had to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures, Ames Laboratory became known as a center for superconductivity research. In 1980 an interdisciplinary team of Ames Laboratory researchers developed the in situ process for making flexible wires of a superconducting copper niobium composite. In 1985 Ames was the site of an International Conference on Superconductivity. When high temperature superconductors hit the headlines last December, a score of Ames Laboratory researchers from an array of disciplines spanning a broad range of expertise decided to collaborate in exploring the new materials. While theorists determine theory, synthesists are making new materials whose properties are investigated by experimentalists. The metallurgists, meanwhile, are parlaying skills acquired in the in situ project into fabricating wires out of ceramics, a feat made quite difficult by the brittleness of the material. DOE has asked Ames Laboratory to publish a biweekly bulletin, High Tc Update, to maintain an overview and eliminate duplication in the current stampede of superconductivity research.
World's Purest Materials
Advanced Materials
In conducting basic studies of the properties of these new materials, Ames Laboratory developed skills in purifying metals and in making metal single crystals. Th
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