News

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source have developed a diamond anvil pressure cell that will enable high-pressure science currently not possible at any other neutron source in the world.

For a researcher who started out in mechanical engineering with a focus on engine combustion, Martin Wissink has learned a lot about neutrons on the job

A better way of welding targets for Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s plutonium-238 production has sped up the process and improved consistency and efficiency. This advancement will ultimately benefit the lab’s goal to make enough Pu-238 – the isotope that powers NASA’s deep space missions – to yield 1.5 kilograms of plutonium oxide annually by 2026.

Marcel Demarteau is director of the Physics Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For topics from nuclear structure to astrophysics, he shapes ORNL’s physics research agenda.

Porter Bailey started and will end his 33-year career at ORNL in the same building: 7920 of the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.

Pauling’s Rules is the standard model used to describe atomic arrangements in ordered materials. Neutron scattering experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory confirmed this approach can also be used to describe highly disordered materials.

For over half a century, Robert Compton has been a celebrated experimentalist and inspirational leader and teacher in the fields of physics and chemistry. Compton came to work at ORNL's Health Sciences Research Division in 1965 after receiving his doctorate in physics from the University of Tennessee.

Rufus Ritchie came from Kentucky coal country, a region not known for producing physicists.

Herb Mook was a driving force in ORNL neutron s​cience ​for four decades, a prolific and pioneering experimentalist, and a leader and mentor for generations of neutron scattering scientists. 

A UCLA-led team that discovered the first intrinsic ferromagnetic topological insulator – a quantum material that could revolutionize next-generation electronics – used neutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to help verify their finding.