News Releases

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a vacuum-assisted extrusion method that reduces internal porosity — by up to 75% — in large-scale 3D-printed polymer parts. Large-scale additive manufacturing has been hindered by internal porosity that weaken printed components. Reducing porosity is key to improving overall performance. ORNL researchers tackled this challenge with a novel approach: integrating a vacuum hopper during the extrusion process to remove trapped gases and minimize void formation in fiber-reinforced materials.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Colorado Boulder used a gene-silencing tool and a large library of molecular guides to understand how photosynthetic bacteria adapt to light and temperature changes. They found that even partial suppression of certain genes yielded big benefits in modifying the stress response of wild microbes. 

Fan was recently named Outstanding Researcher by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, a group dedicated to accelerating federal technologies in the marketplace.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have shown that particles produced in collimated sprays called jets retain information about their origins in subatomic particle smashups.

Minnesota-based startup Maxwell Labs has entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico to demonstrate laser-based photonic cooling for computer chips.

Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory report that radiation-induced chemical reactions may help mitigate the corrosion of metals in a new type of nuclear reactor cooled by molten salts. 

Five scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

Chemist Zheming Wang is the newest AAAS Fellow, joining the ranks of astronaut Mae Jemison, and Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel laureate in physics who served as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy.