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How artificial intelligence can transform US energy infrastructure
Surprisingly, changing isotope masses of molybdenum in a single layer of semiconductor molybdenum disulfide was found to shift the color of light emitted when the layer was illuminated. The study revealed the potential of isotope engineering to design new technologies in 2D materials. Credit: Chris Rouleau/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Tweaking isotopes sheds light on semiconductors
The Linac Coherent Light Source at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California reveals the structural dynamics of atoms and molecules through X-ray snapshots at ultrafast timescales. Pictured here is the LCLS-II tunnel. Credit: Jim Gensheimer/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
ORNL, SLAC team up for biology projects

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A simulation shows the path for the collision of a krypton ion (blue) with a defected graphene sheet and subsequent formation of a carbon vacancy (red). Red shades indicate local strain in the graphene. Image credit: Kichul Yoon, Penn State

Simulations Show How to Turn Graphene’s Defects into Assets

Researchers at Penn State, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company have developed methods to control defects in two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, that may lead to improved membranes for water desalination, energy...
A 32-face 3-D truncated icosahedron mesh was created to test the simulation’s ability to precisely construct complex geometries.

Researchers combine simulation, experiment for nanoscale 3-D printing

Designing a 3-D printed structure is hard enough when the product is inches or feet in size. Imagine shrinking it smaller than a drop of water, smaller even than a human hair, until it is dwarfed by a common bacterium. This impossibly small structure can be made a reality with fo...
In conventional, low-temperature superconductivity (left), so-called Cooper pairing arises from the presence of an electron Fermi sea. In the pseudogap regime of the cuprate superconductors (right), parts of the Fermi sea are “dried out” and the charge-ca

Titan Shines Light on High-Temperature Superconductor Pathway

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.
Department of Energy national lab researchers found strain dramatically influences low-temperature oxygen electrocatalysis on perovskite oxides, enhancing bifunctional activity essential for fuel cells and metal–air batteries.

ORNL researchers use strain to engineer first high-performance, two-way oxide catalyst

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 ...

In unbound calyx[4]pyrrole, two pyrrole “petals” are flipped up and two, down.

Chalice receptors attract metal contaminants with new chemical selectivity

Atomic charges in chemical solutions are like Switzerland—they strive for neutrality. The tendency to balance charges drives dynamics when charged atoms or molecules, called ions, are present in solutions. Recently, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laborat...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers made a molecule that could selectively bind to metals in the middle of the lanthanide series.

ORNL scientists show charged salts can extract specific central lanthanide elements

Rare earth elements are metals used in technologies from wind turbines and magnetic resonance imaging agents to industrial catalysts and high-definition televisions. Most are lanthanides, elements with atomic number from 57 to 71, lanthanum to lutetium, in the periodic table. The la...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers re-evaluated used nuclear fuel rods from a commercial reactor and reduced data uncertainties by an order of magnitude compared with previous measurements taken at a different lab.

ORNL’s benchmark data set validates global nuclear reactor codes

Nearly 100 commercial nuclear reactors supply one-fifth of America’s energy. For each fuel rod in a reactor assembly, only 5 percent of its energy is consumed before fission can no longer be sustained efficiently for power production and the fuel assembly must be replaced. Power plan...

ORNL’s Jim Keiser and Mike Stephens (on stepladder) prepare to install samples in a Keiser rig, a furnace for exposing materials to corrosive gases, crushing pressures and calamitous heat. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy;

‘Keiser rigs’ stress materials to the max to improve products for power, propulsion

The global marketplace demands constant improvements in performance and efficiency of aircraft engines, power turbines and other modern mainstays of energy technology. This progress requires advanced structural materials, such as ceramic composites and metal alloys with higher-t...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Joe Giaquinto investigates chemical clues for trace-level radioactivity. Giaquinto leads ORNL’s Nuclear Analytical Chemistry and Isotopics Laboratory, which makes critical contributions to nuclear forensics and nonprolifera

Cracking Cases

A group of nuclear detectives at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory takes on tough challenges, from detecting illicit uranium using isotopic “fingerprints” to investigating Presidential assassination conspiracies. 

In a Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport Center project to probe a battery’s atomic activity during its first charging cycle, Robert Sacci and colleagues used the Spallation Neutron Source’s vibrational spectrometer to gain chemical inform

ORNL researchers use neutrons to gain insight into battery inefficiency

Rechargeable batteries power everything from electric vehicles to wearable gadgets, but obstacles limit the creation of sleeker, longer-lasting and more efficient power sources. Batteries produce electricity when charged atoms, known as ions, move in a circuit from a positive end ...