Scientists can now look deeper into new materials to study their structure and behavior, thanks to work by an international group of researchers led by University of California, Davis, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The team’s work has been published Aug. 14, 2011, in the journal Nature Materials.

The technique, called angle-resolved photoemission, will enable more detailed study of new types of materials for use in electronics, energy production, chemistry, and other applications.

The technique has been used since the 1970s to study materials, especially properties such as semiconductivity, superconductivity, and magnetism. But it allows probing only to a depth of about 1 nanometer beneath a material’s surface, a limit imposed by the strong inelastic scattering of the emitted electrons.

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