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Developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers, CIRFT bends and vibrates used nuclear fuel rod segments to test the impact of normal traveling conditions—before the fuel rods ever leave the premises.
Moving rods of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to interim storage or a geologic repository requires road or rail travel. Although a heavy shielding cask protects the rods, long distance transportation subjects SNF to vibrations, sudden movements and other potentially agitating for...
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Sergei Kalinin, a researcher in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a fellow of AVS.
Complex, scalable arrays of semiconductor heterojunctions—promising building blocks for future electronics.
Semiconductors, metals and insulators must be integrated to make the transistors that are the electronic building blocks of your smartphone, computer and other microchip-enabled devices. Today’s transistors are miniscule—a mere 10 nanometers wide—and forme...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Gains in engine efficiency are often accompanied by emissions challenges, but a catalyst developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers could provide a solution. The mixed oxide catalyst features low-cost materials and potentially overcomes the problem of inhibition, in which...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Crude oil refinement can be an extremely costly chemical process. In an effort to reduce energy and cost demands, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers Anibal Ramirez-Cuesta and Stuart Campbell are collaborating with University of Nottingham (UK) researchers to develop metal-orga...
Doug Abernathy, left, ARCS instrument scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Marc Janoschek, Los Alamos National Laboratory, prepare their sample for experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source.
Groundbreaking work at two Department of Energy national laboratories has confirmed plutonium’s magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe. The advances that enabled the discovery hold great pro...
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Nancy J. Dudney, Lonnie J. Love and David C. Radford have been named Corporate Fellows at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Corporate Fellow designation recognizes the researchers' significant accomplishments and continuing leadership in their scientific, engineering a...

Inserting helium atoms (visualized as a red balloon) into a crystalline film (gold) allowed Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers to control the material’s elongation in a single direction.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new method to manipulate a wide range of materials and their behavior using only a handful of helium ions. The team’s technique, published in Physical Review Letter...
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It took marine sponges millions of years to perfect their spike-like structures, but research mimicking these formations may soon alter how industrial coatings and 3-D printed objects are produced.

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The probe of an atomic force microscope (AFM) scans a surface to reveal details at a resolution 1,000 times greater than that of an optical microscope. That makes AFM the premier tool for analyzing physical features, but it cannot tell scientists anything about chemistry. For that they turn to the mass spectrometer (MS).