Oak Ridge Today

ORNL: Neutrons find ‘missing’ magnetism of plutonium

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Doug Abernathy and Marc Janoschek

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. (Photo by ORNL)

 

Groundbreaking work at two U.S. 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 promise for materials, energy, and computing applications.

Plutonium was first produced in 1940, and its unstable nucleus allows it to undergo fission, making it useful for nuclear fuels as well as for nuclear weapons. Much less known, however, is that the electronic cloud surrounding the plutonium nucleus is equally unstable and makes plutonium the most electronically complex element in the periodic table, with intriguingly intricate properties for a simple elemental metal.

While conventional theories have successfully explained plutonium’s complex structural properties, they also predict that plutonium should order magnetically. This is in stark contrast with experiments, which had found no evidence for magnetic order in plutonium. [Read more…]

Explore ORNL event postponed to Sept. 23-24

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Explore ORNL conference has been rescheduled until September 23-24 to coincide with a larger industrial outreach event at ORNL this fall. Explore ORNL was originally scheduled for July 14-15.

The September event will feature capabilities in building technologies, vehicle technologies, and advanced manufacturing, and will highlight new opportunities for small businesses to gain access to national laboratories, including ORNL.

Information about the September industry event will be released in the coming weeks.

Helium ‘balloons’ offer new path to control complex materials

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Helium Atoms into Crystalline Film

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. (Submitted image)

 

Researchers at 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 Letters, advances the understanding and use of complex oxide materials that boast unusual properties such as superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance but are notoriously difficult to control.

For the first time, ORNL researchers have discovered a simple way to control the elongation of a crystalline material along a single direction without changing the length along the other directions or damaging the crystalline structure. This is accomplished by adding a few helium ions into a complex oxide material and provides a never before possible level of control over magnetic and electronic properties.

“By putting a little helium into the material, we’re able to control strain along a single axis,” said ORNL’s Zac Ward, who led the team’s study. “This type of control wasn’t possible before, and it allows you to tune material properties with a finesse that we haven’t previously had access to.” [Read more…]

HED: Silica ‘spiky screws’ could enhance industrial coatings, additive manufacturing

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

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.

A molecular process developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory paves the way for improved silica structure design by introducing microscopic, segmented screw-like spikes that can more effectively bond materials for commercial use.

The study, conducted by Jaswinder Sharma and his colleagues Panos Datskos and David Cullen, has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Authors said other applications of the screw-like spikes could include coatings for eyeglasses, television screens, commercial transportation, and even self-cleaning windows and roofs in rural and urban environments.

Created by emulsion droplets applied to a silica particle’s surface, the new, segmented spikes offer an alternative tool for material scientists and engineers that can better maintain and fuse bonds within a variety of microstructures. [Read more…]

ORNL invites companies to connect with lab at ‘Explore ORNL’ 

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will open its doors July 14-15 for its “Explore ORNL” conference designed to introduce the region’s business community to the lab’s world-class research and development facilities and expertise, a press release said.

“Explore ORNL is an outreach event that provides companies both large and small with a unique opportunity to learn about collaboration possibilities,” said Tom Rogers, ORNL’s director of Industrial Partnerships and Economic Development.

Representatives from companies such as Boeing, Cummins, Local Motors, Ten-Tec, Dresser-Rand, and Eagle Bend Manufacturing will speak about their experiences in working with ORNL experts to overcome technical challenges and develop new products. [Read more…]

ORNL: New tool on horizon for surgeons treating cancer patients

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Droplet-based Surface Sampling Probe

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new droplet-based surface sampling probe speeds the process of analyzing a liver biopsy sample. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Surgeons could know while their patients are still on the operating table if a tissue is cancerous, according to researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

In the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, a team led by ORNL’s Vilmos Kertesz describes an automated droplet-based surface sampling probe that accomplishes in about 10 minutes what now routinely takes 20 to 30 minutes. Kertesz expects that time to be cut to four to five minutes soon. For this proof-of-concept demonstration, researchers rapidly profiled two hormones from human pituitary tissue.

“Instead of having to cut and mount tissue and wait for a trained pathologist to review the sample under a microscope, a technician might soon perform an equally conclusive test in the operating environment,” Kertesz said.

The new mass spectrometry-based technology provides an attractive alternative to the traditional method called immunohistochemistry, or IHC, which looks for specific protein biomarkers to make a diagnosis. Although the IHC approach provides a high degree of spatial recognition, it is time-consuming and limited by the quality and specificity of the antibody used to detect the protein. [Read more…]

ORNL, Hyundai Motor collaborating through new R&D agreement

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

ORNL and Hyundai Agreement

Martin Keller, left, associate laboratory director for the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Tae Won Lim, vice president of Hyundai Motor Company, made a memorandum of understanding official on Monday, June 8. (Submitted photo)

 

Hyundai Motor Company and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have signed an agreement intended to strengthen the automaker’s U.S. research and development, or R&D, portfolio.

Hyundai Motor Company and its affiliate Kia Motors Corporation will be identifying and providing R&D needs of the automotive industry, providing feedback and evaluation technology concepts, consulting with ORNL on R&D topics related to the industry, and developing potential Hyundai-sponsored projects to be carried out under separate, legally binding agreements, a press release said.

As the world’s fifth largest automaker, Hyundai Motor Company employs more than 30,000 workers in the United States, and more than 700,000 Hyundai and Kia vehicles are made in the U.S.

Through this agreement, Hyundai Motor and UT-Battelle, which manages ORNL for the U.S. Department of Energy, will also work to identify R&D funding opportunities of mutual interest and coordinate meetings to exchange information, the press release said. Hyundai sees ORNL as providing significant expertise in diverse areas. [Read more…]

U.S. joins world in new era of research at Large Hadron Collider

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Alice

At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have begun to collect new data from experiments such as ALICE, which aims to reproduce conditions similar to those that existed immediately after the Big Bang. (Image credit: CERN)

 

New LHC data gives researchers from around the world their best chance yet to study the Higgs boson and search for dark matter and new particles.

On Wednesday, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European research facility, started recording data from the highest-energy particle collisions ever achieved on Earth. This new proton collision data, the first recorded since 2012, will enable an international collaboration of researchers that includes more than 1,700 U.S. physicists to study the Higgs boson, search for dark matter, and develop a more complete understanding of the laws of nature.

“Together with collaborators from around the world, scientists from roughly a hundred U.S. universities and laboratories are exploring a previously unreachable realm of nature,” said James Siegrist, the U.S. Department of Energy’s associate director of science for high-energy physics. “We are very excited to be part of the international community that is pushing the boundaries of our knowledge of the universe.”

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, reproduces conditions similar to those that existed immediately after the Big Bang. Oak Ridge National Laboratory led an equipment upgrade for LHCs experiment called ALICE (for A Large Ion Collider Experiment), which aims to learn more about the conditions of the early universe. [Read more…]

BESC, Mascoma develop revolutionary microbe for biofuel production

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Yeast

A yeast engineered by Mascoma and BESC could hold the key to accelerating the production of ethanol in the U.S. (Submitted photo)

 

Biofuels pioneer Mascoma LLC and the U.S. Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center have developed a revolutionary strain of yeast that could help significantly accelerate the development of biofuels from nonfood plant matter.

BESC is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The approach could provide a pathway to eventual expansion of biofuels production beyond the current output limited to ethanol derived from corn.

C5 FUEL, engineered by researchers at Mascoma and BESC, features fermentation and ethanol yields that set a new standard for conversion of biomass sugars from pretreated corn stover—the non-edible portion of corn crops such as the stalk—converting up to 97 percent of the plant sugars into fuel. [Read more…]

Curran at ORNL receives SAE Foundation industry leadership award

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Scott Curran and SAE Leadership Award

Stefan Pischinger Young Industry Leadership Award winner Scott Curran, center, is congratulated by SAE Foundation Board Chairman Mazen Hammoud of Ford Motor Company and Patrick Hupperich, FEV North America Inc. president and CEO. (Photo: SAE Foundation)

 

Scott Curran, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has received the Society for Automotive Engineers Foundation’s 2015 Stefan Pischinger Young Industry Leadership Award.

The award, given this week at this year’s SAE Foundation Annual Celebration in Detroit, highlights early career individuals who demonstrate leadership potential and promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-based researched in their respective fields. The SAE Foundation is the charitable branch of the SAE International professional society.

A recipient of three engineering degrees from the University of Tennessee, Curran has been an active member of the SAE since his college days and has been involved in DOE’s Advanced Vehicle Technical Competition as both a student and an advisor. [Read more…]

ORNL demonstrates first large-scale graphene composite fabrication

Posted at
By 1 Comment

ORNL Graphene

ORNL’s ultrastrong graphene features layers of graphene and polymers and is an effective conductor of electricity. (Image courtesy ORNL)

 

One of the barriers to using graphene at a commercial scale could be overcome using a method demonstrated by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Graphene, a material stronger and stiffer than carbon fiber, has enormous commercial potential but has been impractical to employ on a large scale, with researchers limited to using small flakes of the material.

Now, using chemical vapor deposition, a team led by ORNL’s Ivan Vlassiouk has fabricated polymer composites containing 2-inch-by-2-inch sheets of the one-atom thick hexagonally arranged carbon atoms.

The findings, reported in the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces, could help usher in a new era in flexible electronics and change the way this reinforcing material is viewed and ultimately used. [Read more…]

Four ORNL scientists selected for early career research funding

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

ORNL Scientists Early Career Research

Projects by, from left, ORNL researchers Christian Engelmann, Cory Hauck, Katharine Page, and Chad Parish have been selected for DOE Early Career funding. (Photo by ORNL)

 

Four researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among 44 scientists selected by DOE’s Office of Science to receive funding under the department’s Early Career Research Program.

The grants, which are intended to support researchers during their crucial early career years, are at least $500,000 per year for national lab researchers to cover year-round salary plus research expenses over a planned five years.

ORNL’s winners fall within three major Office of Science program offices: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Fusion Energy Sciences (FES). Following are ORNL’s selectees and brief descriptions of their projects. [Read more…]