U.S. Department of Energy Research News

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1-Sep-2004
'Nanotractor' studies micro-scale friction
Interest in the development of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) has grown steadily during the past decade. These tiny devices, now used in such applications as auto airbag systems, inkjet printers, and display units, are attractive because they take up little space and require little or no assembly. They also are cheap to produce in batch quantities because they are made with a technology that is already mature -- the microlithography used to make silicon chips.

1-Sep-2004
'Nanotools' - Self-assembling durable nanocrystal arrays
A wish list for nanotechnologists would likely include a simple, inexpensive means of self-assembling nanocrystals into robust, orderly arrangements, like soup cans on a shelf or bricks in a wall, each separated from the next by an insulating layer of silicon dioxide.

24-Aug-2004
Fine-tuning carbon nanotubes
Since their discovery in the 1990s, carbon nanotubes have ensnared the imagination of chemists. Among them are researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who are putting these fine filaments--ten-thousand times smaller than a hair--to work as biosensors and improving the way carbon nanotubes can be chemically customized to form the basis for a wide variety of devices.

24-Aug-2004
Mercury�watch out!
An innovative sponge-like material that can "absorb" more than half its weight in contaminants from waste streams has been developed by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

24-Aug-2004
Nanoparticles may mean longer life for enzymes
The biochemical world's workaholic is the enzyme. Enzymes are molecules in cells that lead short, active and brutal lives. They restlessly catalyze their neighbors, cleaving and assembling proteins and metabolizing compounds. After a few hours of furious activity, they are what chemists call "destabilized," or spent.

24-Aug-2004
Thin films enable next-generation displays
You've finished working on your computer and you're ready to call it a day. Instead of logging off and folding the screen down over a laptop keyboard, imagine rolling up the computer screen and stashing it in your bag. Roll-up computer screens and other flexible light-emitting displays that conform to almost any shape or surface may one day be realities thanks to a team of scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

24-Aug-2004
Supercritical fluids�making nanoparticles easy
It's not a liquid. It's not a gas. It's a supercritical fluid. Although it looks like a liquid, it has unique properties that allow scientists to work with it in ways they can't with liquids. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are using supercritical fluids as solvents in a process that creates nanoparticles.

24-Aug-2004
Making light of it
A cadre of researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is laying the groundwork for success with the most promising new lighting technology to emerge since liquid crystal displays (LCD).

24-Aug-2004
From cosmetics to hydrogen storage�nanoscale materials push the frontier
Suresh Baskaran develops new projects in advanced materials and manufacturing technology. This includes materials and manufacturing technology for new applications in electronics, photonics, energy conversion, vehicular structures, sensors and emissions control.

24-Aug-2004
Soil's a natural for storing CO2
In a field outside Charleston, S.C., PNNL's Jim Amonette and his colleagues from the U.S. Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have planted 72 pots with Sudan grass. They don't care much about the grass, however--it's the soil beneath that captures their attention.

24-Aug-2004
PNNL co-leads Center for Chemical Hydrogen Storage
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, along with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, will lead a new national Center for Chemical Hydrogen Storage. The new center is a step toward a "hydrogen economy"--an economy based not on the fossil fuels we use today, but on clean, abundant hydrogen fuels. It is one of three Department of Energy "Centers of Excellence" aimed at enabling use of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

24-Aug-2004
Rest easy�it's safe and secure
The desk is cleared, the computer is off, and the weekend lies ahead-hit the lights and you are out the door. Not fifteen minutes later you begin to question whether you locked the safe where you store your classified materials--sound familiar? Even the most diligent and security minded personnel have at some time experienced this absent-minded professor syndrome.

24-Aug-2004
Reading, writing and nanoscience?
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has opened its doors to scholars of nanoscience by hosting the new "Intensive Courses in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology." Billed as one of science's hottest and most rapidly evolving fields, nanoscience involves the study of materials and their properties at the molecular level.

24-Aug-2004
Safe harbors in stormy waters
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's expertise in border control training is being tapped to support the Megaports Initiative, a government program aimed at preventing terrorism.

11-Aug-2004
Progress through computation
If we continue to burn fossil fuels for energy at the current rate, they will last only another few hundred years. In the context of civilization, the fossil fuel era is drawing to a close. In addition, it would be wise to reduce our combustion of oil, gas, and coal because the process produces pollutants that are bad for our health and carbon dioxide that could change our climate in undesirable ways. One possible future source of electricity for the world is fusion energy.

11-Aug-2004
Glimpses of global warming
As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, many questions arise concerning how fast and in what ways Earth's environment will change. For example, in the United States, will increased emissions of carbon dioxide from coal combustion in the 21 st century make the Southeast wetter or drier over the next 100 years? Will changes in temperature and moisture conditions make certain U.S. regions more vulnerable to insect-borne diseases?

11-Aug-2004
Uncovering secrets of living cells
Probing microbes to determine what they are made of and what drives them requires more than mass spectrometers, microarrays, and microscopes. Computational models run on supercomputers have been key contributors to our growing understanding of these single-cell organisms.

11-Aug-2004
Shedding light on luminosity
What on earth is an inverse femtobarn and what does it have to do with the number of events an accelerator produces?Fittingly, it was in the farmlands of the Midwest that the term 'barn' was first applied to physics. In December 1942, at a dinner on the campus of Purdue University, physicists M. G. Holloway and C. P. Parker were lamenting the lack of a catchy name for discussing the size of an atomic nucleus.

10-Aug-2004
New research facility holds promise for nation's energy future
Ground was broken July 27 on a new facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), designed to increase collaboration among researchers and speed the time it takes for new technologies to move from the laboratory bench to commercial manufacturing.

9-Aug-2004
Soil's a natural for storing CO2
In a field outside Charleston, S.C., PNNL's Jim Amonette and his colleagues from the U.S. Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have planted 72 pots with Sudan grass. They don't care much about the grass, however--it's the soil beneath that captures their attention.

6-Aug-2004
How many Nobel laureates do you know well enough to nickname?
For Mark Allen (EC), a member of the BaBar collaboration and a graduate student of Aaron Roodman (EC), the answer is now 18. Allen was one of 64 young scientists from the U.S. to attend a five-day symposium of Nobel prize winners in the cobblestoned medieval city of Lindau on a tiny island in the south of Germany. Most of the laureates and researchers who attended this year are, like Allen, physicists.

1-Aug-2004
Exploring and modeling 21st Century materials
The 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity sparked the quest for room-temperature superconductors that could transmit electrical current without heat losses and without the need for an expensive coolant such as liquid helium. Room-temperature superconductors could make possible ultra-efficient power transmission lines, practical electric cars, and superconducting magnets that could bring high-speed levitated trains and smaller, more efficient, and less costly rotating machinery, appliances, particle accelerators, electric generators, and medical imaging devices.

1-Aug-2004
Tomorrow's molecular and nanoscale devices
Chemists are now about to cross a remarkable threshold and expect a dramatic expansion in their ability to make reliable predictions about molecular structure and processes.

1-Aug-2004
Simulating supernovae
During the catastrophic death throes of massive stars, known as core-collapse supernovae, many elements were created, including those necessary for life on Earth. How and why these stars that were greater than 10 times the mass of our sun and that had evolved over millions of years died explosively in a few hours are mysteries that scientists cannot solve in laboratory experiments. However, simulations on supercomputers hold out hope of unraveling the secrets of supernovae.

13-Jul-2004
This instrument keeps the beat
As part of their responsibilities for stewardship of the nation's nuclear stockpile, Livermore researchers study the behavior of materials detonated with high explosives or struck with projectiles at extreme velocities. In diagnosing these experiments, researchers must measure velocities as great as 3,000 meters per second over distances from less than 0.5 millimeter to more than 50 millimeters.