If such a designation existed, Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb would be on the fast track to becoming an Oak Ridge National Laboratory “super user.” Her research on nanoscale materials has taken her all across the ORNL campus, from scanning probe and electron microscopes at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences to neutron reflectometry at the Spallation Neutron Source and radiation equipment in the Materials Science and Technology Division.
Old thinking was that gold, while good for jewelry, was not of much use for chemists because it is relatively nonreactive. That changed a decade ago when scientists hit a rich vein of discoveries revealing that this noble metal, when structured into nanometer-sized particles, can speed up chemical reactions important in mitigating environmental pollutants and producing hard-to-make specialty chemicals.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new and unconventional battery chemistry aimed at producing batteries that last longer than previously thought possible.
Treating cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar cell materials with cadmium-chloride improves their efficiency, but researchers have not fully understood why.
Thomas Wilbanks and Benjamin Preston, both of the Climate Change Science Institute (CCSI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), are among the 309 coordinating lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Working Group II (WG II) report.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may get the lion’s share of attention in climate change discussions, but the biggest repository of carbon is actually underfoot: soils store an estimated 2.5 trillion tons of carbon in the form of organic matter.
Vertimass LLC, a California-based start-up company, has licensed an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology that directly converts ethanol into a hydrocarbon blend-stock for use in transportation fuels.
Photovoltaic spray paint could coat the windows and walls of the future if scientists are successful in developing low-cost, flexible solar cells based on organic polymers. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently discovered an unanticipated factor in the performance of polymer-based solar devices that gives new insight on how these materials form and function.
Former Energy Secretary Steven Chu mixed his Wigner Distinguished Lecture on Feb . 12 with a description of his current research at Stanford and his outlook on energy policy and climate change.
Jack Fellows, the new director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, wants his organization to provide comprehensive information to policy makers and the general public to improve understanding of global climate change.