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.
In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.
Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.
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.
ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.
ORNL scientists combined two ligands, or metal-binding molecules, to target light and heavy lanthanides simultaneously for exceptionally efficient separation.
Researchers at ORNL zoomed in on molecules designed to recover critical materials via liquid-liquid extraction — a method used by industry to separate chemically similar elements.
Critical Materials Institute researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Arizona State University studied the mineral monazite, an important source of rare-earth elements, to enhance methods of recovering critical materials for energy, defense and manufacturing applications.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists recently demonstrated a low-temperature, safe route to purifying molten chloride salts that minimizes their ability to corrode metals. This method could make the salts useful for storing energy generated from the sun’s heat.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Momentum Technologies have piloted an industrial-scale process for recycling valuable materials in the millions of tons of e-waste generated annually in the United States.