Feature Articles

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are helping modernize power management and enhance reliability in an increasingly complex electric grid. As the United States transitions to cleaner energy and more U.S. consumers adopt electric vehicles, the grid is facing new power flow demands. ORNL researchers are tackling this challenge by creating a new architecture to modernize the grid from the bottom up, starting with consumers and expanding to the entire power distribution system. A cornerstone of this architecture is a new power electronics technology suite called a Smart Universal Power Electronics Regulator, or SUPER.

Scientists working on the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment are developing a vertical drift detector. The new technology may open doors to building large neutrino detectors at a lower cost and in a simpler manner.

The international DUNE collaboration is conducting final tests of the components for its first neutrino detector module, to be installed a mile underground in South Dakota. Preparations for ramping up the mass production of these components are underway.

A new nano-optical bioimaging technology in development at PNNL enables researchers to watch climate-bellwether microbes exchange metabolites and other essential signals.

Brenden Ortiz, a Wigner Distinguished Staff Fellow at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is helping design the next generation of quantum materials.

A tool developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers gives building owners and equipment manufacturers and installers an easy way to calculate the cost savings of a heating and cooling system that utilizes geothermal energy and emits no carbon.

More realistically representing crops and agricultural practices dramatically improves simulations of carbon and energy exchange.

Chemist Jeff Foster is looking for ways to control sequencing in polymers that could result in designer molecules to benefit a variety of industries, including medicine and energy. Using the technology that he and his colleagues are developing, “scientists can begin to understand how the sequence of monomers influences the behavior and properties of synthetic polymer materials,” said Foster, an Alvin M. Weinberg Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

To make the experience more engaging for students, Argonne has begun hosting its regional, virtual Science Bowl in a head-to-head setup.

Researchers at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source have used serial crystallography, a way to make molecular movies, to see in real time the mechanisms involved in an enzyme that confers antibiotic resistance to a certain bacterium.