How scientists are accelerating chemistry discoveries with automation

New statistical-modeling workflow may help advance drug discovery and synthetic chemistry

12-Apr-2024 - A new automated workflow developed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has the potential to allow researchers to analyze the products of their reaction experiments in real time, a key capability needed for future automated chemical processes. The developed ...

Tiny microbes could brew big benefits for green biomanufacturing

The discovery could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of fuels, drugs, and chemicals

15-May-2023 - Scientists find new route in bacteria to decarbonize industry. A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley has engineered bacteria to produce new-to-nature carbon products that could provide a powerful route to sustainable biochemicals. The advance ...

Next generation solar fuels: How a record-breaking copper catalyst converts CO₂ into liquid fuels

Researchers have made real-time movies of copper nanoparticles as they evolve to convert carbon dioxide and water into renewable fuels and chemicals

21-Feb-2023 - Since the 1970s, scientists have known that copper has a special ability to transform carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals and fuels. But for many years, scientists have struggled to understand how this common metal works as an electrocatalyst, a mechanism that uses energy from electrons to ...

A cool new method of refrigeration

Researchers hope that ionocaloric cooling could someday help replace refrigerants with high global warming potential and provide safe, efficient cooling and heating for homes

06-Jan-2023 - Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named “ionocaloric ...

Bacteria for blastoff: Using microbes to make supercharged new rocket fuel

Scientists have developed a new class of energy-dense biofuels based on one of nature’s most unique molecules

04-Jul-2022 - Converting petroleum into fuels involves crude chemistry first invented by humans in the 1800s. Meanwhile, bacteria have been producing carbon-based energy molecules for billions of years. Which do you think is better at the job? Well aware of the advantages biology has to offer, a group of ...

Crystallography for the misfit crystals

Advanced algorithms plus an exceptional X-ray laser can reveal the structures of not-so-neat-and-tidy materials unattainable by other techniques

24-Jan-2022 - Francis Crick, who famously co-discovered the shape of DNA, once said: “If you want to understand function, study structure.” Many decades later, this remains a tenet of biology, chemistry, and materials science. A key breakthrough in the quest for DNA’s structure came from X-ray crystallography, ...

From smoky skies to a green horizon: Scientists convert fire-risk wood waste into biofuel

A simplified new process transforms wood waste from agriculture and forest management into ethanol

20-Apr-2021 - Reliance on petroleum fuels and raging wildfires: Two separate, large-scale challenges that could be addressed by one scientific breakthrough. Teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories have collaborated to develop a streamlined and efficient ...

Showtime for photosynthesis

One of nature's most important chemical reactions is now being captured in a breakthrough 'molecular movie'

08-Jun-2020 - Using a unique combination of nanoscale imaging and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has revealed a key step in the molecular mechanism behind the water splitting reaction of photosynthesis, a finding that could help inform the design of renewable energy technology. "Life ...

X-rays uncover a hidden property that leads to failure in a lithium-ion battery material

Experiments at SLAC and Berkeley Lab uproot long-held assumptions and will inform future battery design

19-Sep-2018 - Over the past three decades, lithium-ion batteries, rechargeable batteries that move lithium ions back and forth to charge and discharge, have enabled smaller devices that juice up faster and last longer. Now, X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ...

Squeezing nanocrystals in a liquid droplet into a solid-like state and back again

13-Aug-2018 - A team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found a way to make a liquid-like state behave more like a solid, and then to reverse the process. They put a droplet of a liquid containing iron oxide nanocrystals into an oily liquid ...