User Facility Science Highlights | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Zooming in on Gluons' Contribution to Proton Spin

New data that "wimpy" gluons, the glue-like particles that bind quarks within protons, have a big impact on proton spin.

The discovery that electrically conductive, hair-like filaments on the surface of Geobacter bacteria could mark a new paradigm for the employment of biological materials in nanoscale electron devices.

Bacteria Hairs Make Excellent Electrical Wires

This discovery could lead to low-cost, non-toxic, biological components for light-weight electronics.

Snakes on a plane: This atomic-resolution simulation of a peptoid nanosheet reveals a snake-like structure never seen before. The nanosheet’s layers include a water-repelling core (yellow), peptoid backbones (white), and charged sidechains (magenta and cyan). The right corner of the nanosheet’s top layer has been “removed” to show how the backbone’s alternating rotational states give the backbones a snake-like appearance (red and blue ribbons). Surrounding water molecules are red and white.

Understanding and Predicting Self-Assembly

Newly discovered “design rule” brings nature-inspired nanostructures one step closer.

Supercomputers Predict New Turbulent Interactions in Fusion Plasmas

Cutting-edge simulations provide an explanation for a mystery over half a century old.

DOE Isotope Program Provides Target Material for the Discovery of Superheavy Elements

New element 117 and its decay products establish the existence of long-sought Island of Stability.

A new algorithm reduces timing uncertainty by a factor of 300, revealing ultrafast dynamics on timescales as short as a quadrillionth of a second.

Creating a Better Way to Find Out “When”

Computer algorithm recovers histories and dynamics on timescales much faster than uncertainties inherent in experimental data.

The orange carotenoid protein of cyanobacteria binds a single carotenoid pigment molecule that may dissipate excess light energy when it moves within the protein.

Changing Colors for Built-in Sunblock

Molecular movements triggered by light redirect the flow of energy through photosynthetic cells to protect them from sun damage.

Selective etching of palladium (blue) from palladium-platinum core-shell nanoparticles (left) yields hollow platinum (grey) nanocages with high activity for the oxygen reduction reaction.

Hollow and Filled with Potential

Hollow shape-selected platinum nanocages represent a new class of highly active catalysts.

This results demonstrate a temporal resolution sufficient to directly image chemical reactions.

Capturing Molecular Motion with Relativistic Electrons

The world’s fastest images of nitrogen molecules rotating in a gas were captured using electron diffraction.

Researchers discovered how green fluorescent proteins (center) react with water (shown around the edges of the protein).

New Insight on a Familiar Glow

A new approach to investigating green fluorescent protein provides a vital tool for unraveling molecular-level details of processes important in biology and light harvesting for energy use.

MD simulation shows membranes with an asymmetric molecular distribution of about 0.6 nm; yellow = gold; red = organo-thiol ligand molecules.

Janus-like Nanoparticle Membranes

Sub-nanometer molecular asymmetry between the two different faces of nanoparticle membranes formed at air-water interface is revealed.

The deposition of a silicon dioxide layer (yellow layer) on a carbon nanotube (gray spheres) introduces solitary oxygen dopants (red spheres).

Using Nanotubes to Create Single Photons for Quantum Communication

Demonstration of room temperature, single photon emission in doped carbon nanotubes opens a new path toward quantum information technologies.