Skip to main content
Researchers at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory determined that two-dimensional materials grown onto a cone allow control over where defects called grain boundaries appear.

Rice University researchers have learned to manipulate two-dimensional materials to design in defects that enhance the materials’ properties. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combi...

COHERENT collaborators were the first to observe coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering. Their results, published in the journal Science, confirm a prediction of the Standard Model and establish constraints on alternative theoretical models. Image c

After more than a year of operation at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the COHERENT experiment, using the world’s smallest neutrino detector, has found a big fingerprint of the elusive, electrically neutral particles that interact only weakly with matter.

Used cooking oil can be converted into biofuel with carbon derived from recycled tires—a new method developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team.
Using a novel, reusable carbon material derived from old rubber tires, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team has developed a simple method to convert used cooking oil into biofuel.
Researchers predicted where lithium ions (green spheres) would pack and move in an open framework of epitaxially strained vanadium dioxide, depicted here by a stick model (oxygen-connecting bonds are red and vanadium-connecting bonds, turquoise).
An Oak Ridge National Laboratory–led team discovered that vanadium dioxide in a crystalline thin film makes an outstanding electrode for lithium-ion batteries. Theory and computation predicted a high capacity for lithium storage, which experiments confirmed with tests in coin c...
ORNL Image
In a first-of-a-kind experiment, researchers used neutrons to investigate the performance of a new aluminum alloy in a gasoline-powered engine—while the engine was running. A team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory worked with industry partners to perfor...
ORNL Image

Researchers used neutrons to probe a running engine at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source

Amit_Naskar_2

Finding new energy uses for underrated materials is a recurring theme across Amit Naskar’s research portfolio. Since joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2006, he has studied low-cost polymers as carbon fiber precursors, turning lignin−a byproduct of biofuel production−into renewable thermoplastics and creating carbon battery electrodes from recycled tires.

Neutrons_beating_clock
Using neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a research team captured a time-sensitive phenomenon to prove that the entropy, or randomness, of atoms in a metallic glass when exposed to intense heat is linked to how atoms self-configure versus their vibration. The large neutron flux of ORNL’s Wide Angular Range Chopper Spectrometer continuously recorded changes in the sample’s vibrations as the temperature slowly increased—a technique not possible a decade ago.
ORNL_Higgs_amp_mode2
A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has used sophisticated neutron scattering techniques to detect an elusive quantum state known as the Higgs amplitude mode in a two-dimensional material. The Higgs amplitude mode is a condensed ...
Ben Doughty
No two scientists have the same story about how they ended up in their field. Some people seem to have been born scientists; others develop their love for it as budding minds full of curiosity. Then there are those who don’t discover science until later in life, but when they do, the...