Berkeley Lab spin-off company PolyPlus is making big strides in lithium-metal batteries, but there are research challenges and opportunities ahead.

Researchers with the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have employed a promising technique for improving the ability of cellulase enzymes to operate at advantageously high temperatures.

When Apollo 11 returned from its historic flight in 1969, the moon rocks and lunar soil collected by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin eventually found their way to some 150 laboratories worldwide. One of those was the Space Sciences Laboratory in Latimer Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. After experiments were conducted and papers published, [...]

A team led by Berkeley Lab Materials Sciences Division’s Jeffrey Urban and Rachel Segalman have discovered highly conductive polymer behavior occurring at a polymer/nanocrystal interface. The composite organic/inorganic material is a thermoelectric – a material capable of converting heat into electricity – and has a higher performance than either of its constituent materials. The results [...]

New evidence supports earlier findings that cancer therapy drugs based on a family of enzymes called metalloproteinases (MMPs) failed in clinical trials because they were aimed at the wrong target.

The power of chromatography for studying proteins and peptides can be substantially boosted with the addition of gold nanoparticles to polymer monolith surfaces.

Berkeley Lab’s sound-restoration experts have done it again. They’ve helped to digitally recover a 128-year-old recording of Alexander Graham Bell’s voice, enabling people to hear the famed inventor speak for the first time. The recording ends with Bell saying “in witness whereof, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.”
The project involved a collaboration between Smithsonian’s National [...]

Systematic in silico studies have identified several zeolite compounds that show technological promise for capturing methane, the main component of natural gas that can serve as an ally or an adversary in combating global climate change.

Artificial photosynthesis is a dream technology that mimics a natural leaf, converting water and carbon dioxide into fuels with sunlight. But before this technology can take flight, scientists will have to solve a fundamental plumbing problem: how to gather molecules of fuel from microscopic reaction sites to pipes that will pour it out by the [...]

Lithium-ion batteries have transformed our lives. Without them, we wouldn’t have laptop computers or cell phones — at least, not the long-lived, lightweight kind we’re used to — and in the near future they may become more important yet. With sufficiently powerful batteries, renewable energy and electric cars become viable, but we first need to [...]