{"id":305851,"date":"2026-01-27T08:41:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T08:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/305851\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T08:41:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T08:41:21","slug":"saw-wai-hla-on-imaging-and-manipulating-materials-at-the-atomic-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/305851\/","title":{"rendered":"Saw Wai Hla on Imaging and Manipulating Materials at the Atomic Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBYLINE:<\/strong> Christina Nunez\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Newswise \u2014 His work has broad relevance, including making the most of difficult-to-mine rare-earth elements.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Saw Wai Hla and a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and several universities achieved a major milestone \u2014\u00a0using X-rays to characterize a single atom for the first time<\/a>. Now Hla, a physicist in Argonne\u2019s Materials Science division, is using the same principles to examine the properties of rare earths. These include elements such as neodymium and europium that are essential to a range of technologies but are difficult to mine.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Hla was a\u00a0Scientific Breakthrough of the Year award<\/a>\u00a0laureate in the physical sciences category from the Falling Walls Foundation for his groundbreaking work using X-rays. Also last year, he was\u00a0awarded the Foresight Institute\u2019s Feynman Prize<\/a>\u00a0in nanotechnology in the experiment category. In this interview, he talks about his latest work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis type of work would be almost impossible anywhere else. \u2026 It is a very rewarding career. I live with excitement.\u201d \u2014 Argonne Physicist Saw Wai Hla<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Q: What is the focus of your research at Argonne?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong>\u00a0Right now, my research focus is on critical materials, especially rare earths, and the key point is to control the basic properties of individual rare-earth ions. We can study just one rare-earth ion (a charged atom) and all its properties, like the elemental type of rare-earth ion, its electronic structure, its chemical state and its magnetic properties, simultaneously. This is our capability and expertise, unmatched by others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q: Why study rare earths at this level of detail?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong>\u00a0Our goal is to manipulate the properties of the rare-earth ion to get the desired outcomes, so that we can bypass the expensive separation procedures. Rare earths are technologically extremely important. Most high-tech components use rare earths. That includes your cellphone, high-definition TVs, telecommunications, electric vehicles, military applications and satellites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem with rare earth is that it\u2019s not like other materials like gold, for example. When you find a gold mine, you find gold with different materials, but not with similar metals like silver or copper, so it\u2019s easy to separate them. But rare earths, often times, many of them are all together, and they all look alike from the outside. So the separation procedure is extremely expensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q: How is it possible to bypass the separation process?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong>\u00a0Even though the properties of rare earths\u2019 outer structure are all the same, they have subtle interior differences. Our idea is that we can control the ions with organic ligands, which are hydrocarbons that bind to other atoms. The ligands interact with a rare-earth ion and recognize that one is not the same as the other \u2014 a bit like a parent who can tell their identical twins apart, even though they might look the same at first glance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, using the specially designed ligands, we hope to recognize which is which without separating them \u2014 that\u2019s the key point. When we want to use a rare-earth ion, the ligand will select it, and that will automatically open it up for desired applications while the other one is locked so it will not be active. To do that, we must understand individual rare-earth properties, and we must be able to design those ligands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q: Why is Argonne a good place to do this research?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong>\u00a0This type of work would be almost impossible anywhere else. It doesn\u2019t matter how smart you are: You need the support and infrastructure, including tools such as the Advanced Photon Source (a\u00a0DOE\u00a0Office of Science user facility). You also need very talented people who have totally different areas of expertise. In my group, we have a chemist who specializes in synthesis, but he needs to know which design to use. We have theorists who can calculate the properties using supercomputers, but they need to confirm that their calculations are correct. We have experimentalists who measure individual properties of rare-earth ions and validate the data. You can\u2019t be an expert in everything, so it\u2019s important to recruit to form a team, to work together, to respect each other and to motivate younger people.<\/p>\n

It is a very rewarding career. I live with excitement. It\u2019s not like a normal job where you are waiting for Friday so that you have a break. I\u2019m very enthusiastic at the start of every week, because I have data I need to analyze, and I\u2019m looking forward to exciting results.<\/p>\n

About the\u00a0Advanced Photon Source<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science\u2019s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world\u2019s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The\u00a0APS\u00a0provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries<\/a> to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation\u2019s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the\u00a0APS\u00a0to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility.\u00a0APS\u00a0scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the\u00a0APS.<\/p>\n

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S.\u00a0DOE\u00a0Office of Science User Facility operated for the\u00a0DOE\u00a0Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No.\u00a0DE-AC02-06CH11357.<\/p>\n

Argonne National Laboratory<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by\u00a0UChicago Argonne,\u00a0LLC<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Science.<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Science<\/strong>\u00a0is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit\u00a0https:\/\/\u200bener\u200bgy\u200b.gov\/\u200bs\u200bc\u200bience<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BYLINE: Christina Nunez Newswise \u2014 His work has broad relevance, including making the most of difficult-to-mine rare-earth elements.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[61338,53750,18,7520,9656,19,17,909,150226,913,941,452,133,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-305851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-argonne-national-laboratory","9":"tag-doe-science-news-source","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-engineering","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-materials-science","16":"tag-materials-science-and-engineering-nanomaterialsnanoscience-and-nanotechnologynanofabricationphysicsaccelerator-physicsatomic-physicsscientific-user-facilitieswe-are-argonne","17":"tag-nanotechnology","18":"tag-newswise","19":"tag-physics","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115966173820087148","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}