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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have advanced the knowledge required to improve large-scale energy storage. In doing so, they have revealed distinct chemical reactions that improve the stability and efficiency of a promising energy-storage system. Their findings suggest positive implications for U.S. energy security, including increased national power grid reliability and affordability.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered an extraordinary crystal made from tantalum, tungsten, and selenium that defies expectations with its unique atomic structure. Instead of a random arrangement, the tantalum atoms organize themselves into precise triangular clusters, enhancing the crystal's stability and creating specific magnetic properties when cooled to extremely low temperatures. This unexpected behavior paves the way for advances in spintronics and quantum materials, which could revolutionize computing and data storage by harnessing the dual properties of electron charge and spin.

ORNL researchers are advancing connected and automated vehicle systems to improve merging behavior and traffic flow. By linking real vehicles with immersive traffic simulations, the team is evaluating cooperative driving strategies to support the development of next-generation intelligent transportation systems.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has launched a novel robotic platform to rapidly analyze plant root systems as they grow, yielding AI-ready data to accelerate the development of stress-tolerant crops for new fuels, chemicals and materials.

Using the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have performed the largest direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulence in three dimensions, attaining a record resolution of 35 trillion grid points.

Scott Smith, section head in the Manufacturing Science Division at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his national leadership in manufacturing and his contributions to improving machine tool system performance and the manufacturing of thin monolithic structures.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are helping to enable the next generation of abundant, affordable nuclear energy by combining 80 years of know-how with the latest scientific techniques, facilities and equipment. The lab’s longstanding expertise in degradation of materials in the harsh environments of nuclear reactors make it the go-to place for a resurgence of interest in liquid metals and molten salts for both advanced fission and fusion reactors. 

In a long-running collaboration with GE Aerospace, researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia have been steadily working to improve the performance of high-pressure turbine (HPT) engines through computer simulations on leadership-class computing systems. Using ORNL's Frontier supercomputer, the Melbourne team investigated how the surface degradation of turbine blades affects their aerothermal performance with unprecedented simulations of 10 to 20 billion grid points in size,

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a deep learning algorithm that analyzes drone, camera and sensor data to reveal unusual vehicle patterns that may indicate illicit activity, including the movement of nuclear materials.

For more than 30 years, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has helped shape the future of high-temperature alloys, translating fundamental materials research into industrial impact. That expertise proved pivotal for Duraloy Technologies, whose long-standing partnership with ORNL transformed the company’s trajectory and set a benchmark for sustained public-private collaboration.