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Polymer nanocomposites mix particles billionths of a meter in diameter with polymers, which are long molecular chains. Often used to make injection-molded products, they are common in automobiles, fire retardants, packaging materials, drug-delivery systems, medical devices, coatings, adhesives, sensors, membranes and consumer goods. When a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory tried to verify that shrinking the nanoparticle size would adversely affect the mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposites, they got a big surprise.

'We're trying to determine the fundamental behavior of plasma-facing materials with the goal of better understanding degradation mechanisms so we can engineer robust, new materials,' said materials scientist Chad Parish of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is senior author of a study in the journal Scientific Reports that explored degradation of tungsten under reactor-relevant conditions. Learning about how energetic atomic bombardment affects tungsten microscopically helps engineers improve nuclear materials.

ORNL's rapid prototyping supports small business manufacturing; ORNL chemists' accelerated membrane-based gas separation method could ultimately separate carbon dioxide from flue gases at power plants; ORNL-developed electron beam melting technique precisely controls microstructure, locate properties in additively manufactured parts; ORNL's open-source, user-friendly and easy-to-use software monitors, controls energy consumption using wide range of devices running different protocols; ORNL report indicates drone activity aids electric utilities to enhance worker safety, system reliability; ORNL hosts cyberspace conference.

Under a collaborative partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy, a new automated measurement system developed at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will ensure quality production of plutonium-238 while reducing handling by workers.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers win four Federal Laboratory Consortium awards.

A multi-institution team simulated, for the first time, atomic-level magnetic properties in regions of a real nanoparticle based on experimental data. UCLA and Berkeley Lab's cutting-edge imaging and 3-D reconstruction techniques combined with the 27-petaflop Titan supercomputer at OLCF and the award-winning LSMS magnetic structure code, developed at ORNL, enabled researchers to model the magnetic properties of over a thousand atoms of an iron-platinum nanoparticle -- a material that has applications for next-generation magnetic storage devices.

A team led by the California Institute of Technology's Thomas Miller used the Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify new electrolyte materials with promising properties for lithium-ion conduction in batteries.