Directing Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination

Abstract

Fabrication of new crystalline materials with atomic-level control. To understand charge ordering and screening in mixed valence oxides, this oxide superlattice has been designed, synthesized, and then spectroscopically characterized at the atomic scale using scanning transmission electron microscopy. In the false color elastic images, white stripes are layers of LaTiO3; purple stripes are SrTiO 3. Small images show individual atomic layers-in the topmost principal-component-filtered image, pink is lanthanum; light purple is strontium; and green is titanium.(From "Artificial Charge-Modulation in Atomic-scale Perovskite Titanate Superlattices," A. Ohtomo, D. A. Muller, J. L. Grazul, H. Y. Hwang, Nature, 419, 378 (2002). Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature.) Directing Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination A Report from the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory CommitteeChair:John Hemminger (University of California, Irvine) U.S. Department of Energy December 20, 2007Prepared by the BESAC Subcommittee on Grand Challenges for Basic Energy Sciences Co-Chairs:Graham Fleming (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley)Mark Ratner (Northwestern University) CO M M I T T EE M EM B ER S BA S I C EN ERG Y S C I EN C E S A DV I S O RY CO M M I T T EEChair: S U B CO M M I T T EE O N G RA N D C H A LLEN G E S F O R BA S I C EN ERG Y S C I EN C E SCo Chairs: TA B LE O F CO N T EN T S G RA N D C H A LLEN G E S F O R BA S I C EN ERG Y S C I EN C E Sthe information stored in the Library of Congress could be contained in a memory the size of a sugar cube. Ultimately, if computations can be carried out at the atomic or sub-nanoscale levels, today's most powerful microtechnology will seem as antiquated and slow as an abacus.For the future, imagine a clean, cheap, and virtually unlimited supply of electrical power from solar-energy systems modeled on the photosynthetic processes utilized by green plants, and power lines that could transmit this electricity from the deserts of the Southwest to the Eastern Seaboard at nearly 100-percent efficiency. Imagine information and communications systems based on light rather than electrons that could predict when and where hurricanes make landfall, along with self-repairing materials that could survive those hurricanes. Imagine synthetic materials fully compatible and able to communicate with biological materials. This is speculative to be sure, but not so very far beyond the scope of possibilities.Acquiring the ability to direct and control matter all the way down to molecular, atomic, and electronic levels will require fundamental new knowledge in several critical areas. This report was commissioned to define those knowledge areas and the opportunities that lie beyond. Five interconnected Grand Challenges that will pave the way to a science of control are identified in the regime of science roughly defined by the Basic Energy Science portfolio, and recommendations are presented for what must be done to meet t...

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