2016

Issue 2

Science & Technology at the Ames Laboratory

Sensitive Instrument Facility | Caloricool | Critical Materials Institute | Advanced Manufacturing
Adam Schwartz, Director

Copyright 2016 by Ames Laboratory. All rights 

reserved. For additional information about Ames 

Laboratory or topics covered in this publication, 

please contact: 

ENERGY

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Office of

Science Inquiry Issue 1 | 2016 3

From the Director

Inquiry is published biannually by the Ames 

Laboratory Office of Public Affairs. Iowa 

State University operates Ames Laboratory 

for the U.S. Department of Energy under 

contract DE AC02 07CH11358. 

Editor, Inquiry

Ames Laboratory

111 TASF

2408 Pammel Drive

Ames, Iowa 50011-1015

www.ameslab.gov

Ames Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory seeking solutions to energy-related problems 

through the exploration of chemical, engineering, materials and mathematical sciences, and physics. Established 

in the 1940s with the successful development of the most efficient process to produce high-purity uranium metal 

for atomic energy, Ames Laboratory now pursues much broader priorities than the materials research that has 

given the Lab international credibility. Responding to issues of national concern, Ames Laboratory scientists are 

actively involved in innovative research, science education programs, the development of applied technologies 

and the quick transfer of such technologies to industry. Uniquely integrated within a university environment, the 

Lab stimulates creative thought and encourages scientific discovery, providing solutions to complex problems and 

educating and training tomorrow’s scientific talent.

Steve Karsjen: Public Affairs Director

Kerry Gibson: Editor

Laura Millsaps: Contributing Editor

Grant Luhmann: Art Director

10 P A G E cientists describe momentum as the quantity of motion of a moving body, 

measured as a product of its mass and velocity. A more general definition might 

describe it as the forward motion resulting from applying a driving force behind 

something. By that yardstick, Ames Laboratory has a number of efforts gathering 

momentum.

Our Sensitive Instrument Facility (SIF) opened its doors this past spring, and a growing 

number of users are taking advantage of its state-of-the-art microscopy equipment to 

characterize materials in unprecedented detail. We were delighted to have Energy Secretary 

Ernest Moniz on hand for the SIF dedication ceremony. Work is now underway to move three 

additional pieces of research equipment to the space to take full advantage of the building’s 

isolation from outside interference and the proximity to the existing electron microscopes. 

See what’s happening on pages 7-9.

We launched a new research consortium called CaloriCoolTM in 2016 with the idea that 

refrigeration could be radically better—cheaper, cleaner, more precise and energy-efficient—by abandoning 

vapor-compression technology for something entirely new: a solid-state caloric system. Established under 

DOE’s Energy Materials Network and overseen by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 

CaloriCool brings together national labs, industry, and academia, including Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge 

National Laboratories, the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, and Citrine Informatics. 

And this research team plans to do it—including adoption into manufactured systems and products—within 

a decade. Read more about it on pages 10-11. 

We’re also involved in two separate Advanced Manufacturing Office efforts. Iver Anderson’s group leads 

a $5 million effort to improve the production and composition of metal alloy powders used in additive 

manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing. And Matt Kramer, Ryan Ott and Pete Collins will 

be working with colleagues at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory to characterize what happens with those powders in situ as the powders are being laid down, 

melted, and resolidified during the 3D printing process. Find out more about this work on pages 12-13.

The Critical Materials Institute, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub led by Ames Laboratory, continues to do 

ground-breaking work to make better use of materials and eliminate the need for materials that are subject 

to supply disruptions. In its three years of existence, CMI has 47 invention disclosures to its credit and has 

developed eight new goals for the final two years of its initial five-year funding cycle. You can find out what 

those efforts are on pages 14-15.

Finally, after an international search, we are pleased to have hired Dimitri Argyriou as chief research officer. 

A condensed matter physicist, Dimitri comes to the Ames Laboratory from the European Spallation Source, 

where he served as its Director of Science and Head of Operations Planning. 

With all this progress, we look forward to 2017 and the 70th anniversary of the founding of Ames Laboratory. 

A lot has changed in seven decades, but we are still committed to creating materials and energy solutions.

S

Contents

Cooler in 10

Meet the New CRO

6

Newly dedicated, 

expanding capabilities

7

Better Powders 

Advance Additive 12 Manufacturing

14

Early successes lead to new and bigger challenges

Critical Materials Institute:

4AWARDS
Awards

4 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 5

Jiles named Jefferson Fellow

David Jiles, Palmer Endowed Chair of the Iowa 

State University Electrical and Computer Engineering 

department, and Ames Laboratory associate has been 

named a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. State 

Department.

The Jefferson Science Fellowship is open to tenured 

or similarly ranked faculty from U.S. institutions of 

higher learning who are U.S. citizens. Jefferson Science 

Fellows spend one year on assignment at the U.S. Department of State or U.S. Agency for International Development as science advisors on foreign policy issues. 

Assignments are tailored to the needs of the hosting office, while taking into account the Fellows’ interests and 

areas of expertise. As part of their assignments, Jefferson 

Fellows have the opportunity to travel to U.S. embassies 

and missions overseas. Following the fellowship year, 

the Jefferson Science Fellow returns to 

his/her academic career, but remains 

available to the U.S. government as an 

experienced consultant for short-term 

projects.

Jiles, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering at 

ISU, is one of 12 Jefferson Fellows 

named in 2016. His research interests 

include magnetism and magnetic materials, nonlinear and hysteretic behavior of magnetic materials; magnetoelasticity, magnetostriction, and magnetomechanical effects; development of novel 

magnetic materials; and biomedical engineering applications, 

including the development of transcranial magnetic stimulation for noninvasive treatment of brain disorders. 

Gordon receives INCITE grant

Ames Laboratory scientist Mark Gordon was awarded 

a 2016 INCITE grant from the DOE’s Office of Science. 

The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact 

on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program was 

created as a primary means for scientists to access the 

DOE’s supercomputers at Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories. 

The award to Gordon includes 200 million processor hours of computing time on the IBM Blue Gene/Q 

supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. His research team will use the hours to study anions (negatively charged ions) such as chloride, fluoride and bromide 

in water, as well as ionic liquids and the processes that 

occur in them.

Anderson inducted into National Academy 

of Inventors

Ames Laboratory senior metallurgist Iver Anderson 

was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors 

(NAI) at a special ceremony in 

Washington, D.C. at the United 

States Patent and Trademark 

Office (USPTO). 

The ceremony, which was held 

as part of the NAI’s Fifth Annual 

Conference, welcomed 168 new 

Fellows into the academy. Each 

Fellow was presented with a special 

trophy, a medal and a rosette pin. 

The NAI Fellows Selection 

Committee credited Anderson for demonstrating a “highly 

prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating 

outstanding inventions that have made tangible impact 

on quality of life, economic development, and welfare 

of society.” 

Iver Anderson

Bertoni awarded Margaret Butler Fellowship

Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University PhD 

student Colleen Bertoni has been named the recipient 

of the Margaret Butler Fellowship in Computational 

Science.

Bertoni will spend 2017 at the 

Argonne Leadership Computing 

Facility (ALCF), a DOE user 

facility at Argonne National 

Laboratory. She will work as a post 

doctoral fellow at the ALCF, where 

she will advance her quantum 

chemistry studies of liquid water 

and ion solvation by employing 

and optimizing ab initio-based 

fragmentation methods on the 

facility’s supercomputers. 

Colleen Bertoni

David Jiles

Canfield awarded APS McGroddy Prize

Professor Paul C. Canfield, a senior scientist at Ames 

Laboratory, has been awarded the James C. McGroddy 

Prize for New Materials by the American Physical 

Society (APS). 

Canfield, who is also a Distinguished Professor and the Robert Allen Wright Professor of Physics and Astronomy at ISU, was 

selected for the prize “for development and use of solution growth 

of single crystalline intermetallic 

materials to design, discover, and 

elucidate new heavy fermion, superconducting, magnetic, and 

quasicrystalline states.” He will be awarded the prize, 

which consists of a certificate and honorarium, at the 

2017 APS March meeting in New Orleans.

Paul Canfield

Perras awarded Banting Fellowship

Frédéric Perras, a post-doctoral researcher at the 

Ames Laboratory, has been awarded a Banting Fellowship by the Government of Canada and the National 

Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Perras joined the Ames Laboratory in 2015 after he was named 

the Laboratory’s first Spedding 

Fellow, a position created to 

recognize exceptional research 

achievements. He conducts research in Ames Laboratory senior 

scientist Marek Pruski’s group, 

specializing in solid-state NMR 

spectroscopy, including dynamic 

nuclear polarization (DNP-NMR).

Frédéric Perras

Kreyssig and Yu named APS 2016 Fellows

Ames Laboratory scientists Andreas Kreyssig and 

Edward Yu were named 2016 Fellows of the American 

Physical Society (APS). 

According to APS, Kreyssig was 

elected for “elucidating the relationships between the structural, 

magnetic, and superconducting 

properties of iron-arsenide hightemperature superconductors.”

Kreyssig is a physicist in the 

Laboratory’s Division of Materials Science and Engineering, and 

an adjunct associate professor 

of physics in the Department of 

Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University.

Yu was elected for “his distinguished contributions to 

the field of efflux transporters, which mediate resistance 

to a variety of antimicrobials in bacteria, and his research 

into the crystallography of integral 

membrane proteins.”

Yu is a professor of Chemistry 

and of Physics & Astronomy. He 

was named the John D. Corbett 

Professor of Chemistry in 2014 and 

elected as a Fellow of the American 

Association for the Advancement 

of Science that same year. 

Andreas Kreyssig

Fox appointed International Francqui 

Professor Chair

Professor Rodney Fox has been appointed to an 

International Francqui Professor Chair as part of the 

Francqui Foundation, based in 

Belgium. Fox will travel to Belgium 

for a six-month stay in late 2016 

and early 2017. His main host will 

be the Laboratory for Chemical 

Technology in Ghent, Belgium.

The chair is named for Emile 

Francqui, a Belgian serviceman, 

politician and business man. He 

and President Herbert Hoover 

established the foundation in 1932 

to support higher education and research in Belgium.

Fox was also named early this year as recipient of 

the AIChE Shell Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle 

Systems. This award recognizes an individual’s recent 

outstanding scientific/technical accomplishment which 

has made a significant impact in the field of fluid particle 

systems or in a related field with potential for cross 

fertilization with relevance to the topics of interest to 

PTF community.

Rodney Fox

Covey named FLC Mid-Continent Tech Transfer 

Professional of the Year

Debra Covey, associate lab director and director of 

Sponsored Research Administration at Ames Laboratory 

was named the 2016 Technology Transfer Professional of 

the Year by the Federal Laboratory 

Consortium (FLC) Mid-Continent 

Region.

The award recognizes the efforts 

of an FLC laboratory technology 

transfer professional or team who 

has demonstrated outstanding 

work transferring technology in 

a manner significantly over and 

above what was called for in the 

normal course of work.

Covey was recognized for playing a significant role in 

the institution of the Ames Laboratory-led CaloriCoolTM

consortium for the discovery and development of 

environmentally friendly and energy-efficient refrigeration 

technologies. She is also credited with expanding 

non-disclosure agreements, intellectual property 

management, and collaborative R&D agreements that 

link the members of Ames Laboratory’s Critical 

Materials Institute. 

Debra Covey

Edward Yu
6 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 7

imitri N. Argyriou has been named Chief Research 

Officer at Ames Laboratory. His appointment 

follows an extensive international search and became 

effective January 2017.

In announcing the selection of Argyriou, Ames Laboratory 

Director Adam Schwartz said, “This is a critical position 

for Ames Laboratory. Dimitri’s proven leadership and 

experience at leading laboratories around the world provides 

an excellent opportunity to advance our scientific mission.

We welcome Dimitri and look forward to having him on the 

Ames Laboratory team.”

The Chief Research Officer (CRO) is responsible for 

initiating, developing and supervising Ames Laboratory’s 

scientific divisions, institutes and programs. The CRO 

formulates and evaluates new initiatives that fall within 

Ames Laboratory’s mission—to create materials, inspire 

minds to solve problems, and address global challenges—

often emphasizing cross-disciplinary collaborations with 

other DOE national laboratories, academia, and industry.

Argyriou is a condensed matter physicist and comes to 

the Ames Laboratory from the European Spallation Source 

(ESS), a $2 billion next-generation neutron spallation 

source under construction by a partnership of 16 European 

countries in Lund, Sweden. Argyriou served as its Director 

of Science and Head of Operations Planning, contributing 

to the establishment of the ESS organization and securing 

its funding by leading the effort to define its scientific project 

scope and delivery by its partners.

An established world-class researcher in electronic 

and magnetic materials, Argyriou is a fellow of the 

American Physical Society cited for his work on colossal 

magnetoresistance manganites, and is a recipient of the 

Friedrich-Wilhelm-Preis for his work on multiferroics.

As the new leader of research efforts at Ames Laboratory, 

Argyriou plans to use his experience in management and 

leadership in science, research, and “big-science” projects to 

help provide vision for establishing new scientific programs 

at Ames Laboratory.

“I am humbled and equally excited to join the Ames 

Laboratory and work with some of the best minds in the area 

of materials,” Argyriou said. “Ames Laboratory is needed now 

more than ever to solve some of society’s tricky problems, 

and I see a bright future ahead for its research. I am very 

happy to be part of the Ames team.”

Argyriou received his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees in Physics 

from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and 

his habilitation from Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische 

Hochschule, Aachen in 2009. He has co-authored over 

160 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and given 

numerous invited talks at international conference. He 

is a main editor at IUCrJ, the International Union of 

Crystallography. He serves in various scientific advisory roles, 

including at ISIS, a pulsed spallation neutron and muon 

source, operated by the Science and Technologics Research 

Council, UK; and at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research 

Complex, Japan.

Argyriou has had key collaborations on projects with 

scientists around the world and has been the recipient 

of numerous competitive funding proposals throughout 

his career.

Argyriou replaces former CRO Duane Johnson, who 

stepped down to pursue research opportunities at Ames 

Laboratory and Iowa State University.

Dimitri N. Argyriou

Meet the New CR0

D

Newly dedicated, expanding capabilities

BY KERRY GIBSON

mes Laboratory’s Sensitive Instrument 

facility, which opened in February and was formally 

dedicated in 2016, bustles with a steady flow of 

scientists using its array of high-powered electron 

microscopes to take an unprecedented, close-up look at all 

types of materials.

Built with funding from the DOE’s Office of Science, the 

nearly $10 million state-of-the-art facility was designed to 

shield the sensitive microscopes from outside interference. 

Two-foot thick concrete floors, including sections mounted 

on shock absorbing springs and isolated mechanical systems 

reduce vibration while 1⁄4-inch-thick aluminum wraps some of 

the instrument bays to prevent electromagnetic interference.

A

SENSITIVE INSTRUMENT FACILITY

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz cuts the ribbon officially 

opening the Sensitive Instrument Facility on May 6, 2016, with 

assistance from Ames Laboratory Director Adam Schwartz (left) 

and Iowa State University President Steven Leath.
FEI Titan Themis

8 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 9

Through a combination of DOE, Ames Laboratory, and 

Iowa State University funding, three state-of-the-art electron 

beam characterization tools worth more than $6 million were 

purchased and an existing transmission electron microscope 

was moved and upgraded. The facility houses the following:

FEI Teneo field emission scanning electron microscope 

with Oxford EDS/EBSD for combined elemental and phase 

mapping and texture determination.

FEI Helios Focus Ion Beam (dual beam) system with easy 

lift out capabilities for TEM and 3D atom probe sample 

preparation, auto-slice capability for 3D reconstruction and a 

multi-chemical deposition system for circuit editing.

FEI Tecnai G2-F20 scanning transmission electron 

microscope (STEM) with both EDX and EELS capability.

FEI Titan Themis 300 Cubed probe aberration corrected 

STEM with Super-X EDX detector, GIF quantum ER system 

and a Lorentz lens with biprism, which enables rapid, precise 

navigation from mesoscopic to atomic scale, as well as study 

of intrinsic magnetic and electric fields.

Obviously only trained researchers may operate the 

equipment and so far, 65 individuals have applied for training 

and 42 have been approved to operate one or more of the 

machines. All users are Ames Laboratory associates, but they 

include researchers from a number of departments across the 

ISU campus.

When the building was built, one large instrument bay 

at the south end of the building was left empty to allow for 

future expansion. Work is underway to finish that space to 

accommodate three pieces of equipment that can also benefit 

from the building’s isolation features and the proximity to the 

other equipment.

That equipment includes a nitrogen vacancy (NV) 

centers in diamond magnetoscope used by Ames Laboratory 

researcher Ruslan Prozorov and his group; a stimulated 

emission depletion imaging (STED) system developed by 

Ames Laboratory scientist Emily Smith; and an Extreme 

Quantum Terahertz nanoscope proposed by Ames Laboratory 

scientist Jigang Wang.

According to Sarah Wiley, SIF program coordinator, 

construction should be completed by mid-2017, and the 

three research groups are expected to be operational by the 

start of the fall 2017 semester.

SENSITIVE INSTRUMENT FACILITY SENSITIVE INSTRUMENT FACILITY

FEI Teneo FEI Helios FEI Tecnai

Kewei Sun uses a microscope in the SIF’s wet lab to prepare a sample for observation by one of the facility’s electron 

microscopes.

Facility users view material samples through the TECnai scanning transmission electron microscope. The Tecnai was moved 

from Wilhelm Hall and upgraded for use at the SIF.
10 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 11

BY LAURA MILLSAPS

efrigeration has been such an integral part

of our everyday lives for so long that we rarely think 

of it. Our food is fresh and our offices and living 

rooms temperature-controlled thanks to the vaporcompression technology developed over a century ago, and 

it is an integral part of medical care, transportation, military 

defense, and more.

At Ames Laboratory a new research consortium 

called CaloriCoolTM launched in 2016 with the idea that 

refrigeration could be radically better—cheaper, cleaner, 

more precise and energy-efficient—by abandoning vaporcompression for something entirely new: a solid-state caloric 

system. And this research team plans to do it—including 

adoption into manufactured systems and products—within 

a decade. 

“It’s like replacing the incandescent light bulb with an 

LED bulb; the new technology does the same thing, but in a 

completely different and much more efficient and sustainable 

way,” said Vitalij Pecharsky, director of CaloriCool. “That’s 

what CaloriCool will do with the refrigeration and heat 

pumping industries.”

The idea that caloric systems could be used as a 

replacement for traditional refrigeration technology is actually 

nothing new. For the last 20 years, materials scientists have 

been searching for compounds that can generate strong 

cooling effects when cyclically acted upon by magnetic, 

electric, or mechanical forces—called magnetocaloric, 

electrocaloric, and elastocaloric materials. 

Starting with the discovery of gadolinium-silicongermanium compounds in Ames in 1997, a few other 

materials are worth mentioning. These include lanthanumiron-silicon-hydrides and iron-manganese-silicon-phosphides 

for magnetocalorics, nickel-titanium for electrocalorics, and 

selected terpolymers for electrocalorics. But none of those 

materials have been exactly right for commercialization 

into any kind of product like a residential refrigerator, or 

building environmental systems. “This is essentially what 

CaloriCool consortium’s goal: game-changing refrigeration technology within a decade

CaloriCool is going after,” said Pecharsky, who is also an Iowa 

State University Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of 

Materials Science and Engineering and Ames Laboratory 

faculty scientist. “We know the real obstacle preventing the 

leap into marketable technology is the lack of affordable, 

high-performance caloric materials.”

The search has already begun in earnest, led by a team of 

researchers based in Ames and enhanced by partner teams 

who represent a range of skills vital to the effort, including 

theoretical analysis, materials design and characterization, 

engineering design, and technology commercialization. 

“We’ve already identified several classes of caloric 

materials that look promising, based on a review of the 

existing scientific literature, and we are creating samples of 

them for evaluation,” said Pecharsky. 

Experimental work is going forward while the consortium 

also assembles an informatics system that will be used as 

both a database and a computational aid tool to assist in 

evaluating existing and new materials. 

“Within five years, we want CaloriCool to be the authority, 

the resource for information on caloric materials, part of the 

national materials genome,” Pecharsky said. “That’s going to 

help accelerate commercialization of the technology.” 

Engineering design members of the group have already 

traveled to Denmark Technical University to establish 

collaborations and study existing prototype systems for a 

test station device being designed and built in 2017 called 

CaloriSMART—Small-scale, Modular Advanced Research 

Test-station. The test station will allow researchers to rapidly 

assess whether new materials have the correct properties, can 

perform as needed for use in a manufactured device, and use 

the smallest sample necessary to produce reliable data. 

“You could read up on how to go about it, but we decided 

it was better to send our people and let them get their hands 

on some of these systems, see how they work, and how we 

can collaborate with experts to build exactly what we need,” 

said Pecharsky.

All of the research in caloric cooling will go hand-in-hand 

Cooler in 10

Post-doctoral researcher Yibole Hargen prepares a caloric 

material sample for evaluation in the laboratory. CaloriCool is 

searching for a metallic compound that could potentially radically change refrigeration technology as it currently exists. 

R

with an analysis of the economic impacts of the technology, 

including scale-up, technology transfer, and raw materials 

availability. CaloriCool’s goal is to discover these caloric 

materials, but they must also be economical, widely available, 

non-toxic, manufacturable, and create enough energy savings 

and other benefits that it is attractive to manufacturers and 

consumers. Early predictions are that caloric cooling systems 

could result in as much as a 30 percent higher efficiency than 

currently available vapor-compression products. 

“What we are doing is exactly the point of U.S. Department 

of Energy’s Energy Materials Network, to really shorten the 

time frame for materials development to a real, manufactured 

technology,” said Pecharsky. CaloriCool was one of seven 

consortia established in 2106 under DOE’s Energy Materials 

Network and overseen by the Office of Energy Efficiency 

and Renewable Energy, specifically to address the need for 

advanced materials for clean energy technologies. CaloriCool 

is bringing together national labs, industry, and academia, 

including Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge National 

Laboratories, the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State 

University, and Citrine Informatics, all of which have become 

official partners in 2016. At present, the CaloriCool team is 

working with several other potential industry partners, which 

will be announced when negotiations are completed. 

“The research has been out there a long time; we just 

needed a new and more aggressive approach to move it from 

the laboratory to commercialization,” said Pecharsky. “We are 

quite confident we’ll be able to deliver, and that commercial 

devices will begin to appear in stores and dealerships near 

you in five to 10 years.” 

A sample of a caloric compound. Caloric materials demonstrate 

cooling effects when cyclically acted upon by magnetic, electric, or mechanical forces. Solid state caloric cooling systems 

could potentially be far more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional vapor-compression systems. 

Formation of samples in an arc melt furnace, as shown 

through its viewport. 
Ames Laboratory’s LENS system creates complex, 3D shapes by depositing metal 

powders through the nozzles and simultaneously melting them with a laser.

12 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 13

dditive manufacturing, also known as 3D

printing, has reached a widespread measure 

of success in manufacturing processes using 

polymers, or plastics. But the use of metal alloys 

for additive manufacturing has lagged due to lack of both 

materials and process development.

Ames Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

have been awarded $5 million from the U.S. Department of 

Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) to improve 

the production and composition of metal alloy powders used 

in additive manufacturing.

 “There’s a lot of intense interest focused on additive 

manufacturing with metal alloys, because there are so many 

potential applications,” said Iver Anderson, project leader 

and senior metallurgist at Ames Laboratory and adjunct 

professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa 

State University. “Industry has demands for prototyping 

parts, design development, reducing waste of expensive 

materials, and efficiently producing custom and legacy 

components for their customers.”

Because additive manufacturing uses metal alloy powders 

as its raw material, the ability to control the properties and 

quality of those powders becomes paramount to the quality 

of the final product, and achieving properties equal to cast 

and machined or, especially, cast/forged and machined parts.

The project will improve powder production by developing 

advances in a high-pressure gas atomization process pioneered 

at Ames Laboratory and will design and customize alloys 

specifically for additive manufacturing processing methods. 

Modeling and simulation of gas atomization process stages at 

Ames Laboratory will use a flow simulation code developed 

by the National Energy Technology Laboratory for part of 

the work. The experimental gas atomization work and alloy 

design calculations/verification also will be performed in 

the powder synthesis facilities at Ames Laboratory. Oak 

Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration 

Facility (ORNL-MDF) will conduct the corresponding 

additive manufacturing experiments. 

“Today, if a manufacturer went to metal powder producers 

with a shopping list of the alloys and powder specifications 

they needed for their manufacturing process, they very 

likely wouldn’t find what they want,” said Anderson. “The 

customization capabilities are just not there, and we need 

to get there. That is going to be the key to commercially 

competitive additive manufacturing processes.”

BY LAURA MILLSAPS

A A micrograph shows the perfectly spherical shape of powder 

particles formed by high-pressure gas atomization (HPGA). 

Better Powders 

Advance Additive 

Manufacturing

Ames Laboratory scientist Emma White sits at the control 

panel for one of Ames Laboratory’s HPGA systems. 

In a separate, but somewhat related project, 

a group of Ames Laboratory researchers will be 

working to characterize what happens to metal 

powders as they are processed into shapes through 

3D printing processes. The goal is to be able to finetune the 3D printing process on the fly to maximize 

the properties desired for the particular piece being 

manufactured.

Ames Laboratory scientists Ryan Ott, Pete 

Collins and Matt Kramer will be working with 

colleagues at the Stanford National Accelerator 

Laboratory (SLAC) and Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop both 

hardware and software to characterize the powders 

in situ as the advanced manufacturing process 

builds up complex shapes layer-by-layer.

“We’ll look at analyzing powders in two types of 

systems, both powder feed and powder bed,” said 

Kramer, who is also Ames Laboratory’s Materials 

Science and Engineering program director. “Powder 

feed is like our LENS (laser engineered net 

shaping) system where powders are delivered via a 

nozzle and melted in place by a laser. Powder bed 

spreads a thin layer of the metal powders over the 

entire surface and a laser then melts only a portion 

of the powders in the particular shape needed.”

The Ames Laboratory team is characterizing the 

commercial powders and developing the power feed 

system that can be used with the beam line at SLAC 

to analyze the powders as they are built up layer by 

layer via X-ray tomography and diffraction. LLNL 

is developing the powder bed system and highspeed imaging and thermal diagnostics. According 

to Kramer, the project will evaluate a wide range 

of commercial powders, including a titaniumaluminum-vanadium alloy commonly used in the 

aerospace industry. Funding for the project will 

come from DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office 

with Ames Lab receiving roughly $1.2 million of 

the approximately $4 million project.

Characterizing powders on the fly
14 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2016 15

hen the Critical Materials Institute

(CMI) launched in 2013, it had an audacious 

mission. It was not only charged with 

developing technologies that could diversify, 

substitute, or recycle rare-earth metals and 

other materials critical to the nation’s clean 

energy security; the DOE energy innovation 

hub needed to do it fast. Mind-bogglingly fast, as a 

matter of fact, considering that the traditional timeline 

to deployment of a new material or process is usually 18 to 

20 years. 

“At the time, I had complete faith in the abilities of the 

researchers we brought together. They truly were the best 

and the brightest at what we’re doing here,” said CMI 

Director Alex King. “But it was unknown whether we could 

really work as a team, get sufficient buy-in from industry 

leaders and move quickly enough to get where we needed 

to go.” 

A little over three years, 47 invention disclosures, and 

multiple industry partnerships later, the hub has been 

basking in the DOE’s and legislators’ praise. Part of the 

secret, King said, is a combination of computational theory, 

high through-put experimentation, and close collaboration 

with industry partners. 

“A great deal of our progress hinges on deciding what not 

to do,” King said. “Abandoning ideas that are impractical, 

too time-consuming, too expensive, or of too little interest 

to industrial partners, who are the people who take the 

research from the lab bench and actually make it go.”

Tom Lograsso, one of four research team leaders at CMI 

and Ames Laboratory’s deputy director, agrees that the right 

methodology has proven successful, using just one example 

from his own research team.

“I think we’ve demonstrated the use of tools that allow us 

to be highly responsive, and phosphors are my poster child 

for that,” Lograsso said. “We went from having no substitutes 

to having two green and one red phosphor for long tube 

fluorescent lighting. We discovered which phosphors have 

not only the appropriate fundamental properties, but also 

the manufacturing characteristics that allowed them to be 

currently in manufactured products. To do this all in slightly 

more than three years is phenomenal, and we’ve now got a 

stretch goal to find red and green phosphors for LED lighting 

within the next two years.”

With a just a little under two years left in CMI’s 5-year 

funding cycle, the DOE asked the hub to challenge itself 

even further, and its researchers responded with eight new, 

more specific and more challenging goals. 

§Produce a neodymium-iron-boron magnet using 

materials and technologies located entirely within the 

United States.

§Discover a new permanent magnet that rivals 

neodymium-iron-boron magnets in performance, using 

reliably available elements.

§Develop a commercial product based on an aluminumand cerium-based casting alloy.

§Develop a working, inexpensive, bulk-scale, exchangecoupled spring magnet.

§Design a new permanent-magnet motor with 

optimized system performance.

§Discover new red and green phosphor candidates 

suitable for use in LED lamps.

§Demonstrate hard disc drive disassembly rates 

exceeding 5,000 per day, to speed recovery of magnets 

for recycling or re-use.

§Scale up the supercritical fluid process for dissolution, 

separation of dissolved components, and refinement of 

separated critical elements, from milligram to kilogram 

quantities.

Of these, King mentioned in particular the challenge 

of developing an exchange-coupled spring magnet, a 

theoretical idea in which two different magnets are 

combined at the nanometer scale that creates a magnet with 

the best properties of both, rather than just their average. 

While they’ve been created in the lab on a small scale, CMI 

proposes to create ones that could be made on a bulk scale 

and large enough for applications like motors. 

“That’s going to be a hard one, no doubt about it, but we 

believe we have some insight now with our three years of 

research experience that will help guide us in pursuit of this 

goal,” said King. 

Other magnet discoveries remain in this list of goals as 

well, including new permanent magnets that use less critical 

materials. 

“To find a new magnet that rivals the most powerful 

magnet is a challenging task; it’s been 45 years since NdFeB 

magnets were discovered,” said Lograsso. “If it was easy, 

we would have had something by now. But we have some 

promising leads on magnets that may fill a gap between 

weaker magnets and the most powerful ones, applications 

where we’re currently using stronger magnets than we need 

to be. We are also working on refining the processing of 

magnetic materials we already do have, through things like 

additive manufacturing and magnetic field treatments.” 

Another notable goal takes CMI in a slightly new 

direction, designing a new permanent magnet motor. 

“We are asking ourselves: if we could make a magnet any 

shape we want, what kind of motor could we design with it?” 

said King. “It’s a matter of combining magnet design with 

motor design, instead of treating them as entirely separate 

challenges.”

“It’s taking the design of magnets to the systems level, 

so it’s more of an engineering goal rather than fundamental 

science, but it’s completely in keeping with CMI’s goals,” 

said Lograsso. 

King and Lograsso both consider the new goals high-risk, 

but ultimately obtainable. 

“We took a hard look at where we’ve been, and the places 

we’re most likely to cross the finish line in the time left, 

and from there we developed these more specific goals,” 

said King. “We believe with industry informing our research 

decisions, we’ve got the right strategy to meet success.” 

BY LAURA MILLSAPS

Early successes lead to new and bigger challenges

Critical Materials Institute:

W

CMI researcher Nerine Cherepy, from Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory, displays phosphors developed to use far 

less rare-earth oxides than in current fluorescent lighting technology. CMI researchers’ next goal is to develop red and green 

phosphors for LED lighting. 

Postdoctoral researcher Helena Khazdozian reviews a 

technical presentation on permanent magnet motor design. 

One of CMI’s eight research goals aims to integrate permanent 

magnet development with motor engineering design as a 

means of optimizing both. 

“It’s taking the design of magnets to the 

systems level, so it’s more of an engineering 

goal rather than fundamental science, but 

it’s completely in keeping with CMI’s goals.”
Ames Laboratory

111 Technical and Administrative Services Facility

2408 Pammel Drive

Ames, Iowa 50011-1015

www.ameslab.gov

2016

Issue 2