Artificial intelligence tools secure tomorrow’s electric grid
A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed a novel way to produce two-dimensional nanosheets by separating bulk materials with nontoxic liquid nitrogen. The environmentally friendly process generates a 20-fold ...
For decades nuclear physicists have tried to learn more about which elements, or their various isotopes, are “magic.” This is not to say that they display supernatural powers. Magic atomic nuclei are composed of “magic” numbers of protons and neutrons—collectively called nucleons—such as 2, 8, 20, and 28.
Scientists can now detect magnetic behavior at the atomic level with a new electron microscopy technique developed by a team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Uppsala University, Sweden. The researchers took a counterintuitive approach ...
When physicists Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Muller discovered the first high-temperature superconductors in 1986, it didn’t take much imagination to envision the potential technological benefits of harnessing such materials.
Fernanda Foertter, a user support specialist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, considers herself a tinkerer.
Foertter’s tinkering started when she was a child, but her innate inquisitiveness still influences her work at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing...
In an era of instant communication, perhaps no message-passing system is more underappreciated than the human body. Underlying each movement, each mood, each sight, sound, or smell, an army of specialized cells called neurons relays signals that register in the brain and connect us to our environment.
In the United States, the use of natural gas for electricity generation continues to grow. The driving forces behind this development? A boom in domestic natural gas production, historically low prices, and increased scrutiny over fossil fuels’ carbon emissions. Though coal still acco...
Catalysts make chemical reactions more likely to occur. In most cases, a catalyst that’s good at driving chemical reactions in one direction is bad at driving reactions in the opposite direction. However, a research team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ...
RMX Technologies of Knoxville, Tenn., and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have signed an exclusive licensing agreement for a new technology that dramatically reduces the time and energy needed in the production of carbon fiber. Lowering the ...
In a rechargeable battery, the electrolyte transports lithium ions from the negative to the positive electrode during discharging. The path of ionic flow reverses during recharging. The organic liquid electrolytes in commercial lithium-ion batteries are flammable and su...