Currently,​​​​this technology is not yet ready for use, but with further development it will become a very important way to inspect materials.

Imagine that you are filming a football match and the shutter speed of the camera is slow enough to keep up with the pace of the players, so they appear blurry and fuzzy in the image, on the contrary, if we use advanced. A camera with a large shutter speed will ensure that the image of the players is perfectly clear.

Scientists previously knew that the movement of molecules and atoms within materials could improve the efficiency of renewable energy applications, such as converting sunlight or waste heat into electricity.

Therefore, researchers from Columbia University in the US, together with researchers from the University of Bourgogne in France, have developed a new camera that captures the movement of atoms inside materials, or so-called “dynamic turbulence”. Research results Natural material.

What is dynamic turbulence in materials?

Dynamic disorder occurs within materials when groups of atoms in a material move in specific ways due to exposure to vibration or temperature change. Studying this motion is critical to improving the properties and interactions of materials.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to study dynamic turbulence and understand what it is, because it is impossible to see, because the shutter speed on cameras was slow compared to the speed of atoms, and therefore not fast enough to photograph it.

The fastest digital cameras on the market have a shutter speed of about 4 milliseconds, and to capture this movement, a fast shutter speed must be developed.

How do scientists visualize dynamic turbulence?

The research team conducted its experiment using an ordinary camera whose shutter was slow, so the image of atomic structures appeared blurry. In contrast, the image of atomic structures was clear when using another camera with a high shutter speed of one pico/second or a trillion times faster than the shutters of a normal camera.

Simon Billing is Professor of Materials Science, Applied Physics, and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University. Press release Published on the university’s website on March 7. A camera’s shutter speed can be used to distinguish moving atoms from stationary atoms within objects.”

The atomic pair distribution function technique relies on the use of neutrons to track the state of atoms, and the researchers applied it to germanium telluride (GeTe), which is widely used for its properties of converting waste heat to electricity or electricity to cool.

Building an eco-friendly hardware industry

The camera revealed that the structures of atoms in germanium telluride were crystal-smooth at almost all temperatures, but at high temperatures, the atoms became dynamically disordered, and the kinetic energy (turbulence) in the atoms was converted to thermal energy.

Understanding the dynamic turbulence of atoms in materials leads to the development of environmentally friendly thermoelectric devices: refrigerators and heat pumps, in addition to optimizing and exploiting the energy recovery process from automobile exhausts. Converting heat into electricity and building tools to power Mars as the sun fades.

Currently, this technology is not yet ready for use, but with further development it will become a very important way to explore objects. The Columbia University science professor and his research team are now working to make his research accessible to the scientific community and applied to other subjects.