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Researchers at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory determined that two-dimensional materials grown onto a cone allow control over where defects called grain boundaries appear.

Rice University researchers have learned to manipulate two-dimensional materials to design in defects that enhance the materials’ properties. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combi...

COHERENT collaborators were the first to observe coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering. Their results, published in the journal Science, confirm a prediction of the Standard Model and establish constraints on alternative theoretical models. Image c

After more than a year of operation at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the COHERENT experiment, using the world’s smallest neutrino detector, has found a big fingerprint of the elusive, electrically neutral particles that interact only weakly with matter.

Used cooking oil can be converted into biofuel with carbon derived from recycled tires—a new method developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team.
Using a novel, reusable carbon material derived from old rubber tires, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team has developed a simple method to convert used cooking oil into biofuel.
A novel technique can help protect the innermost wall in a fusion reactor from the energy created when hydrogen isotopes are heated to temperatures hotter than the sun. Photo by General Atomics
Fusion scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as part of the DIII-D National Fusion Facility team at General Atomics, are studying an approach to insulate the reactor’s innermost wall that surrounds the burning plasma from the energy created when hydrogen isotopes are heated...
Researchers predicted where lithium ions (green spheres) would pack and move in an open framework of epitaxially strained vanadium dioxide, depicted here by a stick model (oxygen-connecting bonds are red and vanadium-connecting bonds, turquoise).
An Oak Ridge National Laboratory–led team discovered that vanadium dioxide in a crystalline thin film makes an outstanding electrode for lithium-ion batteries. Theory and computation predicted a high capacity for lithium storage, which experiments confirmed with tests in coin c...
Amit_Naskar_2

Finding new energy uses for underrated materials is a recurring theme across Amit Naskar’s research portfolio. Since joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2006, he has studied low-cost polymers as carbon fiber precursors, turning lignin−a byproduct of biofuel production−into renewable thermoplastics and creating carbon battery electrodes from recycled tires.

Ben Doughty
No two scientists have the same story about how they ended up in their field. Some people seem to have been born scientists; others develop their love for it as budding minds full of curiosity. Then there are those who don’t discover science until later in life, but when they do, the...
ORNL welcomed its first group of research fellows to join Innovation Crossroads, an entrepreneurial research and development program based at the lab.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory today welcomed the first cohort of innovators to join Innovation Crossroads, the Southeast region's first entrepreneurial research and development program based at a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. Innovation Crossroads, ...

This graphene nanoribbon was made bottom-up from a molecular precursor. Nanoribbon width and edge effects influence electronic behavior. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
A new way to grow narrow ribbons of graphene, a lightweight and strong structure of single-atom-thick carbon atoms linked into hexagons, may address a shortcoming that has prevented the material from achieving its full potential in electronic applications. Graphene n...
ORNL’s Xiahan Sang unambiguously resolved the atomic structure of MXene, a 2D material promising for energy storage, catalysis and electronic conductivity. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Carlos Jones

Researchers have long sought electrically conductive materials for economical energy-storage devices. Two-dimensional (2D) ceramics called MXenes are contenders. Unlike most 2D ceramics, MXenes have inherently good conductivity because they are molecular sheets made from the carbides ...