U.S. Department of Energy Research News

Public Release: 3-Dec-2012
Ames Laboratory scientists develop indium-free organic light-emitting diodes
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered new ways of using a well-known polymer in organic light emitting diodes, which could eliminate the need for an increasingly problematic and breakable metal-oxide used in screen displays in computers, televisions, and cell phones.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 30-Nov-2012
ORNL develops lignin-based thermoplastic conversion process
Turning lignin, a plant's structural "glue" and a byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, into something considerably more valuable is driving a research effort headed by Amit Naskar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Public Release: 30-Nov-2012
Team led by Argonne National Lab selected as DOE's Batteries and Energy Storage Hub
Energy Secretary Steven Chu joined Illinois dignitaries in announcing that a team led by Argonne National Laboratory was selected for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish a new Batteries and Energy Storage Hub. The Hub -- the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research -- will combine the R&D firepower of five DOE national laboratories, five universities, and four private firms in an effort toward achieving revolutionary advances in battery performance.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
Lawrence Livermore's Keane and Long elected AAAS Fellows
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Christopher Keane and Jane Long have been awarded the distinction of fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012

Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences
A human-caused climate change signal emerges from the noise
By comparing simulations from 20 different computer models to satellite observations, Lawrence Livermore climate scientists and colleagues from 16 other organizations have found that tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes are clearly related to human activities.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
Greener storage for green energy
Renewable energy solutions like wind and solar operate on nature's timetable. Power is plentiful -- but not necessarily at the moments when consumers need it. To give renewables a fighting chance, a team led by engineers and chemists at Harvard will use a one-year, $600,000 innovation grant from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency�Energy program to develop a new type of storage battery.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
2 Berkeley Lab scientists named AAAS Fellows
Susan Celniker of the Life Sciences Division and Wim Leemans of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been named 2012 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012

Science
X-ray laser helps fight sleeping sickness
An international group of scientists working at SLAC has mapped a weak spot in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, pinpointing a promising new target for treating a disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012
ARPA-e awards $130 million for transformation energy technology projects
Sixty six cutting-edge research projects have been selected by the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to receive a total of $130 million in funding.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012
NREL updates solar radiation database
The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and collaborators released a 20-year updated version of the US National Solar Radiation Database, a web-based technical report that provides critical information about solar and meteorological data for 1,454 locations in the US and its territories.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Science
NREL researchers use imaging technologies to solve puzzle of plant architecture
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the BioEnergy Science Center combined different microscopic imaging methods to gain a greater understanding of the relationships between biomass cell wall structure and enzyme digestibility, a breakthrough that could lead to optimizing sugar yields and lowering the costs of making biofuels.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Nature
Tiny algae shed light on photosynthesis as a dynamic property
Many of the world's most important photosynthetic eukaryotes such as plants got their light-harnessing organelles (chloroplasts) indirectly from other organisms through endosymbiosis. In some instances, this resulted in algae with multiple, distinct genomes, some in residual organelles (nucleomorphs). To better understand why nucleomorphs persist after endosymbiosis, an international team including researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute collaborated to sequence and analyze two tiny algae. Their report appeared online Nov. 29, 2012 in Nature.

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012
The installed price of solar photovoltaic systems in the US continues to decline at a rapid pace
The installed price of solar photovoltaic power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2011 and through the first half of 2012, according to the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report produced by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Program, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012
Researchers use shock tube for insight into physics early in blasts
Sandia National Laboratories researchers are using a unique multiphase shock tube to study the dispersal of densely clustered particles during an explosion.

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012

Nature Communications
Penn researchers make flexible, low-voltage circuits using nanocrystals
Electronic circuits are typically integrated in rigid silicon wafers, but flexibility opens up a wide range of applications in a world where electronics are becoming more pervasive. Finding materials with the right mix of performance and manufacturing cost, however, remains a challenge. Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that nanoscale particles, or nanocrystals, of the semiconductor cadmium selenide can be "printed" or "coated" on flexible plastics to form high-performance electronics.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012
Researchers test novel power system for space travel
A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights.

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012

Physical Review Letters
Modeling the breaking points of metallic glasses
Metallic glass alloys (or liquid metals) are three times stronger than the best industrial steel, but can be molded into complex shapes with the same ease as plastic. These materials are highly resistant to scratching, denting, shattering and corrosion. Mathematical methods developed by a Berkeley Lab scientists will help explain why liquid metals have wildly different breaking points.

Public Release: 22-Nov-2012

Science
Magnesium oxide: From Earth to super-Earth
The mantles of Earth and other rocky planets are rich in magnesium and oxygen. Due to its simplicity, the mineral magnesium oxide is a good model for studying the nature of planetary interiors. New work from a team led by Carnegie's Stewart McWilliams studied how magnesium oxide behaves under the extreme conditions deep within planets and found evidence that alters our understanding of planetary evolution.

US Department of Energy, US Army Research Office, Krell Institute, Miller Institute, University of California

Public Release: 21-Nov-2012

Nature
New structures self-assemble in synchronized dance
With self-assembly guiding the steps and synchronization providing the rhythm, a new class of materials forms dynamic, moving structures in an intricate dance. Researchers from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube. Such in-motion structures, a blending of mathematics and materials science, could open a new class of technologies with applications in medicine, chemistry and engineering.

National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, US Army Research Office

Public Release: 19-Nov-2012

Astrophysical Journal Letters
Failed explosions explain most peculiar supernovae
Supercomputer simulations have revealed that a type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a class of duds -- one that could nonetheless throw new light on the mysterious nature of dark energy.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Public Release: 19-Nov-2012

Physical Review Letters
BaBar experiment confirms time asymmetry
Digging through nearly 10 years of data from billions of BaBar particle collisions, researchers found that certain particle types change into one another much more often in one way than they do in the other, a violation of time reversal symmetry and confirmation that some subatomic processes have a preferred direction of time.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 16-Nov-2012

Advanced Materials
ORNL recipe for oxide interface perfection opens path to novel materials
By tweaking the formula for growing oxide thin films, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved virtual perfection at the interface of two insulator materials.

Public Release: 15-Nov-2012

Physical Review Letters
ORNL pushes the boundaries of electron microscopy to unlock the potential of graphene
Electron microscopy at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing unprecedented views of the individual atoms in graphene, offering scientists a chance to unlock the material's full potential for uses from engine combustion to consumer electronics.

Public Release: 15-Nov-2012

Environmental Science and Technology
Airborne particles smuggle pollutants to far reaches of globe
Pollution from fossil fuel burning and forest fires reaches all the way to the Arctic, even though it should decay long before it travels that far. Now, lab research can explain how pollution makes its lofty journey: rather than ride on the surface of airborne particles, pollutants snuggle inside, protected from the elements on the way. The results will help scientists improve atmospheric air-quality and pollution transport models.

Department of Energy

Public Release: 15-Nov-2012
LLNL scientists assist in building detector to search for elusive dark matter material
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers are making key contributions to a physics experiment that will look for one of nature's most elusive particles, "dark matter," using a tank nearly a mile underground beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota.