Argonne wins four R&D 100 Awards for scientific, technological innovation
ARGONNE, Ill. (July 8, 2005) – Advances in technology ranging from help for
victims of Parkinson's disease and epilepsy to more efficient combustion in
industrial furnaces are likely with award-winning research at the U.S. Department
of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and its partners.
Argonne's research accomplishments
have won four of the prestigious R&D 100 Awards, given to the world's
top 100 scientific and technological innovations. This is the second year
in a row that Argonne has won four R&D 100 Awards.
This year's awards bring
Argonne's total to 90 of the awards since R&D
magazine began presenting them in 1964.
Argonne director Bob Rosner congratulated the winners, saying, "I
am thrilled that Argonne staff members have won four more of these prestigious
awards. Winning such awards attests to the high quality of research at Argonne
and to the caliber of our staff.”
“These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at
work developing the technologies of the future,” said Secretary of Energy Samuel
W. Bodman. “In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important
role in both our economic and national security.”
This year's winners from Argonne are:
- A self-contained battery-powered microstimulator, developed
jointly with Advanced
Bionics Corp., Alfred
Mann Foundation, Quallion
LLC,
and the Organosilicon
Research Center at the University of Wisconsin.
- MPICH2, software that enables scientists to write parallel
programs that run efficiently on all major computer systems, from parallel
processors to laptops.
- Multilayer lens wafers for X-ray lenses, providing the ability
to focus hard X-rays well below 100 nanometers with high efficiency.
- High-temperature potentiometric oxygen sensor, developed jointly
with Ohio State University.
Microstimulator
The bion ® microstimulator, trademarked and manufactured by Advanced
Bionics Corporation, is a miniature, self-contained, rechargeable implantable
neurostimulator. It is designed to treat a wide variety of diseases, including
incontinence, chronic headaches, peripheral pain, angina, and epilepsy.
An estimated 50 million Americans suffer from debilitating conditions that
may benefit from treatment with microstimulators. The bion implant represents
a new generation of implantable technologies, designed to be placed in the
body near affected muscles or nerves through minimally invasive surgery. The
microstimulator is designed to stimulate viable nerves and muscles to prevent
muscles from deteriorating and to help restore nerve and muscle function.
The fully integrated device measures 27.5 millimeters by 3.2 millimeters and
weighs less than one gram, making it a fraction of the size of conventional
implantable neurostimulation devices. Developing a microstimulator this size
that would also be safe and effective required presented enormous engineering
challenges to the team.
Argonne's researchers on the project, Khalil Amine, Bookeun Oh, Ilias Belharouak,
Qingzheng Wang and Donald Vissers, were primarily involved in tackling the
problem of developing battery chemistry and materials.
The key to the battery's success is an advanced lithium-ion chemistry that
provides a calendar life significantly greater than commercially available
lithium batteries. Previous batteries for medical microelectronics are large,
have short lives and typically are not rechargeable.
Silicon polymers were first studied by researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
For the past few years, Argonne and the university, working with
Quallion, have developed a new class of polymer electrolytes, made largely
of silicon-oxygen chains, that exhibit extraordinary conductivity and safety
properties.
Other developers are Jeff Greiner, Curt Hafner, Kelly McClure, Matt Haller,
Todd Whitehurt, Carla Mann and Alfred Mann of Advanced Bionics; Joe Schulman,
Dan Dell and John Gord of Alfred Mann Foundation; Hisashi Tsukamoto of Quallion
LLC; and Robert West of the Organosilicon Research Center at the University
of Wisconsin.
MPICH2
MPICH2 is a high-performance, portable implementation of community standards
for the message-passing model of parallel computation. Parallel computation
requires many computers to work together on large-scale problems by quickly
distributing the mathematical workload. The new software's layered architecture
permits computer vendors and researchers to customize its lower layers for
particular proprietary networks while using its portable upper layers to provide
compliance with computer community standards and state-of-the-art computational
algorithms.
The software, developed at Argonne by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, Robert Ross,
Rajeev Thakur and Brian Toonen, enables application developers to run the same
code on a wide variety of platforms, from laptops and workstations, through
clusters of computers that can be assembled from off-the-shelf components,
to the largest and fastest parallel computers in the world. Applications include
materials science, combustion simulation, astrophysics, climate modeling and
bioinformatics.
MPICH2 is the first freely available open-source implementation of the MPI-2
international message-passing standard, and both users and vendors have been
quick to adopt it. Companies such as Pratt
and Whitney are using MPICH2 to
design aircraft engines, and the software is also widely used in scientific
applications. A new epilepsy modeling program from a neuroscience group at
the University of Chicago was one of the first applications to take advantage
of the new remote memory access functionality in MPI-2.
In addition to the team listed above, significant contributors to the project
include David Ashton at Argonne, Ralph Butler at Middle
Tennessee State University, and Anthony Chan at the University of Chicago.
Multilayer lens wafers for X-ray lenses
Argonne is home to the Advanced Photon Source, which produces the most brilliant
X-rays in the Western Hemisphere. Only two other machines in the entire world
are comparable, and they are located in Japan and in France. The brilliant
X-rays help researchers find infinite detail in a range of materials.
The new Argonne-developed multilayer lens wafers for X-ray lenses are in use
at the Advanced Photon Source to help focus the X-rays at the nanometer scale,
which is even more precisely than before. Researchers Chian Liu, Raymond Conley
and Albert Macrander, all part of the Advanced Photon Source Experimental
Facilities Division optics fabrication and metrology group.
The focusing lens, called a linear Fresnel lens, is made up of 728 individual
layers grown on a one-inch diameter silicon substrate. The lens – just like
the lens of a camera – allows precise focusing of the light. However, unlike
a camera, the lens focusing the X-ray beam can do so to a spot less than 100
nanometers in diameter. In recent testing, the lens was found to be successful
at less than 30 nanometers and is expected to do so at less than 10 nanometers.
For comparison, the period at the end of this sentence is approximately one
million nanometers in diameter.
Using the lens, researchers will be able to visualize three-dimensional electronic
circuit boards to find circuit errors, or map impurities in biological or environmental
samples at the nanometer scale. They can also analyze samples inside high-pressure
or high-temperature cells.
Other examples of uses of the new lens include development of smaller, better-performing
and more reliable computers and telecommunications equipment; reduction of
electromigration in interconnects in electronic devices; detection of flaws
or strains in materials for storage, machining or aviation; production of lighter,
sturdier, safer transportation vehicles through advanced materials with tailored
properties; imaging cell division and tumor growth, providing a new mechanism
for the early detection of cancer; and faster, more sensitive detection of
hazards in local and global environments.
Oxygen sensor
Researchers at Argonne and at Ohio State have developed a compact sensor to
monitor combustion processes in coal-fire power plants, petrochemical plants,
blast furnaces, glass processing equipment, and even inside internal combustion
engines. The high-temperature potentiometer oxygen sensor can withstand the
heat inside the combustion chambers, allowing monitoring at the source in real
time.
Developers include Jules Routbort and Dileep Singh, both of Argonne's Energy
Technology Division.
The new sensor is the first that does not require an external supply of reference
air. Instead, the sensor is enabled by an internal reference air chamber, sealed
by a unique deformation bonding method that joins the protective ceramic housing
components together without altering the ceramic's oxygen conductivity. By
eliminating the need for costly and bulky high-temperature external plumbing
for reference air, this novel sensor provides unsurpassed oxygen-sensing accuracy
for a cost that is approximately one-twentieth that of conventional oxygen
sensors.
The information provided by the sensor is important to manufacturers, because
it helps them be more energy-efficient and economical in their operations by
achieving energy savings by optimizing the air-to-fuel ratio and the fuel oil
viscosity. While various sensors have been available, industry has never before
had a truly inexpensive means of accurately monitoring its boiler efficiencies
to achieve the highest possible energy savings.
The new oxygen sensor overcomes the limitation of conventional oxygen sensors
by having the capability to withstand temperatures up to 1600 degrees C and
by allowing the engineering of small sensors – smaller than a dime – since
no external air source or plumbing is required. The ceramic housing components
of the sensor are joined without intermediate bonding materials through a unique
deformation bonding method developed by the researchers. And the low cost of
the sensor – about $200 – allows the use of multiple sensors, making it practical
and affordable to monitor the combustion of oxygen and other materials throughout
the combustion process.
The oxygen sensor development was sponsored by DOE's Office of FreedomCar
and Vehicles Technology.
Argonne National Laboratory brings
the world's brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and
creative new solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology.
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic
and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne
researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities,
and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific
problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for
a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed
by UChicago
Argonne, LLC for
the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office
of Science.
For more information, please
contact Steve McGregor (630/252-5580 or media@anl.gov)
at Argonne.
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