For more than 50 years, scientists have debated what turns particular oxide insulators, in which electrons barely move, into metals, in which electrons flow freely.
When Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Yan Xu talks about “islanding,” or isolating, from the grid, she’s discussing a fundamental benefit of microgrids—small systems powered by renewables and energy storage devices. The benefit is that microgrids can disconnect from larger utility grids and continue to provide power locally.
Dr. Michael Simpson, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Corporate Fellow and Group Leader of the Nanofabrication Research Laboratory Group in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at ORNL, has been appointed the next director of the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Biological Sciences (JIBS). This appointment is in addition to his role at CNMS.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated an additive manufacturing method to control the structure and properties of metal components with precision unmatched by conventional manufacturing processes. Ryan D...
Complex oxides have long tantalized the materials science community for their promise in next-generation energy and information technologies. Complex oxide crystals combine oxygen atoms with assorted metals to produce unusual and very desirable properties.
When Orlando Rios first started analyzing samples of carbon fibers made from a woody plant polymer known as lignin, he noticed something unusual. The material’s microstructure -- a mixture of perfectly spherical nanoscale crystallites distributed within a fibrous matrix -- looked almost too good to be true.
Blowing bubbles may be fun for kids, but for engineers, bubbles can disrupt fluid flow and damage metal.
Keeping food fresh is no easy feat. Trials of transporting ice over long distances and the hazards of systems that rely on toxic gases riddle the pages of refrigeration history. And although cooling science has come a long way in the past two centuries, modern refrigeration has an environmental cost...
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded a series of workshops this month that engaged scientists from around the country to identify grand scientific challenges and how they might be addressed through application of neutron science.
depth, population-based approach to identifying such mechanisms for adaptation, and describes a method that could be harnessed for developing more accurate predictive climate change models. For the U.S. Department of...