News Archive | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

The Contradictory Catalyst

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found the key to speeding up the rate of reaction of a potential catalyst for energy storage lies in making the reactive parts of the catalyst move more slowly.

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sPHENIX Gets CD0 for Upgrade to Experiment Tracking the Building Blocks of Matter

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has granted “Critical Decision-Zero” (CD-0) status to the sPHENIX project, a transformation of one of the particle detectors at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory—into a research tool with unprecedented precision for tracking subatomic interactions.

Seeking Structure With Metagenome Sequences

A team led by University of Washington’s David Baker worked with researchers at the Joint Genome Institute to generate structural models for 12 percent of the approximately 15,000 protein families, using computational modeling methods to view structures and determine protein functions.

Kai Xiao: Growing Novel, Nanoscale Materials to Support Future Energy Needs

Kai Xiao's work as a staff scientist at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Science gives him access to some of the world’s most powerful tools to investigate materials as small as one-billionth of a meter, or at the nanoscale.

Using Sunlight to Activate the Flow of Electrical Current in a New Material

A team of scientists from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a new material that absorbs visible light to generate electricity; this material might be useful for splitting water to produce a combustible fuel, hydrogen.

Neutrons and a ‘Bit of Gold’ Uncover New Type of Quantum Phase Transition

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered a new type of quantum critical point, a new way in which materials change from one state of matter to another.

Tracking Antarctic Adaptations in Diatoms

A team led by University of East Anglia (UEA) scientists in Norwich, England conducted a comparative genome analysis that provided clues on how climate change might impact evolutionary adaptation limits.

Meet the Director: Kelly Gaffney

Kelly Gaffney is the director of the SSRL, a user facility that produces extremely bright x-rays as a resource for researchers to study our world at the atomic and molecular level of energy production, environmental remediation, nanotechnology, new materials, and medicine.

For First Time Ever, X-ray Imaging at Argonne Captures Material Defect Process

Argonne researchers are the first to capture the formation of nanomaterial defects in near-real time. Their work will help other researchers model the behavior of materials, a step that is key to engineering stronger, more reliable materials.

Largest Populus SNP Dataset Holds Promise for Biofuels, Materials, and Metabolites

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have released the largest-ever single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) dataset of genetic variations in poplar trees, information useful to plant scientists as well as researchers in the fields of biofuels, materials science, and secondary plant metabolism.

Study of Microbes Reveals New Insight About Earth’s Geology and Carbon Cycles

Anaerobic bacteria play a central role in cycling carbon and other key elements throughout Earth. A new study by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory shows that the behavior of these microbes is significantly affected by the types of carbon “food” sources available to them.

Sketching Out Magnetism With Electricity

In a proof-of-concept study published in Nature Physics, researchers drew magnetic squares in a nonmagnetic material with an electrified pen and then “read” this magnetic doodle with X-rays.