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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...
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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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A new technology developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute that aids in the recycling, recovery and extraction of rare earth minerals has been licensed to U.S. Rare Earths, Inc.

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A microscope being developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will allow scientists studying biological and synthetic materials to simultaneously observe chemical and physical properties on and beneath the surface.
Complex, scalable arrays of semiconductor heterojunctions—promising building blocks for future electronics.
Semiconductors, metals and insulators must be integrated to make the transistors that are the electronic building blocks of your smartphone, computer and other microchip-enabled devices. Today’s transistors are miniscule—a mere 10 nanometers wide—and forme...
Doug Abernathy, left, ARCS instrument scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Marc Janoschek, Los Alamos National Laboratory, prepare their sample for experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source.
Groundbreaking work at two Department of Energy national laboratories has confirmed plutonium’s magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe. The advances that enabled the discovery hold great pro...