Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

Ebola viruses (EBOVs) assemble into filamentous virions, whose shape and stability are determined by the matrix viral protein 40 (VP40). Virus entry into host cells occurs via membrane fusion in late endosomes; however, the mechanism of how the remarkably long virions undergo uncoating, including virion disassembly and nucleocapsid release into the cytosol, remains unknown. Here, we investigate the structural architecture of EBOVs entering host cells and discover that the VP40 matrix disassem... Read more

Recycling spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) guarantees the conservation of important metal resources by reducing demands on raw supply and offsetting the energy and environmental costs associated with its manufacture. Employing a molten salt as a solvent for extraction affords a much greener and simpler route to metal recovery by electrochemical means. The current mechanistic understanding of the electrochemical recovery of metals in molten salts needs to be improved for the process to be op... Read more

Among natural cellular materials, pomelo peels, having a foam-like hierarchical microstructure, represent an ideal model for developing materials with high energy absorption efficiency. In this work, by combining X-ray tomographic imaging technique and digital volume correlation (DVC), in-situ stepwise uniaxial compression tests were performed to quantify the internal morphological evolution and kinematic responses of pomelo peel samples during compression.

The complex mechanical response of open-cell foams depends strongly on the hierarchy of length scales inherent in them, from engineering-part scale to the ligament scale through the grain scale down to the crystal-lattice scale. A first step toward understanding and predicting the coordinated mechanical response across le... Read more

Pigment distributions have a critical role in the corrosion protection properties of organic paint coatings, but they are difficult to image in 3D over statistically significant volumes and at sufficiently high spatial resolutions required for detailed analysis. Here we report, for the first time, large volume analytical serial sectioning tomography of an organic composite coating using a xenon Plasma Focused Ion Beam (PFIB) combined with secondary electron imaging, energy dispersive X-ray (E... Read more

Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels using molten salt media is an attractive alternative to liquid-liquid extraction techniques.

Pyroelectrochemical processing utilizes direct, selective, electrochemical reduction of uranium dioxide, followed by selective electroplating of a uranium metal. Thermodynamic prediction of the electrochemical reduction of UO2 to U in LiCl-KCl eutectic has shown to be a function of the oxide ion activity. The pO2 of the salt may be affected by the microstruc... Read more

Composite cathodes comprising nanoscale
powders are expected to impart with high specific surface
area and triple phase boundary (TPB) density, which will lead
to better performance.

However, uniformly mixing nanosized heterophase powders remains a challenge due to their high surface energy and thus ease with which they agglomerate into their individual phases during the mixing and sintering
processes. In this study, we successfully synthesized La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe... Read more

Targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy (TRT) using α-particle radiation is a promising approach for treating both large and micrometastatic lesions. Researchers developed prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)–targeted low-molecular-weight agents for 212Pb-based TRT of patients with prostate cancer (PC) by evaluating the matching γ-emitting surrogate.

Targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy using α-particles (α-TRTs), which cause deposition of ionizing radiation of high-linear-ener... Read more

For organic-inorganic composite materials, the spatial dispersion of inorganic fillers in the organic matrix is of great significance for designing and manufacturing high-performance composite materials. To improve the understanding of the micro-physical mechanism of the filler-reinforced polymer matrix, we studied the relationship between filler network structure and macro-mechanical properties of silicone rubber by using fluorescent labeling technology and three-dimensional (3D) visualizati... Read more

Porous materials have attracted great attention for various applications, e.g., catalysis, novel materials, energy related topics, acoustics, microelectronics, actuator, bioengineering and biomimetic. Recently, porous materials have gained interest as interconnect materials for power semiconductor device.

The trend in the semiconductor industry goes towards eco-friendliness and higher energy efficiency. Semiconductor compound materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride... Read more

The prevailing electrode fabrication method for lithium-ion battery electrodes includes calendering at high pressures to densify the electrode and promote adhesion to the metal current collector.

However, this process increases the tortuosity of the pore network in the primary transport direction and imposes severe tradeoffs between electrode thickness and rate capability. With the aim of understanding the impact of pore tortuosity on electrode kinetics, and enabling cell designs with ... Read more

Redox flow batteries offer a potential solution to an increase in renewable energy generation on the grid by offering long-term, large-scale storage and regulation of power. However, they are currently underutilised due to cost and performance issues, many of which are linked to the microstructure of the porous carbon electrodes used. Here, for the first time, we offer a detailed study of the in situ effects of compression on a commercially available carbon felt electrode. Visualisation ... Read more

Nickel-yttria-stabilized zirconia (Ni-YSZ) cermet is widely used as an anode material in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs); however, Ni re-oxidation causes critical problems due to volume expansion, which causes high thermal stress. We fabricated a Ni-YSZ anode functional layer (AFL), which is an essential component in high-performance SOFCs, and re-oxidized it to investigate the related three-dimensional (3D) microstructural and thermo-mechanical effects. A 3D model of the re-oxidized AFL ... Read more

In this paper a fully three dimensional, multiphase, micro-scale solid oxide fuel cellanode transport phenomena numerical model is proposed and verified. The Butler-Volmer model was combined with empirical relations for conductivity and diffusivity – notably the Fuller-Shetler-Giddings equation, and the Fickian modelfor transport of gas reagents. FIB-SEM tomography of a commercial SOFC stack anode was performed and the resulting images were processed to acquire input data. ... Read more

This work describes the performance improvement of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell with a novel class of microporous layers (MPLs) that incorporates hydrophilic additives: one with 30 μm aluminosilicate fibers and another with multiwalled carbon nanotubes with a domain size of 5 μm. Higher current densities at low potentials were observed for cells with the additive-containing MPLs compared to a baseline cell with a conventional MPL, which correlate with improvements in water management. Th... Read more

A dendritic porous supported microstructure simultaneously creates small pore size and broad gas diffusion pathways in a solid oxide fuel cell anode membrane. This microstructure also achieves pore sizes that reduce with increasing depth within the membrane without increasing the structure tortuosity. Such a microstructure supplies high triple phase boundary density, fast gas diffusion and low polarization resistance. Here we characterise the performance of a porous anode with such a dendriti... Read more

Solid–liquid interfaces are important in a range of chemical, physical and biological processes but are often not fully understood owing to the lack of high-resolution characterization methods that are compatible with both solid and liquid components. For example, the related processes of dendritic deposition of lithium metal and the formation of solid–electrolyte interphase layers are known to be key determinants of battery safety and performance in high-energy-density lithium-metal bat... Read more

Growing popularity and rapid development of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) stem for their potential to become a gamechanger in the field of clean power generation technologies.

In this paper, a transient microstructure-oriented numerical simulation of a planar Direct Internal Reforming Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (DIR-SOFC) is delivered. The performance criteria in a direct steam reforming for a fuel starvation scenario are analyzed in order to optimize the underlying process. The proposed t... Read more

4D imaging – the three-dimensional distributions of chemical species determined using multi-energy X-ray tomography – of cathode catalyst layers of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEM-FC) has been measured by scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) spectro-tomography at the C 1s and F 1s edges. In order to monitor the effects of radiation damage on the composition and 3D structure of the perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomer, the same volume was measu... Read more

The performance of electrochemical devices depends on the three-dimensional (3D) distributions of microstructural features in their electrodes. Several mature methods exist to characterize 3D microstructures over the microscale (tens of microns), which are useful in understanding homogeneous electrodes. However, methods that capture mesoscale (hundreds of microns) volumes at appropriate resolution (tens of nm) are lacking, though they are needed to understand more common, less ideal electrode... Read more

The three-dimensional (3D) characterization of nuclear fuel with X-ray microscopy has historically proven difficult, due to uranium’s high attenuation of easily accessible X-rays, both in a laboratory setting and at a synchrotron user facility. However, this imaging modality provides nondestructive information that can be used to investigate morphological changes arising from external stimuli (e.g., neutron irradiation, high-temperature testing).

Using an appropriate X-ray energy spe... Read more