Skip to main content
ORNL researcher Peter Thornton "in the field" for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment - Arctic.
The summertime temperatures in the North Slope and Seward Peninsula of Alaska rarely reach higher than 50 degrees F and the perpetually dark winters fall below minus 20 F. It is a brutal environment for any researcher studying the Arctic ecosystem, much less a supercomputer modele...
A team from ORNL, Indiana University and Max Planck Institute in Germany has implemented a technique with Wollaston prisms to expand the capabilities currently available at ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor instrument HB-1.
For the first time since 2011, scientific users of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor were able to take advantage of a seventh cycle, allowing for 25 extra days of neutron production and available time for new experiments on HFIR’s 12 beam lines in fiscal ye...
An illustration that demonstrates how THF (orange) and water (blue) phase separate on the surface of cellulose (green), thus facilitating its breakdown. Image credit: Barmak Mostofian
Lignocellulosic biomass—plant matter such as cornstalks, straw, and woody plants—is a sustainable source for production of bio-based fuels and chemicals.
ORNL’s Sarah Cousineau is responsible for overseeing and coordinating beam physics research efforts for the Spallation Neutron Source accelerator.
Accelerator physicist Sarah Cousineau has dedicated her career to unraveling the world’s mysteries through physics. A large part of solving those mysteries, she says, means getting the next generation of physicists ready for the same challenge. Cousineau is a group leader in th...
The theories that led to physicists Thouless, Haldane, and Kosterlitz being awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, are guiding today’s quantum physicists at ORNL in their search for materials of the future. (Image credit: ORNL/Jill Hemman)

The theories recognized with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics underpin research ongoing at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where scientists are using neutrons as a probe to seek new materials with extraordinary properties for applications such as next-generation electronics, superconductors, and quantum computing.

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
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...
The SNS LINAC is the most powerful proton-pulsed accelerator in the world.
The first of its kind superconducting linear particle accelerator (LINAC) built for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now celebrating 10 years of successful operations. The world-leading machine, which took 7 years...
ORNL researcher Xiaobing Liu  works in the laboratory’s Building Technologies Research and Integration Center.

As a boy growing up in China, Xiaobing Liu knew all about Oak Ridge and the World War II Manhattan Project. He had no idea that he would one day work at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Secret City’s successor. Liu is a lead researcher in geothermal heat pump (GHP) techn...

The first-ever 3D printed excavator will include a cab designed by a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student engineering team and printed at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL using carbon fiber-reinforced ABS plastic.

Heavy construction machinery is the focus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s latest advance in additive manufacturing research. With industry partners and university students, ORNL researchers are designing and producing the world’s first 3D printed excavator, a prototype that w...

Melissa Allen’s work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is focused on urban infrastructure and atmospheric transport, creating models to determine the effects of temperature and climate changes on human activity.
Melissa Allen, a researcher at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is guided by her curiosity and is inspired to pursue what she loves – music, flying and climate science. And she credits her family and many mentors who have helped her along the way. Gro...