Skip to main content
Caption: Jaswinder Sharma makes battery coin cells with a lightweight current collector made of thin layers of aligned carbon fibers in a polymer with carbon nanotubes. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.

ORNL researcher Anne Campbell will present a paper in Korea next year on materials support of carbon-free nuclear energy. Credit: Adam Malin, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Anne Campbell, a researcher at ORNL, recently won the Young Leaders Professional Development Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, or TMS, and has been chosen as the first recipient of the Young Leaders International Scholar Program award from TMS and the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, or KIM.

Valuable chemicals are selectively produced from mixed plastic waste by an ORNL-developed plastic deconstruction process. Credit: Tomonori Saito, Md Arifuzzaman and Adam Malin, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste.

Takaaki Koyanagi

Takaaki Koyanagi, an R&D staff member in the Materials Science and Technology Division of ORNL, has received the TMS Frontiers of Materials award.

 

The DuAlumin-3D research team developed a lightweight, aluminum alloy for additive manufacturing. Credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Dean Pierce of ORNL and a research team led by ORNL’s Alex Plotkowski were honored by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office for development of novel high-performance alloys that can withstand extreme environments.

Xiao-Ying Yu portrait

Xiao-Ying Yu, a distinguished scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing, formerly American Vacuum Society.

A new method to control quantum states in a material is shown. The electric field induces polarization switching of the ferroelectric substrate, resulting in different magnetic and topological states. Credit: Mina Yoon, Fernando Reboredo, Jacquelyn DeMink/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at ORNL.

Stan David, retired ORNL scientist, has received the Joining and Welding Science Award.

Stan David, retired scientist and Corporate Fellow Emeritus at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was awarded the Joining and Welding Science Award from the Joining and Welding Research Institute at Osaka University, Japan.

ORNL researchers have developed a new pressing method, shown as blue circle on right, that produces a more uniform solid electrolyte than the traditionally processed material with more voids, shown as gray circle on left. The material can be integrated into a battery system, center, for improved stability and rate performance. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL scientists found that a small tweak created big performance improvements in a type of solid-state battery, a technology considered vital to broader electric vehicle adoption.

Rigoberto Advincula

Rigoberto Advincula, a renowned scientist at ORNL and professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Tennessee, has won the Netzsch North American Thermal Analysis Society Fellows Award for 2023.