New metrics for analyzing data from small angle scattering (SAS) experiments should dramatically improve the ability of scientists to study the structures of macromolecules such as proteins and nanoparticles in solution.

Working at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), an international team of scientists found that for highly efficient polymer/organic solar cells, size matters. Impure domains if made sufficiently small can lead to improved performances in polymer-based organic photovoltaics.

How matter responds to light lies at the core of vision, photosynthesis, solar cells and light-emitting diodes, and many other fields of scientific and practical import. But until now, it hasn’t been possible to see just how light does it. Berkeley Lab scientists have used SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light for the first demonstration that x-ray and optical wave mixing reveals not only structure but evolving charge states on the atomic scale.

Chemists hope to understand precisely how electrical charges flow and different forms of energy move within molecules and across molecular boundaries. The most demanding experiments would identify specific atoms and track their correlated electronic states, but the facilities don’t exist yet. Berkeley Lab scientists are using powerful lasers to devise future light sources that can do the job.

Through the Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab and leading semiconductor manufacturers have mutually invested in major new facilities at the Advanced Light Source for advanced extreme-ultraviolet lithography, including clean rooms, wafer processing facilities, and microlithography test tools too costly for individual manufacturers.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and Center for X-Ray Optics are working with colleagues at leading semiconductor manufacturers to build SHARP, the world’s most advanced extreme-ultraviolet-light microscope, to study and design the photolithography masks, materials, patterns, and mask architectures essential to producing the next generation of integrated circuits.

Organic nitrogen compounds are essential to life on Earth, but on Earth most of these compounds are made by life itself. Saturn’s moon Titan, like Earth, has a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Researchers using the Advanced Light Source have modeled conditions on Titan and found clues to how life may have gotten a kick-start here and (who knows?) maybe there as well.

Can single-shot imaging with femtosecond x-ray pulses from powerful new free electron lasers really work, or will the beam damage the sample too quickly? Pulse length is the key. A new study reveals that “frustrated absorption” explains why ultrashort pulses, even if their peak power is greater, do less damage to molecules than longer pulses.

Doing away with lenses is the secret to very high resolution images of the internal structures of biological specimens and complex materials. To prove the principle, the best such images yet of whole cells have been achieved using a beam of coherent soft x-rays at the Advanced Light Source’s beamline 9.0.1.