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Media Contacts
![Caption: Jaswinder Sharma makes battery coin cells with a lightweight current collector made of thin layers of aligned carbon fibers in a polymer with carbon nanotubes. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2024-01/sharma1_1.jpg?h=f7dae89e&itok=JiSsMewF)
Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.
![ORNL researchers have developed a new pressing method, shown as blue circle on right, that produces a more uniform solid electrolyte than the traditionally processed material with more voids, shown as gray circle on left. The material can be integrated into a battery system, center, for improved stability and rate performance. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-06/Electrolyte.StoryTip_0.png?h=b6717701&itok=PIYcf5iS)
ORNL scientists found that a small tweak created big performance improvements in a type of solid-state battery, a technology considered vital to broader electric vehicle adoption.
![Heat is typically carried through a material by vibrations known as phonons. In some crystals, however, different atomic motions — known as phasons — carry heat three times faster and farther. This illustration shows phasons made by rearranging atoms, shown by arrows. Credit: Jill Hemman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-02/23-G01840_Phason_Manly_proof3_0.png?h=10d202d3&itok=3NpjriWi)
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.
![When an electron beam drills holes in heated graphene, single-atom vacancies, shown in purple, diffuse until they join with other vacancies to form stationary structures and chains, shown in blue. Credit: Ondrej Dyck/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2022-12/variation.jpg?h=bedff801&itok=9S6jmOVH)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers serendipitously discovered when they automated the beam of an electron microscope to precisely drill holes in the atomically thin lattice of graphene, the drilled holes closed up.
![ORNL researchers observed that atomic vibrations in a twisted crystal result in winding energetic waves that govern heat transport, which may help new materials better manage heat. Credit: Jill Hemman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-11/21-G02214_Helix_0.png?h=3e3883a3&itok=VkEO_bRp)
A discovery by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers may aid the design of materials that better manage heat.
![An ORNL research team is investigating new catalysts for ethanol conversion that could advance the cost-effective production of renewable transportation. Credit: Unsplash](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-07/catalyst_story_tip_0.jpg?h=78aab1d8&itok=0ieRdqRo)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a new catalyst for converting ethanol into C3+ olefins – the chemical
![Transition metals stitched into graphene with an electron beam form promising quantum building blocks. Credit: Ondrej Dyck, Andrew Lupini and Jacob Swett/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-02/quantum-building-blocks.jpg?h=6e276780&itok=uf-gKRle)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists demonstrated that an electron microscope can be used to selectively remove carbon atoms from graphene’s atomically thin lattice and stitch transition-metal dopant atoms in their place.
![Researchers at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center partnered to design a COVID-19 screening whistle for convenient home testing. Credit: Michelle Lehman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-01/covid_whistle_tag_no_logo_0.png?h=d1cb525d&itok=IMMECFgK)
Collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are developing a breath-sampling whistle that could make COVID-19 screening easy to do at home.
![self-healing elastomers](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-01/Buildings%20-%20Unbreakable%20bond-%20small.png?h=5ded6b27&itok=Du9vTz_5)
![An international research team used scanning tunneling microscopy at ORNL to send and receive single molecules across a surface on an atomically precise track. Credit: Michelle Lehman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-01/5.png?h=d1cb525d&itok=TtJEEiiq)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences contributed to a groundbreaking experiment published in Science that tracks the real-time transport of individual molecules.