News

ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin and Rama Vasudevan (foreground) use scanning probe microscopy to study bulk ferroelectricity and surface electrochemistry -- and generate a lot of data. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL’s superb materials expertise, data and AI tools propel progress

May 3, 2021

At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies.

Six ORNL scientists have been elected as fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Six ORNL scientists elected fellows of American Association for the Advancement of Science

November 24, 2020

Six ORNL scientists have been elected as fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS.

Seven ORNL scientists among world’s most cited researchers

November 18, 2020

Seven ORNL scientists have been named among the 2020 Highly Cited Researchers list, according to Clarivate, a data analytics firm that specializes in scientific and academic research.

Substituting deuterium for hydrogen makes methylammonium heavier and slows its swaying so it can interact with vibrations that remove heat, keeping charge carriers hot longer. Credit: Jill Hemman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Blocking vibrations that remove heat could boost efficiency of next-gen solar cells

October 5, 2020

Led by ORNL and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a study of a solar-energy material with a bright future revealed a way to slow phonons, the waves that transport heat.

Selenium atoms, represented by orange, implant in a monolayer of blue tungsten and yellow sulfur to form a Janus layer. In the background, electron microscopy confirms atomic positions. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Process for ‘two-faced’ nanomaterials may aid energy, information tech

June 26, 2020

An ORNL team used a simple process to implant atoms precisely into the top layers of ultra-thin crystals, yielding two-sided structures with different chemical compositions.

ORNL is in the fight against COVID-19

April 15, 2020

In the race to identify solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are joining the fight by applying expertise in computational science, advanced manufacturing, data science and neutron sc

To understand the electronic structures of solids and predict their properties, ORNL’s Valentino Cooper uses density functional theory (DFT), which models how many electrons are in a region rather than where those electrons are. “DFT essentially presents one electron existing in a ‘sea foam’ and tells how dense that foam is,” he said. Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Valentino Cooper: Building foundations for solid science

February 24, 2020

Valentino (“Tino”) Cooper of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory uses theory, modeling and computation to improve fundamental understanding of advanced materials for next-generation energy and information technologies.

Closely spaced hydrogen atoms could facilitate superconductivity in ambient conditions

February 3, 2020

An international team of researchers has discovered the hydrogen atoms in a metal hydride material are much more tightly spaced than had been predicted for decades — a feature that could possibly facilitate superconductivity at or near room temperature

The lithium-aluminum-layered double hydroxide chloride (LDH) sorbent being developed by ORNL targets recovery of lithium from geothermal brines—paving the way for increased domestic production of the material for today’s rechargeable batteries. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

ORNL develops sorbent to recover lithium from geothermal brines

January 21, 2020

In the quest for domestic sources of lithium to meet growing demand for battery production, scientists at ORNL are advancing a sorbent that can be used to more efficiently recover the material from brine wastes at geothermal power plants.

Van-der-Waals layered CuInP2S6 has different properties depending on the locations of copper atoms (orange spheres). Unified theory and experiment led to the discovery of two co-existing phases which are connected through a quadruple energy well whose properties can be harnessed to provide materials with new functions. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; illustration by Sabine Neumayer

A four-way switch promises greater tunability of layered materials

November 18, 2019

A scientific team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University has made the first experimental observation of a material phase that had been predicted but never seen.

Materials