It’s faster than a speeding bullet, by a long shot. Electricity and more specifically, electrons, are the juice that makes technology go.
But the science world is always looking to learn more about the way electrons work, so information and energy can be transmitted more efficiently. Oak Park scientist Juan Carlos Campuzano, a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, received a prestigious award for his research on how electrons move.
Campuzano was awarded the 2011 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize by the American Physical Society along with two other researchers for their innovations in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, an experimental method that’s used to track electrons within solids.
It can be used to better understand high-temperature superconductors, two-dimensional materials that Campuzano says could revolutionize technology.
With more efficient ways of moving energy, superconductors could help solve the energy crisis by making it easier to transmit electricity over great distances.
That means solar or wind energy generated in the American West could be effectively sent back to the dense East Coast.
Campuzano, a native of Paraguay who moved to the U.S. in 1969, has worked at Argonne since 1987 and also teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
