News

An ORNL study found that complex oxide materials can self-organize into electrical circuits, which creates the possibility for new types of computer chips.

Complex materials can self-organize into circuits, may form basis for multifunction chips

September 14, 2016

Researchers studying the behavior of nanoscale materials at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered remarkable behavior that could advance microprocessors beyond today’s silicon-based chips. The study, featured on the cover

Electron beam microscope directly writes nanoscale features in liquid with metal ink

September 9, 2016

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are the first to harness a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to directly write tiny patterns in metallic “ink,” forming features in liquid that are finer than half the wi

Miaofang Chi: Searching for big solutions to science’s tiny enigmas

August 30, 2016

Miaofang Chi is an early career scientist making a name for herself—and microscopy—at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She is a researcher at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences whose early-career

A 32-face 3-D truncated icosahedron mesh was created to test the simulation’s ability to precisely construct complex geometries.

Researchers combine simulation, experiment for nanoscale 3-D printing

August 5, 2016

Designing a 3-D printed structure is hard enough when the product is inches or feet in size.

ORNL optimizes formula for cadmium-tellurium solar cells

August 3, 2016

Solar cells based on cadmium and tellurium could move closer to theoretical levels of efficiency because of some sleuthing by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

ORNL software engineer Eric Lingerfelt (right) and Stephen Jesse (left) of ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences led the development of the Bellerophon Environment for Analysis of Materials (BEAM).

An Accelerated Pipeline to Open Materials Research

July 21, 2016

Using today’s advanced microscopes, scientists are able to capture exponentially more information about the materials they study compared to a decade ago—in greater detail and in less time.

This 3-D structure was created in a microscope. On the left is the structure; on the right is the simulation that shows how to create such a structure.

Directed matter

July 12, 2016

Additive manufacturing techniques featuring atomic precision could one day create materials with Legos flexibility and Terminator toughness, according to researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

ORNL’s Juan Carlos Idrobo helped develop an electron microscopy technique to measure magnetism at the atomic scale.

New electron microscope method detects atomic-scale magnetism

June 20, 2016

Scientists can now detect magnetic behavior at the atomic level with a new electron microscopy technique developed by a team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Uppsala University, Sweden.

Microwave imaging (left) reveals conducting ferroelectric domain walls (right) in lead zirconate titanate. Before microwave microscopy, it was difficult to detect electrically conducting ferroelectric domains.

Materials– Microwave microscopy of ferroelectric domains

June 6, 2016

Research led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and published in Nature Communications explored building blocks of future electronics — ferroelectric materials in which topological defects called domain walls can be created by an electric field and detected

Speedy ion conduction clears road for energy storage

May 10, 2016

Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences