Paul Fenter, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, has been named the next recipient of the American Crystallographic Association’s (ACA) Bertram E. Warren Award, which recognizes contributions to the physics of solids through the use of diffraction-based techniques.

The diffraction or ​“scattering” of high intensity X-rays, such as those produced by Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), provides powerful ways to visualize the structure of a wide variety of different materials.

Fenter has spent much of his career at Argonne studying ​“interface dynamics”—the particular physical and chemical processes that occur at the boundaries between different materials. ​“With X-ray scattering and microscopy, one can visualize what’s happening at a buried interface more clearly than with virtually any other technique,” he said.

Even processes that have been studied for millennia, such as the weathering of mineral surfaces by water, benefit from investigation by X-ray diffraction, according to Fenter. ​“Liquid-solid interfaces are some of the most difficult to characterize, but they can also be the most important.

Our understanding of what happens in these processes has been limited primarily by our ability to visualize them,” he said. ​“Understanding interfaces in such complex environments has continued to challenge our ability to address many energy-related technologies, such as to create new catalysts and memory storage devices, among other potential discoveries.”

The ACA bestows the Warren Award every three years. Fenter will receive the award at next year’s ACA meeting in Boston. ​“The Warren Award is a tremendous honor for me personally, but more importantly I hope it illustrates the enormous value of using high-power X-rays produced by the APS to advance our understanding of interfaces and materials,” Fenter said.