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

New ORNL Method Could Unleash Solar Power Potential

Measurement and data analysis techniques developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could provide new insight into performance-robbing flaws in crystalline structures, ultimately improving the performance of solar cells.

Microbes May Not Be So Adaptable to Climate Change

Microbes in soil — organisms that exert enormous influence over our planet's carbon cycle — may not be as adaptable to climate change as most scientists have presumed, according to a study done at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Brookhaven Lab Facilities Team Up to Offer Beamline for Cutting-Edge Science

The Coherent Soft X-ray Scattering and Spectroscopy (CSX-2) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II, which hosted its first users in February, was built in partnership with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.

Hunting For Big Bang Neutrinos That Could Provide Fresh Insight on the Origin of the Universe

Researchers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are readying a facility to detect Big Bang neutrinos by capturing them on a postage stamp-sized sheet of graphene holding a 1/100th of a milligram of tritium.

New Fuel Cell Design Powered by Graphene-Wrapped Nanocrystals

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new materials recipe for a battery-like hydrogen fuel cell—which surrounds hydrogen-absorbing magnesium nanocrystals with atomically thin graphene sheets—to push its performance forward in key areas.

Chromium Breaks the Toughest of Bonds, with the Right Support

At the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, scientists showed what it takes to make long-overlooked chromium help form ammonia; this work is a critical step in controlling a reaction that could store electrons from intermittent wind and solar stations in use-any-time fuels.

Boeing Catches Caution from the Wind

Through the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge, via the OLCF’s HPC Industrial Partnerships Program, Boeing used the Jaguar supercomputer, aiming to establish more reliable computational methods for estimating high-lift (takeoff/landing) characteristics for its commercial transport aircraft.

5 Ways SLAC’s X-ray Laser Can Change the Way We Live

Since it began operation in 2009, the SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source has generated molecular movies, gotten a glimpse of the birth of a chemical bond, traced electrons moving through materials and made 3-D pictures of proteins that are key to drug discovery.

Birth and Growth of an Aerosol

Scientists led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are finding new ways to more accurately model the birth of tiny aerosol particles that impact climate.

Illuminating the Universe’s Ignition

A multi-institution team is using the supercomputing resources at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to simulate 10 million years of cosmic time, tracking evolving properties of galaxies to understand the epoch of reionization as galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

Mix and Match MOF

Researchers working at two DOE’s user facilities have created a composite of a MOF and a helper molecule in which the two work in concert to separate oxygen from other gases simply and cheaply.

Multi-Scale Simulations Solve a Plasma Turbulence Mystery

Cutting-edge simulations run at NERSC over a two-year period are helping physicists better understand what influences the behavior of the plasma turbulence that is driven by the intense heating necessary to create fusion energy.