UCLA physicists map the atomic structure of an alloy
University of California - Los Angeles
Now, UCLA physicists and collaborators have mapped the coordinates of more than 23,000 individual atoms in a tiny iron-platinum nanoparticle to reveal the material’s defects. This new National Science Foundation-funded consortium consists of scientists at UCLA and five other colleges and universities who are using high-resolution imaging to address questions in the physical sciences, life sciences and engineering. Everything we look at, it’s new, Miao said. Understanding the three-dimensional structures of grain boundaries is a major challenge in materials science because they strongly influence the properties of materials, Miao said. The researchers then used the three-dimensional coordinates of the atoms as inputs into quantum mechanics calculations to determine the magnetic properties of the iron-platinum nanoparticle.