Associate dean for research and winner of the 2016 South Carolina Governor's Award for Excellence in Scientific Research Dr. Hans-Conrad zur Loye and his students bring new solid-state materials into existence regularly. As an inorganic chemist, zur Loye’s research group focuses on developing better nuclear waste storage containers and making more efficient scintillators for neutron diffraction experiments.
When it comes to developing receptacles to store nuclear waste, zur Loye has to design a material able to withstand large amounts of radiation for over 10,000 years.
“You need to convince someone that it’s going to last for that time and so we think about what type of a structure would work,” he said. “[The radiation] can damage the material, over a week or a year that may not make a difference, but over 10,000 years … it may cause problems.”
Common elements used in nuclear reactors can emit radiation steadily over their half-lives, some of which can be well over 20,000 years. In order to prove whether or not his newly synthesized materials can withstand this much radiation, zur Loye cleverly places isotopes with much shorter half-lives, some as short as one day, into his containers that will emit the same amount of radiation in just 10 days.
Much of this research is conducted with the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation in South Carolina owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. zur Loye estimates that it will take Savannah River over 30 years to finish disposing of its nuclear waste and he is trying to design material to significantly reduce this time.
The Hanford Site, located in Washington state, has so much waste that it may take them over 100 years to get rid of it all. zur Loye was confident when he said that “if we can make something that can store more waste, in a safer fashion, then maybe it will only take 20 years or 30 years, which is much better than 100.”
Another large focus for the zur Loye group is the advancement of neutron detecting scintillators. These scintillators will help researchers, like zur Loye, better observe the atomic and magnetic structures of compounds in neutron diffraction experiments, allowing them to recreate and manufacture exact compounds more precisely.
These scintillators could also be used by Homeland Security to detect radiation.
“If someone brings a container and you want to know if there’s a nuclear material on the inside you would use a scintillating detector to see if any radiation is coming out. If we can make something that is easy to make, cheap, and very good, they would be interested,” zur Loye said.
zur Loye became interested in inorganic chemistry as an undergraduate at Brown University, and the thrill of discovery has kept him going ever since. He encourages undergraduates at USC to get involved as well.
“I think most students don’t even know they can do it. Or they think they have to have taken every class and you know it helps to have a good background but we’re teachers. That’s what we do,” he said.
He recommends looking through professor’s webpages, finding an area of research that interests you and “go in person to the professor; don’t send an email, actually show up at the door, maybe a few times to make sure you catch the person,” he says.