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As an educator and physicist, Michael De Marco has a passion for working with natural elements to improve technology. He begins his work by asking questions. How can we build a bigger, stronger magnet? How can we create a cleaner fuel? The professor and chair of the Physics Department had the opportunity to investigate such questions during a spring 2008 sabbatical.

De Marco and Dermot Coffey, associate professor, have worked as principal investigators on several grants from the U.S. Department of Energy since 2003. The funding, which was renewed in 2006 and again this summer, allows them to research the superconductive properties of ruthenium—element 44 on the periodic table. Superconductivity is the ability of a material to conduct electricity at ultralow temperatures without the loss of energy.

The sabbatical provided De Marco time to learn to use a 9 Tesla magnet, which is about 90,000 times stronger than a common household magnet. De Marco and Coffey have been able to use the magnet to experiment with the nucleus of ruthenium through a technique called the Mössbauer effect in a special laboratory at the University at Buffalo, where scientists collect data about the properties of nuclei by producing and studying emissions.

Superconductive materials are frequently used in the medical field for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and in the transportation field for high-speed trains that run on magnetic levitation, such as those in Japan. De Marco believes elements like ruthenium can help meet future energy needs, and he hopes the data collected with the magnet can help scientists create a superconductor that can operate at room temperature. Currently, ruthenium is superconductive only at immensely cold temperatures—below negative 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

“If you understand how a scientific process works, then you can figure out how to make it better and apply it to different systems,” De Marco said.

Since 2003, De Marco and Coffey have received more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grants include stipends for undergraduate student researchers, who De Marco said are critical partners in the experiments.

De Marco also invited a group of scientists from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium to campus toward the end of the sabbatical. Together, they are working to develop a ruthenium compound that can remove nitrous oxides from diesel fuel, which would make the fuel cleaner. De Marco traveled to Belgium in the fall for continued experiments.

Without the sabbatical, De Marco said, he wouldn’t have had time to be a physicist—which, in turn, makes him a better educator. “When you perform experiments, you’re a scientist,” he said. “You can’t just teach by reading a book. You need insight of how to fail and how to succeed. Getting that firsthand knowledge of methodology helps you understand what it means to work in physics.”

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