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Steady progress in the development of advanced materials has led to modern civilization’s foundational technologies—better batteries, resilient building materials and atom-scale semiconductors. Development of the next wave of materials, however, is being slowed by the sheer co...
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Harvesting oil, mitigating subsurface contamination, and sequestering carbon emissions share a common thread—they deal with multiphase flows, or situations where materials are flowing close together in different states (solids, liquids, or gases) or when the flow is comprised ...
A surfactant template guides the self-assembly of functional polymer structures in an aqueous solution. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; image by Youngkyu Han and Renee Manning.
The efficiency of solar cells depends on precise engineering of polymers that assemble into films 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. Today, formation of that polymer assembly requires solvents that can harm the environment, but scientists at the Department of En...
An ORNL-University of Rome study has delivered direct evidence of high-temperature superconductivity at the interface of two insulating oxide materials. Electron microscopy at ORNL showed that superconductivity arises from oxygen ions (circled in white) t
Electron microscopy at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pointing researchers closer to the development of ultra-thin materials that transfer electrons with no resistance at relatively high temperatures. The study delivers direct evidence of high-tem...
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Some of the 300 million tires discarded each year in the United States alone could be used in supercapacitors for vehicles and the electric grid using a technology developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Drexel University. By em...
With a nano-ring-based toroidal trap, cold polar molecules near the gray shaded surface approaching the central region may be trapped within a nanometer scale volume.
Single atoms or molecules imprisoned by laser light in a doughnut-shaped metal cage could unlock the key to advanced storage devices, computers and high-resolution instruments. In a paper published in Physical Review A, a team composed of Ali Passian of the Depa...
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 14, 2015 – A catalyst being developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could overcome one of the key obstacles still preventing automobile engines from running more cleanly and efficiently.

A catalyst being developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could overcome one of the key obstacles still preventing automobile engines from running more cleanly and efficiently. The mixed oxide catalyst could solve the ...

Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker inspects the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, hosted by Craig Blue, IACMI’s chief executive officer. (Jason Richards photo).
Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker visited the new Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, praising the advances in manufacturing technology taking place in East T...
Material dissolved in the liquid at the port tip is immediately transported into the mass spectrometer, ionized, detected and characterized.
In mere seconds, a system developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory can identify and characterize a solid or liquid sample, providing a valuable tool with applications in material science, forensics, pharmaceuticals, biology and chemistry.
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Viruses are tiny—merely millionths of a millimeter in diameter—but what they lack in size, they make up in quantity.