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An international team of researchers, led by Pat Thiel, senior chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, has discovered a new type of structural anomaly, or defect, that can appear in quasicrystals, a unique material with some crystal-like properties but a more complex structure.

In The News

On Jan. 5, R&D Magazine carried the Ames Lab press release announcing that lead-free solder had taken over the top spot in the amount of royalty revenue generated by a technology developed at Ames Laboratory.

The environmentally-friendly solder was the first cost-effective, broadly useable alternative to tin-lead solder, a toxic but necessary ingredient in a range of popular—and proliferating—consumer electronics.

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Dan Shechtman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, returned to Ames from Israel on Feb. 14 for the first time since the award was announced in early October. Shechtman, an Ames Lab researcher, held a news conference and photo session at The Ames Laboratory and later met with students during a reception in his honor at the ISU Memorial Union.