University Research | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Atomic-Scale View of Bacterial Proteins Offers Path to New Tuberculosis Drugs

With the first detailed analysis of a cellular component from a close relative of the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, Rockefeller scientists are suggesting strategies for new drugs to curb this growing health problem.

Stabilizing Energy Storage

University of Utah and University of Michigan chemists, participating in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, predict a better future for a type of battery for grid storage called redox flow batteries.

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Dream of Energy-Collecting Windows is One Step Closer to Reality

Researchers at the University of Minnesota and University of Milano-Bicocca are bringing the dream of windows that can efficiently collect solar energy one step closer to reality thanks to high tech silicon nanoparticles.

Making Molecular Movies with X-rays

In order to better understand the chemical reactions in real time that allow your skin to make vitamin D3, University of California, Berkeley scientists are developing ultrafast spectroscopic devices that not only fit on a table top, but also produce the hard-to-generate UVB photons that trigger the reaction.

Carnegie Mellon Physicists Search for Supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider

Carnegie Mellon physicists have been instrumental in the development and operation of one of the giant detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid, in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

New Property Found in Unusual Crystalline Materials

A team of researchers at MIT discover materials with a special kind of boundary between crystal grains can deform in unexpected ways.

A Sweeter Way to Make Green Products

A research team led by Basudeb Saha at University of Delaware’s Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, has invented a new process that could make forest and farm waste a cheaper, sustainable alternative to the petroleum used in manufacturing thousands of products.

Newly Discovered Semiconductor Dynamics May Help Improve Energy Efficiency

Researchers examining the flow of electricity through semiconductors have uncovered another reason these materials seem to lose their ability to carry a charge as they become more densely “doped.”

Making Better Material for Fuel Cells

University of Delaware researchers make material to make fuel cells more durable and less expensive.

Rice U. Solubility Study Could Impact Energy, Biology, Environment

Rice University chemical engineers have used the most realistic computer model yet devised to simulate the precise atomic and molecular interactions that come into play when water mixes with alkanes, a family of hydrocarbons that includes methane, propane and other products refined from petroleum and natural gas, such as paraffin.

Coral Skeletons May Resist the Effects of Acidifying Oceans

New research from Pupa Gilbert, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, provides evidence that at least one species of coral, Stylophora pistillata, and possibly others, build their hard, calcium carbonate skeletons faster, and in bigger pieces, than previously thought.

New Computational Model of Chemical Building Blocks May Help Explain the Origins of Life

A research team from the Stony Brook University Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a computational model explaining how certain molecules fold and bind together to grow longer and more complex, leading from simple chemicals to primitive biological molecules.