October 3, 2016 – Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are harnessing big data capture and analytics to quickly develop deep insight into materials and their dynamics. Their new technique builds on Kelvin probe force microscopy, long used to gather information about electronic properties by “feeling” a material’s surface with a probe. The new approach, called General Mode KPFM and described in Scientific Reports, fully captures information about the probe motion to provide surface voltage data on nanometer length and microsecond time scales. “New insights can be gained into the relationship between structure and electrochemical function in complex systems including batteries, solar cells and even biological systems,” said first author Liam Collins.
