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

Count on it: Peering at Atomic Structures with No More than Pencil and Paper

University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of California, Santa Barbara engineers predicted and confirmed the surface configuration for an important half-Heusler material called cobalt titanium antimony, which is a potentially useful semiconductor. The researchers measured the crystal surface with advanced imaging techniques, noting their pencil-and-paper predictions lined up perfectly with real atomic configurations.

Rutgers-led Research Could Lead to More Efficient Electronics

A Rutgers-led team of physicists has demonstrated a way to conduct electricity between transistors without energy loss, opening the door to low-power electronics and, potentially, quantum computing that would be far faster than today’s computers.

Hidden Magnetism Appears under Hidden Symmetry

Sometimes a good theory just needs the right materials to make it work. That’s the case with recent findings by UT’s physicists and their colleagues, who designed a two-dimensional magnetic system that points to the possibility of devices with increased security and efficiency, using only a small amount of energy.

Evidence for New Property of Quantum Matter Revealed

A theorized but never-before detected property of quantum matter has now been spotted in the lab at Johns Hopkins University.

Stanford Researchers Find Groundwater Pumping Can Increase Arsenic Levels in Irrigation and Drinking Water

Pumping an aquifer to the last drop squeezes out more than water. A Stanford study finds it can also unlock dangerous arsenic from buried clays – and reveals how sinking land can provide an early warning and measure of contamination.

Soil Prospecting Yields Wealth of Potential Antibiotics

Soil, the source of our best antibiotics, can be more thoroughly mined for new drugs and other useful chemicals with the help of metagenomics, according to UC Berkeley scientists.

Designing “Recipes” Using Artificial Intelligence

MIT researchers and their collaborators have demonstrated a novel system using artificial-intelligence techniques to help identify methods of fabricating materials, especially those that look promising in computer simulations.

Designing a Better Superconductor with Geometric Frustration

A new, dynamic system discovered by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Argonne National Laboratory will enable ongoing adjustments to tiny tornadoes of supercurrent – called vortex filaments – to alter a material’s superconducting properties over time.

A Better Device for Measuring Electromagnetic Radiation

Bolometers, devices that monitor electromagnetic radiation through heating of an absorbing material, are used by astronomers and homeowners alike. But most such devices have limited bandwidth and must be operated at ultralow temperatures. Now, researchers say they’ve found a ultrafast yet highly sensitive alternative that can work at room temperature — and may be much less expensive.

Experiments Trace Interstellar Dust Back to Solar System’s Formation

A team of scientists led by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) researcher Hope Ishii, discovered that certain interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) contain dust leftover from the initial formation of the solar system.

UVA Physicists Probing Ever Deeper Into the Stuff of the Universe

University of Virginia physicists have recently played key roles in new particle physics discoveries. The scientists are involved with large international collaborations using major facilities designed for expanding our knowledge of the most intimate details of how the smallest known pieces of atoms may have given birth to the universe.

Finding Antineutrino Oscillation

For more than three years, scientists on the NOvA collaboration, which includes MSU physicists, have been observing particles called neutrinos as they oscillate from one type to another over a distance of 500 miles. Now, in a new result unveiled at the Neutrino 2018 conference, the collaboration has announced its first results using antineutrinos.