News Releases

Energy Sciences

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 9-Sep-2025 07:11 ET (9-Sep-2025 11:11 GMT/UTC)

Fresh, direct evidence for tiny drops of quark-gluon plasma

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new analysis of data from the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) reveals fresh evidence that collisions of even very small nuclei with large ones might create tiny specks of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Scientists believe such a substance of free quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, permeated the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Floating solar panels could support US energy goals

DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Federal reservoirs could help meet the country’s solar energy needs, according to a new study published in Solar Energy. For the study, Evan Rosenlieb and Marie Rivers, geospatial scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as well as Aaron Levine, a senior legal and regulatory analyst at NREL, quantified for the first time exactly how much energy could be generated from floating solar panel projects installed on federally owned or regulated reservoirs. (Developers can find specific details for each reservoir on the website AquaPV.)

Journal: Solar Energy

ORNL partnership with EPB tests new method for protecting quantum networks

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory joined forces with EPB of Chattanooga and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to demonstrate the first transmission of an entangled quantum signal using multiple wavelength channels and automatic polarization stabilization over a commercial network with no downtime.

The successful trial of this innovation marks another step toward the eventual creation of a quantum internet that could prove to be more capable and secure than existing networks.

Journal: Optics Express
Funder: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, ORNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development

Unlocking the potential of lithium-sulfur batteries

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Argonne researchers have developed a new class of electrolyte additives for lithium-sulfur batteries, improving battery performance by suppressing the unwanted migration of polysulfide ions and reducing the uneven distribution and occurrence of chemical reactions within the system.

Journal: Joule

Pioneering new tool will spur advances in catalysis

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Catalysts do several surprising things to assist with daily life – from bread making to turning raw materials into fuels more efficiently. Now, SLAC researchers have developed a way to speed up the discovery process for a promising new class of these helpful substances called single atom catalysts.

Journal: Chemistry - Methods
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Plasma heating efficiency in fusion devices boosted by metal screens

DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have performed computer simulations confirming a technique that prevents the production of unhelpful electromagnetic waves, boosting the heat put into fusion plasma.

Journal: Physics of Plasmas
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Hey! Where’s my qubit?

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico have for the first time demonstrated a practical way to detect these atom loss for neutral atom quantum computers.

Journal: PRX Quantum

Metal scrap upcycled into high-value alloys with solid phase manufacturing

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Solid phase manufacturing can create new custom metal alloys through an innovative process called solid phase alloying, researchers from PNNL report.

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The future of more sustainable cooling and heating technology could be just around the corner

DOE/Ames National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of researchers from the U. S. Department of Energy Ames National Laboratory developed a magnetocaloric heat pump that matches current vapor-compression heat pumps for weight, cost, and performance.

Journal: Applied Energy

Landmark photosynthesis gene discovery boosts plant height, advances crop science

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of scientists with two Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers — the Center for Bioenergy Innovation, or CBI, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation, or CABBI, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — identified a gene in a poplar tree that enhances photosynthesis and can boost tree height by about 30% in the field and by as much as 200% in the greenhouse.

Journal: Developmental Cell
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy

1
2
3
4