{"id":230045,"date":"2026-01-28T21:26:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T03:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/framework-sets-new-benchmarks-for-3d-atom-maps-in-amorphous-materials"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:26:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T03:26:56","slug":"framework-sets-new-benchmarks-for-3d-atom-maps-in-amorphous-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/framework-sets-new-benchmarks-for-3d-atom-maps-in-amorphous-materials","title":{"rendered":"Framework sets new benchmarks for 3D atom maps in amorphous materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/framework-sets-new-benchmarks-for-3d-atom-maps-in-amorphous-materials.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA published a step-by-step framework for determining the three-dimensional positions and elemental identities of atoms in amorphous materials. These solids, such as glass, lack the repeating atomic patterns seen in a crystal. The team analyzed realistically simulated electron-microscope data and tested how each step affected accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>The team used algorithms to analyze rigorously simulated imaging data of nanoparticles\u2014so small they\u2019re measured in billionths of a meter. For amorphous silica, the primary component of glass, they demonstrated 100% accuracy in mapping the three-dimensional positions of the constituent silicon and oxygen atoms, with precision about seven trillionths of a meter under favorable imaging conditions.<\/p>\n<p>While 3D atomic structure determination has a history of more than a century, its application has been limited to crystal structures. Such techniques depend on averaging a pattern that is repeated trillions of times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA published a step-by-step framework for determining the three-dimensional positions and elemental identities of atoms in amorphous materials. These solids, such as glass, lack the repeating atomic patterns seen in a crystal. The team analyzed realistically simulated electron-microscope data and tested how each step affected accuracy. The team [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1965,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-mapping","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}