Science Highlights
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 28-May-2025 15:09 ET (28-May-2025 19:09 GMT/UTC)
12-May-2025
Scientists track tiny structures key to advanced electronics
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
As demand for energy-intensive computing grows, researchers at ORNL have developed a new technique that lets scientists see how interfaces move in promising materials for computing and other applications. The method, now available to users at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at ORNL, could help design dramatically more energy-efficient technologies.
- Journal
- Small Methods
1-Apr-2025
Oxygen tweaking may be the key to optimizing particle accelerators
DOE/US Department of Energy
Many particle accelerators rely on superconducting radiofrequency components made of niobium. Nuclear physicists found that dissolving oxygen atoms a few micrometers into niobium greatly improves the performance of components made of the metal. Now, the researchers are perfecting a model using different processes for adding oxygen. The model helps to predict and optimize component performance.
- Journal
- Journal of Applied Physics
31-Mar-2025
Molecular modeling reveals how nanocrystals take shape
DOE/US Department of Energy
The shape of nanoparticles depends on the choice of solvent and temperature during their growth, but the seed particles that form first are too small to measure accurately. Researchers have developed a new approach to successfully model seed particles with 100 to 200 atoms. They found that the shapes of the tiny particles depend on the solvent composition and temperature in unexpected ways.
- Journal
- ACS Nano
28-Mar-2025
In an advance for promethium production, researchers get a new view of the element’s properties
DOE/US Department of Energy
Promethium’s short half-life and lack of stable isotopes makes it difficult to study. In addition, promethium is difficult to separate from other lanthanide elements because of these elements’ similarity. In this study, scientists created a pure sample of the isotope promethium-147 and used X-ray absorption spectroscopy to examine the way it chemically bonds. This information will lead to better separation methods and increased promethium production.
- Journal
- Nature
27-Mar-2025
New approach to materials synthesis—with quick validation by a robotic lab
DOE/US Department of Energy
To make inorganic materials such as catalysts, industry mixes precursor powders and fires them in an oven. This often produces a mix of compositions and structures. In this study, researchers developed a new way to select precursors to increase yield and quickly validated their results using a robotic lab. The new recipe selection process obtained higher purity for 32 of the 35 target materials.
- Journal
- Nature Synthesis
26-Mar-2025
New precise calculation of nuclear beta decays paves the way to uncover physics beyond the standard model
DOE/US Department of Energy
Through the weak nuclear force, one quark flavor can transmute into another. However, current data and theory indicate that the probabilities of quark flavor transmutation do not add up to 100%, as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. To understand whether this is due to physics beyond the Standard Model or underestimated uncertainties, nuclear theorists laid out a new framework needed to extract the up-down quark flavor mixing with a precision of a few parts in ten thousand from certain nuclear beta decays.
- Journal
- Physical Review C
21-Mar-2025
Can electricity flow without electrons?
DOE/US Department of Energy
Scientists have long held that electricity is carried by individual electrons with discrete charges moving in a metal, even in the case of electrons clumped into quasiparticles. However, “strange metals” fail to obey this paradigm. Researchers have observed a radical quantum blurring of electrons in strange metal into a featureless liquid, potentially pointing toward a new theory of electrical transport.
- Journal
- Science