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

Nucleation a Boon to Sustainable Nanomanufacturing

Calcium carbonate is found nearly everywhere, in sidewalk cement, wall paint, antacid tablets and deep underground. Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have used a unique set of state-of-the-art imaging techniques to discover how calcium carbonate nanoparticles nucleate, which is important for those manufacturing the carbonate nanomaterials and controlling metal carbonation during CO2 sequestration.

$120 Million to Support Next-generation Battery Research

he U.S. Department of Energy announced its decision Sept. 18 to renew the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, which is led by Argonne National Laboratory and focused on advancing battery science and technology. The department plans to fund the center for a total of $120 million over the five-year renewal period. The University of Chicago is one of the partners in the center, known as JCESR.

Record Year for UT Grad Students Earning Awards to Work at National Labs

Four UT graduate students have received Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) awards. This is the highest number of SCGSR awardees UT has had in one year.

Yale to Help Develop Particle Detector Assemblies via $1.6M Grant

A $1.6 million planning grant from the National Science Foundation will be divided among Yale, the University of Chicago, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin. The four institutions will develop engineering and design plans to help the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) meet its goal of starting to collect data in 2026.

DOE Grants Propel Physics Research at MU

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is funding cutting-edge research into new magnetic materials and the theory of spinning electrons that could lead to better data storage and processing and more efficient magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for radiologists, and it may even have implications for quantum computing.

National Clean Energy Week: New Technology Could Wean the Battery World Off Cobalt

A research team led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, has opened the door to using other metals in lithium-based batteries, and have built cathodes with 50 percent more lithium-storage capacity than conventional materials.

University to Lead $2.25 Million Grant for Developing Next-generation Quantum Computer

The University of Minnesota announced today that it will lead a $2.25 million grant over the next three years from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science for developing materials and device knowledge necessary for creating the next-generation of computing—the quantum computer.

Understanding How Plants Use Sunlight

Researchers at MIT along with collaborators at the University of Verona, Italy, worked to develop a new understanding of the mechanisms by which plants reject excess energy they absorb from sunlight so it doesn’t harm key proteins.

WVU Physicists Awarded $1.34 Million to Develop Machine-learning Software

The researchers, James Lewis and Aldo Romero from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, will lead a team from WVU, University of Southern California and Kitware, Inc. to develop new machine-learning tools for advancing chemical and materials science discoveries on the nation’s future high-speed computing platforms.

Focusing on the Negative is Good When It Comes to Batteries

Chemists at several institutions, including Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, as well as the Honda Research Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have hit on a new way of making rechargeable batteries based on fluoride, the negatively charged form, or anion, of the element fluorine.

A 3D Imaging Technique Unlocks Properties of Perovskite Crystals

A team of materials scientists from Penn State, Cornell and Argonne National Laboratory have, for the first time, visualized the 3D atomic and electron density structure of the most complex perovskite crystal structure system decoded to date.

Replacing Hard Parts in Soft Robots

Researchers at Harvard University develop 'soft' valves to make entirely soft robots.