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

Boston College Chemist: Nano-Coatings Stabilize Carbon for Lithium-Air Batteries

Associate Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang has been developing materials that might one day enable the manufacture of new batteries capable of meeting power demands within the size and cost constraints of car makers and other industries.

UCLA Researchers Develop Lower-Cost, More Efficient Nanostructure for Fuel Cells

A team led by researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed nanostructures made from a compound of three metals that increases the efficiency and durability of fuel cells while lowering the cost to produce them.

New Method Allows for Greater Variation in Band Gap Tunability

Northwestern University researchers discovered a novel way to control the electronic band gap in complex oxide materials without changing the material’s overall composition.

UCLA Chemists Devise Technology That Could Transform Solar Energy Storage

A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks — an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.

UCLA Physicists Offer a Solution to the Puzzle of the Origin of Matter in the Universe

Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics and astronomy in the UCLA College, and colleagues propose that the matter-antimatter asymmetry could be related to the Higgs boson particle.

Drexel Engineers' Recipe For 'Sandwiching' Atomic Layers Expands Possibilities For Making Materials That Store Energy

New method allows for two-dimensional layers of disparate elements to be stacked together.

Graphene Nanoribbon Finding Could Lead to Faster, More Efficient Electronics

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have discovered a way to grow graphene nanoribbons with desirable semiconducting properties directly on a conventional germanium semiconductor wafer.

Challenge to Classic Theory of 'Organic' Solar Cells Could Improve Efficiency

New research findings at Purdue University contradict a fundamental assumption about the functioning of "organic" solar cells made of low-cost plastics, suggesting a new strategy for creating inexpensive solar technology.

Molecular Scientists Unexpectedly Produce New Type of Glass

UChicago researchers co-led experiments that produced glass with an organized molecular structure, a material previously thought to be entirely amorphous and random.

A Molecular Light Switch?...Just Add Water

A team of researchers from Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Berkeley, and Temple University recently published its discovery that it is possible to control UV light production via a chemical reaction that functions like flipping a light switch.

Transparent Metal Films for Smartphone, Tablet and TV Displays

A new material that is both highly transparent and electrically conductive could make large screen displays, smart windows and even touch screens and solar cells more affordable and efficient, according to the Penn State materials scientists and engineers who discovered it.

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Taps Carnegie Mellon Statistician To Lead Informatics and Statistics Science

Carnegie Mellon’s Chad Schafer is co-leader of a team developing new methods to gain scientific insights from the roughly 30 terabytes of data that the LSST will gather each night.