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

Berkeley Lab Scientists Brew Jet Fuel in One-Pot Recipe

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have engineered a strain of bacteria that enables a “one-pot” method for producing advanced biofuels from a slurry of pre-treated plant material.

A Major Upgrade of the Lithium Tokamak Experiment at PPPL Will Explore Liquid Lithium as a First Wall for Hot Plasmas

A promising experiment that encloses hot, magnetically confined plasma in a full wall of liquid lithium is undergoing a $2 million upgrade at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

Neutrons Tap into Magnetism in Topological Insulators at High Temperatures

A multi-institutional team of researchers has discovered novel magnetic behavior on the surface of a specialized material that holds promise for smaller, more efficient devices and other advanced technology.

Ultra-fast X-ray Lasers Illuminate Elusive Atomic Spins

New x-ray technique reveals never-before-seen, trillionth-of-a-second magnetic fluctuations that transform the electronic and magnetic properties of materials.

Energy Secretary Moniz Dedicates New Research Facility at Ames National Laboratory

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz emphasized the role of materials research in clean energy innovation Friday at the dedication of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames National Laboratory Sensitive Instrument Facility.

Large Hadron Collider Prepares to Deliver Six Times the Data

After months of winter hibernation, the Large Hadron Collider is once again smashing protons and taking data. The LHC will run around the clock for the next six months and produce roughly 2 quadrillion high-quality proton collisions, six times more than in 2015 and just shy of the total number of collisions recorded during the nearly three years of the collider’s first run.

Visualizing the Lithiation of a Nanosized Iron-Oxide Material in Real Time

A team of researchers from Brookhaven National Lab, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park, has developed an electron microscopy technique to visualize atomic-scale reaction pathways and track phase changes in lithium-ion battery materials.

Speedy Ion Conduction in Solid electrolytes Clears Road for Advanced Energy Devices

A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has used state-of-the-art microscopy to identify a previously undetected feature, about 5 billionths of a meter (nanometers) wide, in a solid electrolyte.

How Ameriflux Helped Determine the Impact of the 2012 U.S. Drought on the Carbon Cycle

To map the carbon flux across the nation during the 2012 drought, an international team of scientists used a network of 22 “carbon-sensing” towers in the continental United States - part of the Ameriflux network, a community of scientists and sites that measure ecosystem carbon, water, and energy fluxes in North and South America.

SLAC’s Historic Linac Turns 50 and Gets a Makeover

SLAC’s 2-mile-long linac, the longest linear accelerator ever built, produced its first particle beams 50 years ago and has been the lab’s backbone for accelerator-driven science ever since.

Scientists Challenge Conventional Wisdom to Improve Predictions of the Bootstrap Current at the Edge of Fusion Plasmas

PPPL researchers used the Mira supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to challenge conventional understanding of the bootstrap current in a tokamak, modeling the self-generating electric current in a steep gradient region where the temperature and density drop off sharply.

Could Aluminum Nitride Produce Quantum Bits?

Using NERSC’s Edison supercomputer, researchers found that by applying strain to aluminum nitride, one could create structural defects that may be harnessed as qubits similar to the one seen in diamond.