From Clemson University: “Some of Clemson University’s coolest tech is used by materials scientists and engineers”

From Clemson University

2.22.23

Students are generally familiar with most majors even before they take the first class, but materials science and engineering leaves some wondering what exactly it entails.

It’s relatively simple.

Materials scientists and engineers are the unsung heroes who design, develop and produce engineered materials that touch virtually every aspect of the modern world.

To paraphrase a TV commercial from the 1990s, materials scientists and engineers don’t make the products you buy, but they make the products you buy better. Their innovations range from optical fiber for lasers to plastics and composites that heal their own scratches.

It is a great discipline for students interested in research because materials scientists and engineers use some of the most interesting facilities and technology on campus.

Today we are swinging open the laboratory doors to give you five examples to help round out your understanding of the major and show some of its opportunities:

Marek Urban, right, and Ph.D. student Samruddhi Gaikwad work with a device they use to make hoses.

One of its uses is in the creation of materials that can heal themselves like skin. Urban, the J.E. Sirrine Foundation Endowed Chair in Advanced Polymer Fiber-Based Materials, is a pioneer and leader in the field.

Urban has been developing self-healing materials for more than a decade and has considered applications ranging from paint that repairs its own scratches to military vehicles that patch its own bullet holes to self-repairable pet toys.

In a more recent project, Urban and his team have developed a self-repairing hose to dispense hydrogen as part of the nation’s effort to diversify its fuel supply.

Advances in recycling plastic: Igor Luzinov, the Kentwool Distinguished Professor, uses a ball mill in research that could lead to a new way of recycling polystyrene, a widely used plastic that shows up in products ranging from disposable food containers to foam

Advanced Materials Innovation Complex: Clemson University will soon break ground on a world-class research-and-education facility that will serve as home base for faculty members in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the labs they use.

The 143,000-square-foot building will be the University’s most technologically advanced facility. It will include cutting-edge research and teaching laboratories, synergistic classrooms and collaborative spaces for exploration and conversation outside the lab and classroom.

All students in the complex will conduct research, helping prepare them to be future leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs in advanced materials, a discipline expected to be transformative in advanced manufacturing, energy and health innovation.

The Advanced Materials Innovation Complex is on track to open in 2025, which means students who enroll now will likely be among the first to use it.

Kyle Brinkman, left, and his former Ph.D. student, Mingyang Zhao, work with the calorimeter in this 2016 photo.

Not a water heater: It may look like an oversized water heater, but what happens inside the high-temperature melt solution calorimeter is helping South Carolina play a leading role in research that ensures nuclear waste is stored safely for generations to come.

The custom-made instrument measures heat flow in various materials and is so sensitive that it can detect someone’s breath, even when it’s coming from just outside the room. Ceilings in a lab had to be raised and a platform was built to accommodate the calorimeter.

Several researchers are using the calorimeter to answer some of the nation’s most perplexing questions about managing nuclear waste as well as to design new materials for energy conversion and storage, including batteries, fuel cells and thermoelectrics.

The data generated by the calorimeter are helping the nation advance clean energy, a critical issue in South Carolina, where four nuclear power plants supplied more than half of the state’s electricity last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Kyle Brinkman, chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was key in bringing the calorimeter to Clemson.

Creating self-healing materials: Marek Urban and his team use a technology he played a leading role in developing: high-fidelity surface chemical imaging. The technique allows the team to measure molecular processes responsible for the dynamics of macromolecules.

One of its uses is in the creation of materials that can heal themselves like skin. Urban, the J.E. Sirrine Foundation Endowed Chair in Advanced Polymer Fiber-Based Materials, is a pioneer and leader in the field.

Urban has been developing self-healing materials for more than a decade and has considered applications ranging from paint that repairs its own scratches to military vehicles that patch its own bullet holes to self-repairable pet toys.

In a more recent project, Urban and his team have developed a self-repairing hose to dispense hydrogen as part of the nation’s effort to diversify its fuel supply.

Advances in recycling plastic: Igor Luzinov, the Kentwool Distinguished Professor, uses a ball mill in research that could lead to a new way of recycling polystyrene, a widely used plastic that shows up in products ranging from disposable food containers to foam packaging materials.

To recycle polystyrene, the molecular bonds that hold it together have to be broken. One way is to heat the polystyrene to more than 300 degrees Celsius, but that is energy intensive and prohibitively expensive to do on a large scale.

The research team, which included several researchers from Ames Laboratory, instead put commercial polystyrene inside a ball mill. When the device is turned on, it shakes, and small metal balls inside smash against the polystyrene pieces, facilitating chemical transformations.

The team found that ball-milling broke the molecular chains– called polymers– into chains that were 10-20 times shorter. Shortening the chains means the polystyrene would be less viscous when melted and therefore easier to recycle.

Most surprisingly, though, the team found ball-milling also produced single molecules called monomers.

The ability to break down polystyrene into monomers could prove to be key in separating polystyrene from impurities, such as the various additives commonly included when it is manufactured. That would mean the recycled polystyrene could be used for a wide variety of applications, including food and medical uses.

Combining 3D-printing and lasers: One device at Clemson combines 3D printing and lasers in a technique known as laser-selective integrated additive/subtractive manufacturing, or (L-IASM).

In one project, researchers are using the technique to advance technology for hydrogen-powered turbines, a potential clean-energy source of the future.

An advantage that hydrogen-fueled turbines would have over other clean-energy sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels, is that hydrogen can be burned at will to generate power without having to worry about changes in the weather.

One of the major challenges in adopting hydrogen-powered turbines is protecting turbine blades against heat and high-velocity steam. A possible solution under study at Clemson would be to cover turbine blades with a special slurry and use a laser to sinter it one point at a time, creating a protective coating. Clemson researchers are using L-IASM to create samples of various materials that could be analyzed for their suitability as a covering.

In another project that is a collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory, Clemson researchers are using the 3D-printing facility to explore the creation of new ceramic composites that would be able to stop extremely high-velocity projectiles or lead flying objects at hypersonic speed.

In still another project, researchers are using the laser to fabricate stacks of fuel cells, electrolyzers and batteries. Using laser-based 3D printing, researchers can precisely control the processing temperature at the micrometer scale. This unique capability allows researchers to build stacks of energy devices continuously, resulting in compact devices with high energy densities.

A multidisciplinary team is responsible for developing L-IASM, including: Fei Peng, associate professor of materials science and engineering; Jianhua “Joshua” Tong, associate professor of materials science and engineering; Hai Xiao, chair of the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Jane Zhao, Stanzione Associate Professor of mechanical engineering; Brinkman; Rajendra Bordia, the George J. Bishop, III Endowed Chair of materials science and engineering; and Shunyu Liu, assistant professor of automotive engineering.

Powerful lasers: Clemson, faculty and students create a wide variety of high-powered, experimental lasers. Some are designed to make precision cuts or drill the tiniest of holes, while others counterintuitively make things colder.

Optical fiber is a key part of many laser systems, and Clemson has some of the most unique facilities in the world for creating industry-grade optical fiber at its facility in Anderson, South Carolina. They include a modified chemical vapor deposition lathe and a two-story draw tower.

Clemson also has some of the world’s top faculty in the field, including John Ballato, who holds the J.E. Sirrine Endowed Chair of Optical Fiber in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson, with joint appointments in electrical engineering and in physics.

A closer look with microscopes: Materials scientists and engineers at Clemson use some of the world’s most unique and powerful microscopes. One of them is called a confocal Raman microscope.

Confocal Raman microscope

The microscope allows researchers to examine ceramic materials with the technique of Raman spectroscopy. That alone is not so rare, but it’s less common to use the technique with a combination of high temperatures and controlled atmosphere. This microscope has that capability, heating materials as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius.

Faculty members and their students use the microscope in a variety of nuclear-energy projects, especially those focused on nuclear fuel cladding, nuclear waste immobilization and radiation damage. They are, for example, evaluating new types of molten salt mixtures used in molten salt nuclear reactors.

Luiz Jacobsohn, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, was instrumental in securing the funding that brought the microscope to Clemson.

See the full article here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson University is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger Magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start
University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “Five ways that lasers shine a light on research and leadership in engineering and science”

From Clemson University

2.3.23

Fig. 1: Image of the 124-m-high telecommunication tower of Säntis (Switzerland).

Also shown is the path of the laser recorded with its second harmonic at 515 nm.

The news that lasers are capable of rerouting lightning [Nature Photonics (below)] and could someday be used to protect airports, launchpads and other infrastructure raised a question that has electrified some observers with curiosity:

Just what else can these marvels of focused light do?

We took that question to Clemson University’s John Ballato, one of the world’s leading optical scientists, and his answers might be—you guessed it—shocking.

John Ballato.

John Ballato, right, and Wade Hawkins work in their lab the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET).

Some lasers shine more intensely than the sun, while others can make things cold, he said. Lasers can drill the tiniest of holes, defend against missile attacks and help self-driving cars “see” where they are going, Ballato said. Those are just a few examples—and all have been the subject of research at Clemson.

If anyone knows about how light and lasers are used, it’s Ballato, who holds the J.E. Sirrine Endowed Chair of Optical Fiber in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson, with joint appointments in electrical engineering and in physics.

He has authored more than 500 technical papers, holds 35 U.S. and international patents and is a fellow in seven professional organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ballato recently returned from San Francisco, where he served as a symposium chair at SPIE’s Photonics West LASE, “the most important laser technologies conference in the field,” according to its website.

“We’ve got a great opportunity to shine a light—pun intended—on Clemson’s leadership in laser technology,” said Ballato, who was not involved in the lightning-related research. “Clemson has some of the world’s top talent in laser technology, unique facilities that include industry-scale capabilities for making some of the world’s most advanced optical fibers and opportunities for hands-on learning. If you want to be a leader, innovator or entrepreneur in lasers, Clemson is the place for you.”

Liang Dong, right, creates powerful lasers as part of his research at Clemson University.

Ballato is among numerous researchers at Clemson who are doing seemingly miraculous things with laser light. Here are five things lasers can do (other than deflect lightening) that Clemson researchers are working with today.

Ballato was part of an international team that developed the first laser self-cooling optical fiber made of silica glass and then turned that innovation into a laser amplifier. Researchers said it is a step toward self-cooling lasers. Such a laser would not need to be cooled externally because it would not heat up in the first place, they said, and it would produce exceptionally pure and stable frequencies. The work was led by researchers at Stanford University and originally reported in the journal Optics Letters [below two papers].

The light from lasers can be made to twist or spin as it travels from one point to another. This can be done by engineering the light’s “orbital angular momentum” and is central to research led by Eric Johnson, the PalmettoNet Endowed Chair in Optoelectronics, with help from several other researchers, including Joe Watkins, director of General Engineering. The technology could make it possible to channel through fog, murky water and thermal turbulence, potentially leading to new ways of communicating and gathering data.

Some lasers are orders of magnitude more intense than the surface of the sun, thanks to specially designed optical fiber that confines that light to a fraction of the width of a human hair. These powerful laser devices can be used to shoot missiles out of the sky or to cut, drill, weld and mark a variety of materials in ways that conventional tools cannot. Lasers, for example, are used to cut Gorilla Glass on smartphones. Clemson researchers helping advance laser technology in this direction include: Ballato; Liang Dong, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Wade Hawkins, a research assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a technology that employs pulsing laser beams to measure distance to objects or surfaces. For self-driving cars, lidar serves as the “eyes” that help vehicles navigate the streets. Lidar can also be used for mapping and surveying and measuring density, temperature, and other properties of the atmosphere. The technology has been employed in numerous projects at Clemson, including Deep Orange 12, an autonomous race car designed by automotive engineering graduate students.

Lasers are also playing a role in helping develop clean energy sources. One of the major challenges in creating hydrogen-powered turbines is protecting the blades against heat and high-velocity steam so extreme it would vaporize many materials. A possible solution under study at Clemson would be to cover turbine blades with a special slurry and use a laser to sinter it one point at a time, creating a protective coating. The research is led by Fei Peng, an associate professor of materials science and engineering.

Optics Letters 2020
Optics Letters 2020
Nature Photonics

See the full article here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson University is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger Magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start
University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “How three Clemson scientists are weaving chemistry research into real-world solutions”

From Clemson University

10.17.22

Chemistry touches every aspect of everyday life, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to the cars we drive and the products we use.

This week is National Chemistry Week, an event sponsored by the American Chemical Society to highlight chemistry’s importance.

This year’s theme is “Fabulous Fibers: The Chemistry of Fabrics.” To celebrate, the Clemson University College of Science is spotlighting three faculty members whose research is linked to the use of various fibers.

Disappearing colors

Chemistry Professor George Chumanov helped an automotive upholstery manufacturer determine why their fabric started to fade when the car was parked in the sun on dealer lots.

Clemson Chemistry Professor George Chumanov and his colleagues turned into a detectives of sorts when an automobile upholstery manufacturing company asked for help. The cars’ seat fabric was suddenly starting to fade when the sun hit the cars parked on dealer lots.

“It’s all chemistry,” Chumanov said. “What happens when fabric fades is that the dye molecules decompose. The molecules fall apart, and the color disappears. Photobleaching happens every minute. You cannot prevent it. The question is how to minimize and control it.”

One of Chumanov’s areas of expertise is “photophysics” — the physics of light and its interaction with matter.

“It was immediately apparent to us that the problem had something to do with the manufacturing process, that they had inevitably changed something that ultimately led to the fabric being less stable,” he said.

Knowing the fundamentals of photodegradation is just the first step. “Translating those fundamentals into the real why is much more complex,” said Chumanov.

Besides sunlight, factors such as oxygen levels, moisture and temperature can affect the fabric and dye molecules.

Here, Chumanov’s lab, Department of Chemistry lecturer Rakesh Sachdeva and specialists from the manufacturing company used a variety of tools — including chemical, optical and mass spectrometry measurements — to reveal how properties of the dyes and fabrics had changed before and after the fading to pinpoint causes of the problem.

“I learned how to appreciate the complexity of real-world situations. It’s often extremely difficult to identify the problem under conditions where you don’t have full control of conditions,” said Chumanov, whose fabric research has also included creating clothing that repelled dirt and making yarns that can produce electricity when exposed to sunlight.

His current research involves the synthesis and investigation of high-end carbon nanofibers.

Removing pollutants

Daniel Whitehead, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, has turned cotton fibers into nanoparticles that remove environmental pollutants.

Thanks to its practicality, comfort and convenience, cotton is the most popular fabric in the world. But Daniel Whitehead, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, isn’t using it to make blue jeans or T-shirts. Instead, he is turning cotton fibers into nanoparticles that remove environmental pollutants.

Cotton is about 80 percent cellulose. Whitehead’s lab degrades the non-crystalline portion of the cotton fibers using a chemical reaction, leaving tiny cellulose nanocrystals. Between 1,000 and 1,600 of the nanocrystals would fit on the cross-section surface of a human hair.

A polymer placed on the surface of the nanocrystals reacts with the target contaminant.

Initially, the project targeted volatile compounds that caused odors during the fat-rendering process that separates protein from fat in leftover parts of animals we don’t eat for use in pet food. Researchers made a filter cartridge out of the nanoparticles and passed the air from the plant through the filter. They found the filter removed at least 95 percent of the odor molecules from the air.

Whitehead’s lab has also used the nanoparticles to degrade pesticides and remove polyfluorinated surfactants, a persistent environmental contaminant, from water. Scientists have also investigated using nanocrystals to remove metal contaminants from rendered fat so it can be refined into renewable fuel.

“What we like about cellulose nanocrystals is that they’re very cheap to make because they come from cotton, which is a commodity crop. They’re easy to chemically modify after we’ve synthesized them, and it gives us a nice biodegradable platform that we can use for these applications to remove contaminants from the environment,” Whitehead said. “We think it’s useful for a variety of applications.”

While the lab has showed that the material works in multiple applications at a lab scale, it must still prove it can work on an industrial scale for an affordable price.

“We’ve shown we can do this with 100 milliliters of fat. What happens if we try to do it with 1,000 pounds of fat? The question is, can we make it affordable enough that it can be applied in the market?” he said.

Wearable devices

When most people think of wearable devices, they probably think of smartwatches, fitness trackers and wearable monitors that collect information on physical activity, measure blood oxygen saturation levels, detect falls and even surveil heart rhythms.

Clemson Chemistry Professor Carlos Garcia’s lab is researching a different type of a wearable device that would use paper fibers (turned into carbon electrodes) to efficiently and inexpensively detect infections or even monitor cancer biomarkers to determine whether a treatment is working.

Carlos Garcia

Lucas Ayres, a graduate student in Chemistry Professor Carlos Garcia’s lab, helped solve two challenges in using carbon electrodes made from paper fibers in wearable devices that would detect infections.

Clemson Chemistry Professor Carlos Garcia’s lab is researching a different type of a wearable device that would use paper fibers (turned into carbon electrodes) to efficiently and inexpensively detect infections or even monitor cancer biomarkers to determine whether a treatment is working.

Wearable devices could give doctors the information they need to treat a problem.

“Most often, doctors make a diagnosis based on the best clinical data available,” Garcia said. “We want to provide more data so that diagnosis is more accurate and ultimately improve clinical outcomes.”

Using pyrolysis, the paper is heated in the absence of oxygen to temperatures high enough that the cellulose fibers turn to carbon while preserving the paper’s 3D structure.

“You end up with something that looks like spaghetti noodles, and each of the fibers can conduct electricity and become a chemical sensor,” Garcia said. “That gives us tremendous flexibility in the design of these sensors and allows us to measure things we could not measure with standard color-based devices.”

Previously, Garcia’s lab created sensors that measured metabolites, gases, heavy metals and even bleach.

However, two factors limited the applicability of this material in wearable applications — brittleness and some electrical resistance. But Lucas Ayres, a Ph.D. student in Garcia’s lab, used a natural polymer to coat the electrodes, making them flexible enough to withstand bending and added a thin layer of gold to improve the electron transfer process. In collaboration with Kristi Whitehead, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, they developed a device that can be attached to skin and detect the presence of Staphylococcus aureus, a commonly misdiagnosed and mistreated pathogen.

“Fundamentally, Lucas is addressing limitations that apply to many other carbon materials, enabling the development of other sensors. On the application side, this addresses a clinical need to have a way of diagnosing these infections using a system that is not invasive and inexpensive,” Garcia said.

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson University is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger Magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.

How Clemson got its start

University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “Discovery brings scientists one step closer to solving century-old cosmic ray mystery”

From Clemson University

July 14, 2022

Astrophysicists prove neutrinos originate from blazars.

Illustration by Clemson University graduate student Benjamin Amend.

Cosmic rays, charged particles that travel up to nearly the speed of light from deep outer space, constantly bombard Earth.

For more than a century, astrophysicists have tried to determine the origin of those extremely energetic particles, which are up to a million times more energetic than anything achieved by the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

They also want to know what propels them with such tremendous force.

Solving the age-old mystery could be one step closer thanks to new multi-messenger research by a team of scientists that includes Clemson University Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Marco Ajello.

Ajello and collaborators Sara Buson from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, and Andrea Tramacere from the University of Geneva have proven with an unprecedented certainty that astrophysical neutrinos originate from blazars.

Tiny particles

Astrophysical neutrinos are tiny neutral particles produced by cosmic ray interactions in these extreme accelerators, making them unique messengers, or signals, that could help pinpoint cosmic ray sources.

Because cosmic rays are charged particles, the galaxy’s magnetic fields can deflect them during their journey through space. That makes it impossible for scientists to trace where they originated. Neutrinos, on the other hand, have very little mass, are neutral and hardly interact with matter.

Neutrinos. Credit: J-PARC T2K Neutrino Experiment.

They race through the universe and can travel through galaxies, planets and the human body almost without a trace. Because electromagnetic forces do not affect them, they can be traced back to their astrophysical sources.

In 2017, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, buried deep in the ice at the South Pole, detected a neutrino.

University of Wisconsin IceCube Neutrino Observatory Detector at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica South Pole, elevation of 2835 metres (9301 feet).

Scientists traced it back to blazar TXS 0506+056. Blazars are active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes that emit much more radiation than their entire galaxy. Blazars are active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes that emit much more radiation than their entire galaxy.

Using neutrino data obtained by IceCube — the most sensitive neutrino detector currently in operation — and a catalog of astrophysical objects confidently identified as blazars, Ajello and his colleagues found powerful evidence that a subset of blazars originated the observed high-energy neutrinos.

“We had a hint back then (in 2017), and now we have evidence,” Ajello said.

“The results provide, for the first time, incontrovertible observational evidence that the sub-sample of PeVatron blazars are extragalactic neutrino sources and thus cosmic ray accelerators,” Buson said. PeVatron blazars speed up particles up to at least PeV energies. PeV is 10^15 electron-volts.

Major milestones

The discovery of these high-energy neutrino factories represents a major milestone for astrophysics, according to Tramacere. “It places us a step forward in solving the century-old mystery of the origin of cosmic rays,” he said.

Ajello said researchers will now study those blazars to understand what makes them good accelerators.

Buson said the statistical analysis has focused only on the most promising sets of IceCube neutrino data. She expects that further sophisticated analytical techniques may bring more discoveries.

The research also illustrates the importance of multi-messenger astronomy, Ajello said. Multi-messenger astrophysics is one goal in the National Academies’ “Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s,” a report that sets research priorities for the astronomy and astrophysics communities for the next decade.

For thousands of years, astronomers and astrophysicists relied on light to study the universe. But they can now detect other “messengers” such as cosmic rays, neutrinos and gravitational waves.

“It’s like feeling, hearing and seeing at the same time. You’ll get a much better understanding,” Ajello said. “The same is true in astrophysics because the insight you have from multiple detections of different messengers is much more detailed than you can get from only light.”

The European Research Council has funded the described work within the framework of a Starting Grant, PI Sara Buson. ID: 949555, “Mapping Highly-Energetic Messengers across the Universe” (MessMapp). Part of Ajello’s work on the project was funded by NASA under contract 80NSSC21K1915.

This article includes information from a media release by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

The publication in the journal Science sparked a scientific debate about whether blazars are cosmic ray accelerators.

The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, report the probability of this being coincidence is less than one in a million.

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson University is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger Magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start

University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “Clemson astrophysicist works to unravel mystery of what happens after neutron stars collide”

From Clemson University

April 25, 2022

Clemson University astrophysicist Jonathan Zrake is a detective of sorts.

But Zrake is not a part of a team of investigators reconstructing a crime scene to identify a suspect. Instead, he is among international researchers working to determine what caused a new X-ray glow three and a half years after two neutron stars merged 130 million light-years away from the Earth, creating a new black hole and a bright “kilonova” explosion.

GW170817 is the first, and so far only, neutron star merger observed in both gravitational waves — minute but recently detectable vibrations of space-time — and electromagnetic radiation, or light. X-rays are a type of light.

“The event was a cataclysmic thing that happened in seconds. But the dynamics that took place in that very short window of time are still playing out,” Zrake said.

Astrophysicists have two leading explanations for the new X-ray source: either a “kilonova afterglow” — a plasma shock wave that could have been re-strengthened by outflowing gas — or matter heating up and shining as it falls back into the black hole left behind after the neutron stars merged. In either case, it would be the first time such a phenomenon has been observed.

This will keep theorists busy for some time. We may argue about the most viable explanation, but no matter what, the enhancement of the X-ray emission is a big discovery.

On Aug. 17, 2017, astronomers detected gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars — the very dense cores of collapsed giant stars — using the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States and Virgo, a detector in Italy. Scientists detected visible and infrared light several hours later.

Caltech/MIT Advanced aLigo at Hanford, WA, Livingston, LA; and VIRGO Gravitational Wave interferometer, near Pisa(IT).

“It highlights the importance of multi-messenger astrophysics. We would have never detected this event at all if the gravitational wave observatories hadn’t seen it first. We saw the light, but only because the gravitational wave detectors told us where and when to look,” Zrake said.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory detected X-rays from GW170817 nine days later.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope.

Researchers believe the merger produced a narrow jet of high-energy particles that wasn’t pointed directly towards Earth.

The X-ray emission caused by the jet had been steadily getting fainter since early 2018. But researchers noticed that the decline stopped in March 2020 and the X-rays steadied.

One explanation is that the expanding debris from the merger generated a shock, like a sonic boom from a supersonic plane. The emission produced by material heated by the shock is called a “kilonova afterglow.”

An alternative explanation is that some of the material launched by the merger fell back into the black hole left behind after the neutrons stars merged, producing radiation because it got very hot. That phenomenon is called fallback accretion.

Scientists are continuing to monitor GW170817 in X-rays and radio waves. If it is a kilonova afterglow, it should lead to increasingly bright radio emissions, said Zrake, whose research group at Clemson studies the dynamics of black holes and astrophysical explosions. If it is fallback accretion, the X-ray emission should stay steady or steadily decline. Either way, scientists are learning something new about what happened.

“It’s inevitable that something like this will happen again. It’s just a question of when. When it does, this team of astronomers and astrophysicists, including scientists at Clemson, will be poised to investigate it,” Zrake said.

The Astrophysical Journal Letters published the findings.

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson University is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger Magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start

University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “New research hints at the presence of unconventional galaxies containing two black holes”

From Clemson University

June 19, 2020

Marco Ajello
majello@g.clemson.edu
650-804-9042

Jim Melvin
jsmelvi@clemson.edu
864-784-1707

New research indicates that some galaxies might have two massive black holes at their centers that can emit ultra-powerful jets of energy. Credit: European Space Agency

A Clemson University scientist has joined forces with an international team of astronomers to identify periodic gamma-ray emissions from 11 active galaxies, paving the way for future studies of unconventional galaxies that might harbor two supermassive black holes at their centers.

Among astronomers, it has long been well-established that most galaxies host a black hole at their center. But galaxies hosting a pair of black holes has remained theoretical.

The results of the team’s research appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on June 19, 2020.

“In general, supermassive black holes are characterized by masses of more than a million masses of that of our sun,” said Pablo Peñil, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain. “Some of these supermassive black holes, known as active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been found to accelerate particles to near the speed of light in collimated beams called jets. The emission from these jets is detected throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but most of their energy is released in the form of gamma rays.”

Gamma rays, which are the most extreme form of light, are detected by the Large Area Telescope onboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. AGN are characterized by abrupt and unpredictable variations in brightness.

NASA/Fermi LAT

NASA/Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

“Identifying regular patterns in their gamma-ray emission is like looking at the stormy sea and searching for the tiny regular set of waves caused by, say, the passage of a small boat,” Peñil said. “It becomes very challenging very quickly.”

The team accomplished the first difficult step of identifying a large number of galaxies that emits periodically over years and is trying to address the question of what is producing that periodic behavior in these AGN. Several of the potential explanations are fascinating.

“The next step will be the preparation of observational campaigns with other telescopes to closely follow up on these galaxies and hopefully unravel the reasons behind these compelling observations,” said co-author Marco Ajello, an associate professor in the College of Science’s department of physics and astronomy at Clemson University. “We have a few possibilities in mind – from lighthouse effects produced by the jets to modulations in the flow of matter to the black hole – but one very interesting solution would be that periodicity is produced by a pair of supermassive black holes rotating around each other. Understanding the relation of these black holes with their environment will be essential for a complete picture of galaxy formation.”

Thanks to a decade of Fermi-LAT observations, the team was able to identify the repetition of gamma-ray signals over cycles of a few years. On average, these emissions repeated about every two years.

“Our study represents the most complete work to date on the search for periodicity in gamma rays, a study that will be instrumental in deriving insights about the origin of this peculiar behavior,” said co-author Alberto Domínguez, Peñil’s Ph.D. supervisor in Madrid and also a former postdoctoral researcher in Ajello’s group at Clemson. “We have used nine years of continuous LAT all-sky observations. Among the more than two thousand AGN analyzed, only about a dozen stand out for this intriguing cyclical emission.”

Enlarging the limited sample of periodic emitters constitutes an important leap forward for understanding the underlying physical processes in these galaxies.

“Previously only two blazars were known to show periodic changes in their gamma-ray brightness. Thanks to our study, we can confidently say that this behavior is present in 11 other sources,” said co-author Sara Buson, a professor at University of Würzburg in Germany. “In addition, our study found 13 other galaxies with hints of cyclical emission. But to confidently confirm this, we need to wait for Fermi-LAT to collect even more data.”

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start

University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson University: “Clemson researchers capture first-ever photographic proof of power-packed jet emerging from colliding galaxies”

From Clemson University

April 7, 2020
Laura Schmitt

A team of Clemson University College of Science researchers, in collaboration with international colleagues, has reported the first definitive detection of a relativistic jet emerging from two colliding galaxies — in essence, the first photographic proof that merging galaxies can produce jets of charged particles that travel at nearly the speed of light.

Furthermore, scientists had previously discovered that these jets could be found in elliptical-shaped galaxies, which can be formed in the merging of two spiral galaxies. Now, they have an image showing the formation of a jet from two younger, spiral-shaped galaxies.

The Seyfert 1 galaxy, TXS 2116-077, (seen on the right) collides with another spiral-shaped galaxy of similar mass, creating a relativistic jet in the TXS’s center. Both galaxies have active galactic nuclei (AGN). Image Credit: Courtesy Vaidehi Paliya

“For the first time, we have found two spiral- or disk-shaped galaxies on path for a collision that have produced a nascent, baby jet that has just started its life at the center of one of the galaxies,” said Vaidehi Paliya, a former Clemson post-doctoral researcher and lead author of the findings reported in The Astrophysical Journal on April 7, 2020.

The paper is titled “TXS 2116-077: A gamma-ray emitting relativistic jet hosted in a galaxy merger.” In addition to Paliya, who is now at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, the other Clemson authors include associate professor Marco Ajello, professor Dieter Hartmann, and adjunct professor Stefano Marchesi of the department of physics and astronomy.

The fact that the jet is so young enabled the researchers to clearly see its host.

According to Ajello, others have already imaged galactic collisions many times. But he and his colleagues are the first to capture two galaxies merging where there is a fully formed jet pointing at us — albeit, a very young one, and thus not yet bright enough to blind us.

“Typically, a jet emits light that is so powerful we can’t see the galaxy behind it,” Marchesi said. “It’s like trying to look at an object and someone points a bright flashlight into your eyes. All you can see is the flashlight. This jet is less powerful, so we can actually see the galaxy where it is born.”

Jets are the most powerful astrophysical phenomena in the universe. They can emit more energy into the universe in one second than our sun will produce in its entire lifetime. That energy is in the form of radiation, such as intense radio waves, X-rays, and gamma-rays.

“Jets are the best accelerators in the universe — far better than the super colliders we have on Earth,” said Hartmann, referring to accelerators used in high-energy physics studies.

Jets were thought to be born from older, elliptical-shaped galaxies with an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is a super-massive black hole that resides at its center. As a point of reference, scientists believe all galaxies have centrally located super-massive black holes, but not all of them are AGNs. For example, our Milky Way’s massive black hole is dormant.

Scientists theorize that the AGNs grow larger by gravitationally drawing in gas and dust through a process called accretion. But not all of this matter gets accreted into the black hole. Some of the particles become accelerated and are spewed outward in narrow beams in the form of jets.

“It’s hard to dislodge gas from the galaxy and have it reach its center,” Ajello explained. “You need something to shake the galaxy a little bit to make the gas get there. The merging or colliding of galaxies is the easiest way to move the gas, and if enough gas moves, then the super-massive black hole will become extremely bright and could potentially develop a jet.”

Ajello believes that the team’s image captured the two galaxies, a Seyfert 1 galaxy known as TXS 2116-077 and another galaxy of similar mass, as they were colliding for the second time because of the amount of gas seen in the image.

“Eventually, all the gas will be expelled into space, and without gas, a galaxy cannot form stars anymore,” Ajello said. “Without gas, the black hole will switch off and the galaxy will lay dormant.”

Billions of years from now, our own Milky Way will merge with the nearby Andromeda galaxy.

“Scientists have carried out detailed numerical simulations and predicted that this event may ultimately lead to the formation of one giant elliptical galaxy,” said Paliya. “Depending on the physical conditions, it may host a relativistic jet, but that’s in the distant future.”

The team captured the image using one of the largest land-based telescopes in the world, the Subaru 8.2-meter optical infrared telescope located on a mountain summit in Hawaii. They performed subsequent observations with the Gran Telescopio Canarias and William Herschel Telescope on the island of La Palma off the coast of Spain, as well as with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory space telescope.

NAOJ/Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea Hawaii, USA,4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level

Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, in the Canaries, Spain, sited on a volcanic peak 2,267 metres (7,438 ft) above sea level

ING 4.2 meter William Herschel Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands, 2,396 m (7,861 ft)

NASA/Chandra X-ray Telescope

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.

Just as founder Thomas Green Clemson intertwined his life with the state’s economic and educational development, the Clemson Family impacts lives daily with their teaching, research and service.
How Clemson got its start

University founders Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson had a lifelong interest in education, agricultural affairs and science.

In the post-Civil War days of 1865, Thomas Clemson looked upon a South that lay in economic ruin, once remarking, “This country is in wretched condition, no money and nothing to sell. Everyone is ruined, and those that can are leaving.”

Thomas Clemson’s death on April 6, 1888, set in motion a series of events that marked the start of a new era in higher education in South Carolina. In his will, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and a considerable sum from his personal assets for the establishment of an educational institution that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolina’s young people.

Clemson Agricultural College formally opened as an all-male military school in July 1893 with an enrollment of 446. It remained this way until 1955 when the change was made to “civilian” status for students, and Clemson became a coeducational institution. In 1964, the college was renamed Clemson University as the state legislature formally recognized the school’s expanded academic offerings and research pursuits.

More than a century after its opening, the University provides diverse learning, research facilities and educational opportunities not only for the people of the state — as Thomas Clemson dreamed — but for thousands of young men and women throughout the country and the world.

From Clemson via phys.org: “Novel MOF is potential next-gen semiconductor”

From Clemson University

via

From phys.org

March 23, 2020
Laura Schmitt, Clemson University

Sourav Saha’s metal-organic framework research was featured on the cover of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on March 18, 2020. Credit: Courtesy Sourav Saha

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are emerging multi-functional materials that are gradually finding their way out of the research labs and into a myriad of real-world applications. For example, MOFs can store dangerous gasses, catalyze chemical reactions, deliver drugs in controlled fashion, and may even be used in rechargeable batteries and solar cells.

A team of researchers from Clemson University’s College of Science recently demonstrated that a novel double-helical MOF architecture, in a partially oxidized form, can conduct electricity that potentially makes it a next-generation semiconductor.

The team’s findings are described in the paper titled “The Advent of Electrically Conducting Double-Helical Metal-Organic Frameworks Featuring Butterfly-Shaped Electron-Rich π-Extended Tetrathiafulvalene Ligands,” which was published on March 18, 2020, as the cover article in Applied Materials & Interfaces, a journal published by the American Chemical Society.

MOFs consist of an array of metal ions connected by organic ligands. Atomically engineered with great precision, they possess highly ordered repetitive units that usually constitute porous structures.

Since the first MOF was constructed over 20 years ago, researchers worldwide have created more than 20,000 different MOFs made with a variety of metals and organic ligands.

According to chemistry associate professor Sourav Saha, most existing MOFs are made of linear or planar ligands. However, Saha and his team introduced a butterfly-shaped, convex ligand into a MOF, which resulted in a novel double helical structure capable of conducting electricity once partially oxidized by guest iodine molecules.

“This butterfly-shaped extended tetrathiafulvalene (ExTTF) ligand has been known to the chemistry community for a while, but it hadn’t been incorporated into a MOF before,” Saha said. “By introducing it into a double helical MOF, we could create unique S-shaped charge transport pathways that run along the seams of the neighboring strands. When the ExTTF ligands on one side of each double helical strand is oxidized by iodine and those on the other remain neutral, they form intermolecular charge-transfer chains along the seams. Electrons can flow along this pathway in an intermolecular fashion, making the MOF more conductive.”

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

About Science X in 100 words

Science X™ is a leading web-based science, research and technology news service which covers a full range of topics. These include physics, earth science, medicine, nanotechnology, electronics, space, biology, chemistry, computer sciences, engineering, mathematics and other sciences and technologies. Launched in 2004 (Physorg.com), Science X’s readership has grown steadily to include 5 million scientists, researchers, and engineers every month. Science X publishes approximately 200 quality articles every day, offering some of the most comprehensive coverage of sci-tech developments world-wide. Science X community members enjoy access to many personalized features such as social networking, a personal home page set-up, article comments and ranking, the ability to save favorite articles, a daily newsletter, and other options.
Mission 12 reasons for reading daily news on Science X Organization Key editors and writersinclude 1.75 million scientists, researchers, and engineers every month. Phys.org publishes approximately 100 quality articles every day, offering some of the most comprehensive coverage of sci-tech developments world-wide. Quancast 2009 includes Phys.org in its list of the Global Top 2,000 Websites. Phys.org community members enjoy access to many personalized features such as social networking, a personal home page set-up, RSS/XML feeds, article comments and ranking, the ability to save favorite articles, a daily newsletter, and other options.

One of the country’s most selective public research universities, Clemson University serves a uniquely driven and highly accomplished student body.

Ranked as the 27th best national public university by U.S. News & World Report, Clemson is dedicated to teaching, research and service. Founded in 1889, we remain committed both to world-class research and a high quality of life. In fact, 92 percent of our seniors say they’d pick Clemson again if they had it to do over.

Clemson’s retention and graduation rates rank among the highest in the country for public universities. We’ve been named among the “Best Public College Values” by Kiplinger magazine in 2019, and The Princeton Review named us among the “Best Value Colleges” for 2020.

Our beautiful college campus sits on 20,000 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the shores of Lake Hartwell. And we also have research facilities and economic development hubs throughout the state of South Carolina — in Anderson, Blackville, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Greenwood, and Pendleton.

The research, outreach and entrepreneurial projects led by our faculty and students are driving economic development and improving quality of life in South Carolina and beyond. In fact, a recent study determined that Clemson has an annual $1.9 billion economic impact on the state.