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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory got a surprise when they built a highly ordered lattice by layering thin films containing lanthanum, strontium, oxygen and iron. Although each layer had an intrinsically nonpolar (symmetric) distribution of electrical charges, the lattice had an asymmetric distribution of charges. The charge asymmetry creates an extra “switch” that brings new functionalities to materials when “flipped” by external stimuli such as electric fields or mechanical strain. This makes polar materials useful for devices such as sensors and actuators.
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The Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory broke records for sustained beam power level as well as for integrated energy and target lifetime in the month of June.
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The American Conference on Neutron Scattering returned to Knoxville this week, 12 years after its inaugural meeting there in 2002.

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Vertimass LLC, a California-based start-up company, has licensed an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology that directly converts ethanol into a hydrocarbon blend-stock for use in transportation fuels.
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Photovoltaic spray paint could coat the windows and walls of the future if scientists are successful in developing low-cost, flexible solar cells based on organic polymers. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently discovered an unanticipated factor in the performance of polymer-based solar devices that gives new insight on how these materials form and function.

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Arthur Ragauskas, an authority in bioenergy, has been named a University of Tennessee–Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair.
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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville have pioneered a new technique for forming a two-dimensional, single-atom sheet of two different materials with a seamless boundary.

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The associate laboratory director for Energy and Environmental Sciences (EES) at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and two University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor’s Chair researchers are among the newly elected fellows of the American Associa...
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Researchers studying more effective ways to convert woody plant matter into biofuels at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified fundamental forces that change plant structures during pretreatment processes used in the
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The ability to make plants grow stronger and more quickly is a key goal in the effort to develop better biofuels and better understand plant efficiency.