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

This shows the size-induced transition to metallicity that takes place in a universal manner for all metallic elements, as gauged by the polarizability-based characteristic called degree of metallicity. As the clusters grow in size, they gradually become metallic and expel an external electric field from their interior (the Faraday cage effect in metals). (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

New Discovery is Big on Nanoscale

Is it possible to predict what type of material an unidentified element will be in bulk quantities solely based on the properties it exhibits over a limited range of the subnano to nano size régime? It is, according to Argonne scientists.

Sheng Dai innovates chemical separations, nanomaterials synthesis, and catalytic interfaces for energy applications at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is the lab’s most prolific author. He is a Corporate Fellow researcher, leader of the Nanomaterials Chemistry Group, and director of the DOE Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport Center based at ORNL.

Sheng Dai: Building Teams, Not Empires

Dai is leader of the Nanomaterials Chemistry Group in the Chemical Sciences Division and a Corporate Fellow researcher at ORNL, who also holds a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is director of the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport Center, or FIRST, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center based at ORNL that focuses on an atomistic understanding of electrolytes and electron transport to advance electrical energy storage.

Maria De La Cinta Lorenzo Martin, an Argonne scientist, oversees Northwestern University summer interns Ally O’Donnell, a senior in mechanical engineering, and Jacob Hechter, a junior in materials science, as they prepare wind turbine components for testing. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Making the Makers

A group of eight undergraduate students from Northwestern University gave their summer internships a twist by teaming up to learn about an array of different advanced manufacturing technologies at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Both the students and laboratory staff say the internships yielded positive results.

Illuminating Nanoparticle Growth with X-rays

Using the ultrabright x-rays at NSLS-II and the advanced capabilities of NSLS-II’s In situ and Operando Soft X-ray Spectroscopy (IOS) beamline, researchers revealed the chemical characterization of the catalyst’s growth pathway in real time.

Sam Kizlaitis, chemical engineering student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examines wear damage on bearings at Argonne. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Tribology Interns Find a Smooth Path to Research

Argonne scientists and engineers see their work with interns in the tribology group as an investment. Some of the interns will go on to get Ph.D.s, some will return to Argonne for careers — all of them offer fresh perspectives.

Argonne researchers will use machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to improve simulations of internal combustion engines. Sibendu Som and his team are collaborating with Convergent Science and Parallel Works as part of this research, which is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy. The team will use the ALCF's Mira supercomputer as part of this engine modeling research. (Top image: Shutterstock / yucelyilmaz.)

Machine Learning Award Powers Argonne Leadership in Engine Design

When attempting to design engines to be more fuel-efficient and emissions-free, automotive manufacturers have to take into account all the complexity inherent in the combustion process. With the help of supercomputing resources, researchers are now refining their computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to better capture the real-world behavior of these engines.

Fluoride (pink) floats in liquid electrolyte BTFE. Image Credit: Brett Savoie, Purdue University

Caltech Team Models Novel Battery Chemistries on Titan to Help Make Fluoride Batteries a Reality

A team led by the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech’s) Thomas Miller used the 27-petaflop Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) to understand and refine the electrolyte’s properties and confirm its unprecedented ability to conduct fluoride ions and retain chemical stability at room temperature, making the breakthrough material the first of its kind in the battery world.

On Sept. 24, scientists and information technology specialists from various labs in the United States and Europe participated in a full-day workshop—hosted by the Scientific Data and Computing Center at Brookhaven Lab—to share challenges and solutions to providing centralized computing support for photon science. From left to right, seated: Eric Lancon, Ian Collier, Kevin Casella, Jamal Irving, Tony Wong, and Abe Singer. Standing: Yee-Ting Li, Shigeki Misawa, Amedeo Perazzo, David Yu, Hironori Ito, Krishna Muriki, Alex Zaytsev, John DeStefano, Stuart Campbell, Martin Gasthuber, Andrew Richards, and Wei Yang.

Lighting the Way to Centralized Computing Support for Photon Science

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory hosted a one-day workshop on Sept. 24 for information technology (IT) specialists and scientists from various labs around the world to discuss best practices and share experiences in providing centralized computing support to photon science.

Beginning in late November 2015, a set of ARM equipment was deployed to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, including basic radiometric, surface energy balance and upper air equipment directly to make the first well-calibrated climatological suite of measurements seen in this extremely remote, but globally critical, region in more than 40 years. (Image by U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement [ARM] Research Facility.)

Clouds with a Chance of Warming

Researchers from Argonne’s Environmental Science division participated in one of the largest collaborative atmospheric measurement campaigns in Antarctica in recent decades.

ORNL computational scientists Loukas Petridis (left) and Jeremy Smith use supercomputers to better understand how plants can be turned into fuel and other useful materials. The duo recently published a paper in Nature Reviews Chemistry summarizing molecular-level concepts derived from 10 years of research.

Breaching the Biomass Problem

Using supercomputers, a team from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has made several fundamental discoveries related to the challenges associated with breaking down biomass.

ORNL scientists have created a new composite material for additive manufacturing that makes use of lignin, a biofuels byproduct.

New Composite Advances Lignin as a Renewable 3D Printing Material

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a recipe for a renewable 3D printing feedstock that could spur a profitable new use for an intractable biorefinery byproduct: lignin.

This shows how a plane electron wave and a magnetic charge interact, forming an electron vortex state that carries orbital angular momentum. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Scientists Use Magnetic Defects to Achieve Electromagnetic Wave Breakthrough

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have created small regions of magnetic defects made from nanoscale magnetic islands assembled into a grid. The plane waves interact with these defects, thereby generating helical waves.