EFree has been very active on many levels since the last newsletter.

Our Annual Meeting was held at Carnegie on September 9-10. The goal of the meeting was to assess progress during the past year and to chart a course for the second year of the Center.  Highlights included discussions of the advances in each of our five projects provided by the project leads and presentations by students and postdocs followed by extensive discussions.  Our External Advisory Committee members also provided valuable input on our research program moving forward.  

EFree research was also on display at the recent EFRC PI meeting, held October 26-27 in Washington. We are pleased that our graduate students played the main role in highlighting progress in each of the Center-wide projects through both oral presentations and posters.  We now look toward our mid-term review, February 5, 2016 in the Washington, DC area. This will provide a further opportunity to showcase the progress in our research program. 

This newsletter highlights just of a few of the current advances.  Current research in diamond growth by chemical vapor deposition has resulted in a method for diamond synthesis at atmospheric pressure, a significant breakthrough for EFree.  Progress in unraveling the structure of carbon nanothreads has taken a big step forward with the work of the Cornell and Penn State groups on potential reaction pathways from benzene, through intermediate polymeric structures, to nanothreads. 

EFree continues to explore fundamental properties of elements whose behavior of over a broad range of conditions could ultimately transform our energy landscape. Similarities and differences in the bonding and electronic structure between hydrogen and lithium under pressure provide new insight for increasing our understanding of structure-property relations in the “simplest” elemental solids, with the ultimate goal of creating new energy materials.

There is great excitement about the opportunities in the facilities, particularly the Spallation Neutron Source where we are conducting new experiments and holding a special workshop Dec. 10.  We continue to promote EFree research with presentations in a variety of settings.  I gave a presentation at Georgetown University disucussing many aspects of EFree science, and Coordinator Steve Gramsch spoke with undergraduate students at Augustana College (Rock Island, IL) and Northern Virginia Community College (Annandale, VA) on opportunities in high pressure research.  Other presentations are detailed in a story below. 

We welcome new Affiliated Scientists, Tianshu Li (George Washington University and John Tse (University of Saskatchawan).  Also, congratulations go to Tim Strobel and the New Solar Materials Project, as their work was featured in the recent EFRC program newsletter, as well as on the research highlights of the Advanced Photon Source. 

Sincerely,