Shedding light on superconducting disorder

25-Sep-2024 - The importance of disorder in physics is only matched by the difficulty to study it. For example, the remarkable properties of high-temperature superconductors are greatly affected by variations in the chemical composition of the solid. Techniques that enable measurements of such disorder and its ...

The Clues for Cleaner Water

Pitt, Drexel, and Brookhaven engineers solve the “catalysis vs corrosion” mystery in electrochemical ozone production

08-May-2024 - Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Drexel University in Philadelphia, along with Brookhaven National Laboratory, are working to solve a multipart mystery to make water disinfection treatments more sustainable. Scalable electrochemical ozone production (EOP) technologies to disinfect ...

Engineered battery chemistry for fast charging capabilities

An electrolyte additive increased the charging rate of lithium metal batteries and led to new discoveries about battery chemistry

31-Jan-2024 - On a mission to build better electric vehiclebatteries, chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have used an electrolyte additive to improve the functionality of energy-dense lithium metal batteries. By adding a compound called cesium nitrate to the ...

Catalytic combo converts CO2 to solid carbon nanofibers

Tandem electrocatalytic-thermocatalytic conversion could help offset emissions of potent greenhouse gas by locking carbon away in a useful material

16-Jan-2024 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University have developed a way to convert carbon dioxide (CO2), a potent greenhouse gas, into carbon nanofibers, materials with a wide range of unique properties and many potential long-term uses. ...

Structure of 'oil-eating' enzyme opens door to bioengineered catalysts

Atomic level details reveal how enzyme selectively breaks hydrocarbon bonds, suggesting bioengineering strategies for making useful chemicals

04-Apr-2023 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have produced the first atomic-level structure of an enzyme that selectively cuts carbon-hydrogen bonds—the first and most challenging step in turning simple hydrocarbons into more useful chemicals. As described in a ...

AI discovers new nanostructures

Researchers used artificial intelligence to rapidly discover new self-assembled nanostructures

18-Jan-2023 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have successfully demonstrated that autonomous methods can discover new materials. Theartificial intelligence(AI)-driven technique led to the discovery of three new nanostructures, including a first-of-its-kind ...

X-rays reveal elusive chemistry for better EV batteries

High energy x-rays to investigate the solid-electrolyte interphase, a chemical layer in batteries that's key to stabilizing lithium metal anodes

08-Dec-2022 - Researchers around the world are on a mission to relieve a bottleneck in the clean energy revolution:batteries. From electric vehicles to renewable grid-scale energy storage, batteries are at the heart of society’s most crucial green innovations—but they need to pack more energy to make these ...

A radical new approach in synthetic chemistry

Pulse radiolysis experiments help reveal how unpaired electrons at one end of a molecule can initiate chemistry at 'distant' locations

28-Nov-2022 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory helped measure how unpaired electrons in atoms at one end of a molecule can drive chemical reactivity on the molecule’s opposite side. As described in apaperrecently published in theJournal of the American ...

Engineering Duckweed to Produce Oil for Biofuels, Bioproducts

Scientists drive oil accumulation in rapidly growing aquatic plants

14-Oct-2022 - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have engineered duckweed to produce high yields of oil. The team added genes to one of nature’s fastest growing aquatic plants to “push” the synthesis of fatty ...

Tuning electrode surfaces to optimize solar fuel production

An electrode material with modified surface atoms generates more electrical current, which drives the sunlight-powered reactions that split water into oxygen and hydrogen

24-Feb-2021 - Scientists have demonstrated that modifying the topmost layer of atoms on the surface of electrodes can have a remarkable impact on the activity of solar water splitting. As they reported in Nature Energy on Feb. 18, bismuth vanadate electrodes with more bismuth on the surface (relative to ...