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

Sun-soaking Device Turns Water Into Superheated Steam

MIT engineers have built a device that soaks up enough heat from the sun to boil water and produce “superheated” steam hotter than 100 degrees Celsius, without any expensive optics.

Quantum Information Systems will Revolutionize Computing...as Soon as We Figure Out How to Make Them

A group of researchers led by Northeastern physicist Arun Bansil has received a $3.54 million grant from the Department of Energy to investigate new ways to design quantum information systems, which could revolutionize data encryption, enable new medical treatments, and more accurately model the changing climate.

UMass Engineers Make Crossbar Arrays of the Smallest Memristors

A research team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst says it has developed a promising building block for the next generation of nonvolatile random-access memory, artificial neural networks and bio-inspired computing systems.

Researcher Gets Grant To Study Materials Moving Through Tiny Spaces

Dr. Gangli Wang, professor of chemistry at Georgia State University, has received a three-year, $485,263 federal grant to study how nanostructured materials, or materials with hollow structures on the nanometer scale, affect how other substances pass through them.

UK Joins U.S. Department of Energy Battery Research Partnership

The University of Kentucky has been named a partner on a $120 million, five-year second phase of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Innovation Hub focused on advancing battery science and technology.

Solving a 75-Year-Old Mystery Might Provide a New Source of Farm Fertilizer

Thanks to a specialized X-ray source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have confirmed the existence of a long-hypothesized interaction between nitrogen and titanium dioxide (TiO2) – a common photoactive material also known as titania – in the presence of light.

Faster-Charging, Safer Batteries

A team at the University of Delaware has patented an idea to improve battery performance by introducing tapers into the polymer membrane electrolytes that allow the lithium ions inside the battery to travel back and forth faster.

Major Natural Carbon Sink May Soon Become a Carbon Source

Peatlands in the Peruvian Amazon could soon start emitting carbon rather than soaking it up, according to a new study.

Switch-in-a-cell Electrifies Life

Rice synthetic biologists and their colleagues have developed protein switches that can be used to control the flow of electrons within cells. The synthetic proteins are one of the few remaining components needed to mimic entire electronic devices within cells.

Study of Quark Speeds Finds a Solution for a 35-year Physics Mystery

MIT physicists now have an answer to a question in nuclear physics that has puzzled scientists for three decades: Why do quarks move more slowly inside larger atoms?

Fossil Fuel Combustion Is the Main Contributor to Black Carbon Around the Arctic, International Study Finds

An international team conducted the study at sites in Russia, Canada, Sweden and Norway, with Baylor University researchers contributing measurements for Alaska.

Superconductors, the Future of Low-cost Energy, Focus of Newly Awarded Grant

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Physics was awarded $635,964 from the United States Department of Energy to continue research into improving the control and efficiency of energy production, storage and use by connecting theoretical and experimental physics of superconductor materials to find more proficient ways to transport energy.