Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductors — materials that can transport electricity with perfect efficiency at or near liquid nitrogen temperatures (minus-196 degrees Celsius) — scientists have been working to develop a theory that explains their essential physics.
A multi-institution team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Gaute Hagen used computation to corroborate experimental findings throwing calcium-52’s status as a magic isotope into question.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using bamboo fiber in 3-D printing experiments to determine whether bio-based feedstock materials are feasible in additive manufacturing.
Drivers of Formula E cars may soon no longer have to change cars midway through the race, thanks to a battery coating technology developed by XALT Energy of Michigan and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. By depositing a nanoscale layer of alumina on oxide cathodes, researchers have incre...
An anti-soiling highly reflective and water-resistant roof coating developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and evaluated at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has produced encouraging results. The coating based on superhydrophobic particles resulted in only 3.3 and 4.9 percent r...
Energy-sapping defects in solar cell material can be revealed with an unprecedented, dual-imaging method established by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL scientists scanned hybrid perovskite films to measure “dark” electronic trap states in complex photovoltaic materi...
Research led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and published in Nature Communications explored building blocks of future electronics — ferroelectric materials in which topological defects called domain walls can be created by an electric field and detected by an alternating current. Th...
The gap between electricity generation and use could be narrowed with an Oak Ridge National Laboratory system that extracts energy from thin air. Actually, Ground-Level Integrated Diverse Energy Storage, or GLIDES, stores electricity mechanically in the form of compressed gas that disp...
Hard carbon materials recycled from tires continue to show great promise as anodes in sodium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study led by Yunchao Li. The carbons, captured by pyrolyzing, or baking in the absence of oxygen, tir...
Silicon carbide-based materials could be a winning alternative to zirconium alloys commonly used in fuel and core structures in today’s light water reactors, according to preliminary findings of a team led by Yutai Katoh of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “Fuels and core structures in c...