Science Highlights | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Advanced electron microscopy technique permits the simultaneous collection of both signals: secondary electron (that are sensitive to the surface) and transmitted electron.

Atomic-Level Measurements of Rough Surfaces

Researchers use surface-sensitive signals to atomically resolve the structure of a rough surface.

Using a scanning electron microscope, the identity of individual elements that make up a single grain of a material can be mapped from the x-rays emitted by the interactions of high energy electrons with the material.

New Materials Family on the Block

A family of single-phase materials was discovered with coexisting magnetic and electrical properties having potential for electronic applications.

Scientists devised a new way to wire a photosynthetic protein onto an electrode for integration into devices that turn sunlight into fuel. The light energy collected by the proteins (green) extracts electrons from an electrode (orangey red) through long molecules (yellow) under the proteins.

How to Wire Photosynthetic Proteins to Electrodes

New approach for connecting light-harvesting proteins enhances the current produced by a factor of four.

A Nobel for Neutrinos: Super-Kamiokande

Discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass, garners the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Reaping Radioisotopes

Researchers harvest long-lived isotopes that are difficult or impossible to acquire otherwise.

Project 8 Detects Individual Electrons by their Cyclotron Radiation

New electron spectroscopy technique may lead to an improved neutrino mass determination.

Working with Molecular Foundry staff, an international team of users utilized the TEAM 1 microscope to plot the exact coordinates of nine layers of atoms with a precision of 19 trillionths of a meter.

Unprecedented Precise Determination of Three-Dimensional Atomic Positions

For the first time, electron tomography reveals the 3D coordinates of individual atoms and defects in a material.

Schematic drawing shows an electron (gold sphere) moving in the direction of the green arrow on the surface of a topological crystalline insulator. In this material, the electron’s quantum-mechanical spin (up) (blue arrow) is coupled with the direction of its motion in such a way that reversing its direction of motion would reverse the direction of the spin (down).

You Can Have Your Conductor and Insulator, Too

Scientists synthesized a theoretically-predicted material with unusual current-carrying properties that could open the door for next-generation electronics.

A stripe-shaped magnetic region (domain), shown in blue (top left) in an ultrathin film device (orange structure). The narrowing region of the device causes the current distribution to change (two of the three red arrows change direction), leading to the breakdown of the magnetic domain into circular disk-shaped bubbles, called skyrmions (bottom left) Magnetic skyrmion bubbles (bottom right) were experimentally observed using magnetic imaging.

Creating Novel Magnetic Islands for Spintronics

Generating and moving small, stable magnetic islands at room temperature could be the ticket to more energy-efficient electronics.

Picture of newly-devised frequency comb.

Toward Powerful and Compact Terahertz Spectrometers

A new, dime-sized light source will lead to novel spectrometers for the next generation of scientific discoveries.

A liquid mixture solidifies to different solid phases upon cooling (left) and heating (right). At low temperature, colloidal spherical particles form crystals due to pressure from collisions with the surrounding polymer.

Shape Shifters: Demonstrating Tunable Phase Shifting

Reversible self-assembled structures balance two competing attractions to enable stimuli-responsive materials.

On the left: Fluorescent microscope image shows artificial bioreactors composed of sugar-based dextran polymer solution (blue) encapsulated within a shell of lipid vesicles (red). On the right: schematic illustration of what the vesicles look like at the aqueous/aqueous interface. Blue and yellow shading indicate the interior and exterior solutions.

New Artificial Cells Mimic Nature’s Tiny Reactors

A new approach creates microscale bioreactors for studying complex reactions for energy production and storage.