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From left, Amit Naskar, Ngoc Nguyen and Christopher Bowland in ORNL’s Carbon and Composites Group bring a new capability—structural health monitoring—to strong, lightweight materials promising for transportation applications.

Carbon fiber composites—lightweight and strong—are great structural materials for automobiles, aircraft and other transportation vehicles. They consist of a polymer matrix, such as epoxy, into which reinforcing carbon fibers have been embedded. Because of differences in the mecha...

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Physicists turned to the “doubly magic” tin isotope Sn-132, colliding it with a target at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to assess its properties as it lost a neutron to become Sn-131.

ORNL researchers Gaute Hagen, Masaaki Matsuda, and Parans Paranthaman has been elected fellow of the American Physical Society.

Three researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). Fellows of the APS are recognized for their exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise in outstanding resear...

Two neutron diffraction experiments (represented by pink and blue neutron beams) probed a salty solution to reveal its atomic structure. The only difference between the experiments was the identity of the oxygen isotope (O*) that labeled nitrate molecules

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons, isotopes and simulations to “see” the atomic structure of a saturated solution and found evidence supporting one of two competing hypotheses about how ions come

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A novel technique that nudges single atoms to switch places within an atomically thin material could bring scientists another step closer to realizing theoretical physicist Richard Feynman’s vision of building tiny machines from the atom up.
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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the recipient of six awards from DOE’s Office of Science aimed at accelerating quantum information science (QIS), a burgeoning field of research increasingly seen as vital to scientific innovation and national...
In a thin film of a solar-energy material, molecules in twin domains (modeled in left and right panels) align in opposing orientations within grain boundaries (shown by scanning electron microscopy in the center panel).

A unique combination of imaging tools and atomic-level simulations has allowed a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to solve a longstanding debate about the properties of a promising material that can harvest energy from light. Th...

From left, Radu Custelcean and Neil Williams of Oak Ridge National Laboratory used a solar-powered oven to generate mild temperatures that liberate carbon dioxide trapped in guanidine carbonate crystals in an energy-sustainable way.

Chemists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a practical, energy-efficient method of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from air. They report their findings in Nature Energy. If deployed at large scale and coupled to geo...

Adding powdered silica (in blue container) to the polymer layer (white sheet) that separates electrodes inside a test battery (gold bag) will prevent lithium-ion battery fires. Credit: Gabriel Veith

Lithium-ion batteries commonly used in consumer electronics are notorious for bursting into flame when damaged or improperly packaged. These incidents occasionally have grave consequences, including burns, house fires and at least one plane crash.

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An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team used a scanning transmission electron microscope to selectively position single atoms below a crystal’s surface for the first time.