2016 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Researchers Combine Simulation, Experiment for Nanoscale 3-D Printing

A team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Tennessee and the Graz University of Technology, has developed a powerful simulation-guided drafting process to improve FEBID and introduce new possibilities in nanomanufacturing.

Argonne Discovery Yields Self-Healing Diamond-Like Carbon

The tribologists — scientists who study friction, wear, and lubrication — and computational materials scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory discovered a revolutionary diamond-like film of their own that is generated by the heat and pressure of an automotive engine.

ORNL Optimizes Formula For Cadmium-Tellurium Solar Cells

Solar cells based on cadmium and tellurium could move closer to theoretical levels of efficiency because of some sleuthing by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Susan Hogle: Coming Full Circle, From Nuclear Waste to Isotope Production

Susan Hogle has spent the last several years working to improve the production of radioisotopes, particularly californium-252. But not long ago, the native of Napanee, Canada, was working on the opposite task—researching how to dispose of nuclear material.

Physicist Trio Amplifies SLAC Research on Mysterious Forms of Matter

SLAC scientists develop methods to study neutrinos from star explosions and search for unknown particles and forces with possible ties to dark matter.

Scientists Model the "Flicker" of Gluons in Subatomic Smashups

Scientists exploring the dynamic behavior of particles emerging from subatomic smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—are increasingly interested in the role of gluons.

PPPL Researchers Combine Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity to Clear Up Puzzles in Plasma Physics

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a theory of plasma waves that can infer these properties in greater detail than in standard approaches.

ORNL-led Study Analyzes Electric Grid Vulnerabilities in Extreme Weather Areas

Climate and energy scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new method to pinpoint which electrical service areas will be most vulnerable as populations grow and temperatures rise.

Fermilab Bids a Fond Farewell to MINOS

After more than a decade of running, on June 29, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search experiment and its second iteration, MINOS+, concluded their runs. MINOS was the first of its kind at Fermilab, a high-power experiment that shot a beam of neutrinos through two detectors spaced hundreds of miles apart.

SLAC X-ray Studies Help NASA Develop Printable Electronics for Mars Mission

With help at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, scientists create plasma-printed sensors to monitor astronaut health on long space trips.

A New Leaf: Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Back Into Fuel

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago, researchers have found a way to convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source by using sunlight.

Study Finds Molecular Switch That Triggers Bacterial Pathogenicity

Using an array of high-powered X-ray imaging techniques, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) showed that histone-like proteins that bind to DNA are related to the physical twisting of the genetic strand, and that the supercoiling of the chromosome can trigger the expression of genes that make a microbe invasive.