An international team using neutrons set the first benchmark (one nanosecond) for a polymer-electrolyte and lithium-salt mixture. Findings could produce safer, more powerful lithium batteries.
Alyssa Carrell started her science career studying the tallest inhabitants in the forest, but today is focused on some of its smallest — the microbial organisms that play an outsized role in plant health.
Canan Karakaya, a R&D Staff member in the Chemical Process Scale-Up group at ORNL, was inspired to become a chemical engineer after she experienced a magical transformation that turned ammonia gas into ammonium nitrate, turning a liquid into white flakes gently floating through the air.
Chelsea Chen, a polymer physicist at ORNL, is studying ion transport in solid electrolytes that could help electric vehicle battery charges last longer.
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.
Marcel Demarteau is director of the Physics Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For topics from nuclear structure to astrophysics, he shapes ORNL’s physics research agenda.
Porter Bailey started and will end his 33-year career at ORNL in the same building: 7920 of the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and collaborators have discovered that signaling molecules known to trigger symbiosis between plants and soil bacteria are also used by almost all fungi as chemical signals to communicate with each other.
Scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory used high-performance computing to create protein models that helped reveal how the outer membrane is tethered to the cell membrane in certain bacteria.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers proved that the heat transport ability of lithium-ion battery cathodes is much lower than previously determined, a finding that could help explain barriers to increasing energy storage capacity and boosting performance.