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New SunCatcher power system unveiled at National Solar Thermal Test Facility

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Business Announcement

Stirling Energy Systems and Tessera Solar recently unveiled four newly designed solar power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories' National Solar Thermal Test Facility. Called SunCatchers, the new dishes have a refined design that will be used in commercial-scale deployments of the units beginning in 2010.

Salt block unexpectedly stretches in Sandia experiments

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To stretch a supply of salt generally means using it sparingly. But researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Pittsburgh were startled when they found they had made the solid actually physically stretch.

Journal: Nano Letters

Fast pandemic detection tool ready to fight flu

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory
Business Announcement

In a joint effort by national laboratory-, university- and private-sector institutions, researchers are developing new tools for rapidly characterizing biological pathogens that could give rise to potentially deadly pandemics such as influenza A.

Sandia researchers construct carbon nanotube device that can detect colors of the rainbow

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have created the first carbon nanotube device that can detect the entire visible spectrum of light, a feat that could soon allow scientists to probe single molecule transformations, study how those molecules respond to light, observe how the molecules change shapes, and understand other fundamental interactions between molecules and nanotubes.

Journal: Nano Letters

Breaking the ties that bind: New hope for biomass fuels

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have discovered a potential chink in the armor of fibers that make the cell walls of certain inedible plant materials so tough. The insight ultimately could lead to a cost-effective and energy-efficient strategy for turning biomass into alternative fuels.

Journal: Biophysical Journal
Funder: Laboratory-Directed Research and Development

Asteroid monitored from outer space to ground impact

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international research team has been able to identify an asteroid in space before it entered Earth's atmosphere, enabling computers to determine its area of origin in the solar system as well as predict the arrival time and location on Earth of its shattered surviving parts.

Journal: Nature

Los Alamos researchers create 'map of science'

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have produced the world's first Map of Science -- a high-resolution graphic depiction of the virtual trails scientists leave behind when they retrieve information from online services. The research, led by Johan Bollen, appears this week in PLoS ONE.

Journal: PLOS One
Funder: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Sandia's diamond-like films on board NASA satellite

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Business Announcement

Diamond-like carbon films created at Sandia National Laboratories are helping probe the far boundaries of the solar system as part of a NASA mission to study how the sun's solar wind interacts with the interstellar medium -- the matter that exists between the stars within a galaxy.

Huge pressures that melt diamond on planet Neptune determined by Sandia researchers

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The enormous pressures needed to melt diamond to slush and then to a completely liquid state have been determined 10 times more accurately by Sandia National Laboratories researchers than ever before.

Journal: Science

Research highlights potential for improved solar cells

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of Los Alamos researchers led by Victor Klimov has shown that carrier multiplication -- when a photon creates multiple electrons -- is a real phenomenon in tiny semiconductor crystals and not a false observation born of extraneous effects that mimic carrier multiplication. The research, explained in a recent issue of Accounts of Chemical Research, shows the possibility of solar cells that create more than one unit of energy per photon.

Journal: Accounts of Chemical Research
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory