2018 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Fine-Tuning Fusion

Theresa Wilks has come full circle, at least geographically. After receiving a master's and PhD from Georgia Tech, she returned to her home state of California in 2016 as an MIT postdoc doing fusion energy research at the DIII-D tokamak, a national fusion reactor in San Diego.

The Changing Chemistry of the Amazonian Atmosphere

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have quantified the effect of NOx pollution on OH radicals in the Amazon rainforest.

Engineering, LSA Faculty to Pursue Batter Breakthroughs as Part of Nationwide Battery Initiative

Five University of Michigan faculty will be part of the second five-year phase of the Joint Center for Energy Storage (JCESR) research, an ambitious Department of Energy project aimed at breaking the scientific barriers to realizing next-generation batteries.

Stanford Researchers Have Developed a Water-Based Battery to Store Solar and Wind Energy

Stanford scientists have developed a manganese-hydrogen battery that could fill a missing piece in the nation’s energy puzzle by storing wind and solar energy for when it is needed, lessening the need to burn carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Venkata Srinu Bhadram Receives Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award

Venkata Srinu Bhadram in Timothy Strobel’s lab at the Geophysical Laboratory (GL) will receive the ninth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award (PIE). The recipients are awarded a cash prize for their exceptionally creative approaches to science, strong mentoring, and contributing to the sense of campus community.

Imaging Technique Pulls Plasmon Data Together

Rice University scientists have developed a novel technique to view a field of plasmonic nanoparticles simultaneously to learn how their differences change their reactivity.

Researchers Find Way to Keep Proteins Functioning Outside of the Cell

A team of researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California at Berkeley have discovered a way to keep proteins active outside of a cell. The discovery could lead to a new class of materials with functions found only in living systems.

Plasmons Triggered in Nanotube Quantum Wells

A novel quantum effect observed in a carbon nanotube film could lead to the development of unique lasers and other optoelectronic devices, according to scientists at Rice University and Tokyo Metropolitan University.

Is a Dark Particle the 'Dark Horse' of Dark Matter?

Scientists at UC San Diego are proposing the possibility of a yet-to-be-discovered “dark particle” that could account for both dark matter and a defined discrepancy in the field of physics when it comes to measuring neutron lifetime.

Oxide Materials Discovery May Advance Electronic Device Development

Materials scientists at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have made a breakthrough discovery in the study of oxide heterostructures, substances that have the potential to revolutionize advanced electronics, memory technologies and photovoltaics.

University of Illinois Team Finds Wigner Crystal—Not Mott Insulator—in 'Magic-angle' Graphene

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have recently shown that the insulating behavior reported by the MIT team has been misattributed. Professor Philip Phillips, a noted expert in the physics of Mott insulators, says a careful review of the MIT experimental data by his team revealed that the insulating behavior of the “magic-angle” graphene is not Mott insulation, but something even more profound—a Wigner crystal.

Better Water Purification Methods Are Aim of New Research Center

With rising demand and dwindling supply, water is perhaps Earth’s most critical natural resource. One way to get more of it is to find more creative approaches — and new materials — to use and reuse existing water and improve upon existing water purification methods. That is the focus of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy SysTems (M-WET), a new multi-university research center headquartered in The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, uniting researchers from UT; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.