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Susan Hubbard, left, deputy for science and technology at ORNL, and Vanessa Chan, director of the Office of Technology Transitions and chief commercialization officer for DOE, discuss the role of the national laboratory system in moving leading-edge technology to industry during a chat at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. Credit: Karen Dunlap/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Technology Transfer staff from Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory attended the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, in Las Vegas, Jan. 8–12. 

Researchers at Corning have found that understanding the stability of the rings of atoms in glass materials can help predict the performance of glass products.

Corning uses neutron scattering to study the stability of different types of glass. Recently, researchers for the company have found that understanding the stability of the rings of atoms in glass materials can help predict the performance of glass products.

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.

2023 Top Science Achievements at SNS & HFIR

The 2023 top science achievements from HFIR and SNS feature a broad range of materials research published in high impact journals such as Nature and Advanced Materials.

From left, researchers Syed Islam and Ramesh Bhave discuss the nickel sulfate recovered from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries using the membrane solvent extraction process they co-invented at ORNL. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists at ORNL have developed a technique for recovering and recycling critical materials that has garnered special recognition from a peer-reviewed materials journal and received a new phase of funding for research and development.

Rigoberto “Gobet” Advincula, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a 2023 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, or NAI.

Rigoberto “Gobet” Advincula, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a 2023 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Advincula has been recognized for his 14 patents and 21 published filings related to nanomaterials, smart coatings and films, solid-state device fabrication and chemical additives.

Alexey Serov researches ways to improve hydrogen fuel cells and materials and the electrolysis process. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

It would be a challenge for any scientist to match Alexey Serov’s rate of inventions related to green hydrogen fuel. But this researcher at ORNL has 84 patents with at least 35 more under review, so his electrifying pace is unlikely to slow down any time soon.

ORNL scientist Zhijia Du, white coat, former ORNL scientist Jianlin Li, blue coat, and Ateios CEO Rajan Kumar inspect battery components during a pilot production run. Credit: Kurt Weiss/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy

Ateios Systems licensed an ORNL technology for solvent-free battery component production using electron curing. Through Innovation Crossroads, Ateios continues to work with ORNL to enable readiness for production-quality battery components. 

QSC Director Travis Humble, who gave a lunchtime talk on transitioning good ideas to device development, learns about one of the many quantum research efforts featured at the poster session. Credit: Alonda Hines/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

On Nov. 1, about 250 employees at Oak Ridge National Laboratory gathered in person and online for Quantum on the Quad, an event designed to collect input for a quantum roadmap currently in development. This document will guide the laboratory's efforts in quantum science and technology, including strategies for expanding its expertise to all facets of the field.

The AI agent, incorporating a language model-based molecular generator and a graph neural network-based molecular property predictor, processes a set of user-provided molecules (green) and produces/suggests new molecules (red) with desired chemical/physical properties (i.e. excitation energy). Image credit: Pilsun You, Jason Smith/ORNL, U.S. DOE

A team of computational scientists at ORNL has generated and released datasets of unprecedented scale that provide the ultraviolet visible spectral properties of over 10 million organic molecules.