A technique from Berkley Lab for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the molybdenite catalyst paves the way for developing catalytic materials that can serve as effective low-cost alternatives to platinum for generating hydrogen gas from water.

Berkeley researchers have provided the most detailed look ever at the “regulatory particle” used by the proteasome – one of the most critical protein machines in living cells – to identify and degrade proteins marked for destruction. This new information holds implications for a broad range of vital biochemical processes, including transcription, DNA repair and the immune defense system.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to change the status quo by reviving the study of rare earths to better understand how to extract them, use them more efficiently, reuse and recycle them and find substitutes for them.

Chemists hope to understand precisely how electrical charges flow and different forms of energy move within molecules and across molecular boundaries. The most demanding experiments would identify specific atoms and track their correlated electronic states, but the facilities don’t exist yet. Berkeley Lab scientists are using powerful lasers to devise future light sources that can do the job.

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have shed light on the role of temperature in controlling a fabrication technique for drawing chemical surface patterns as small as 20 nanometers. This technique could provide an inexpensive, fast route to growing and patterning a wide variety of materials on surfaces to build electrical circuits and chemical sensors, or study how pharmaceuticals bind to proteins and viruses.

Berkeley Lab researchers led the development of a technique called HARPES, for Hard x-ray Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy, that enables the study of electronic structures deep below material surfaces, including the buried layers and interfaces in nanoscale devices. This could pave the way for smaller logic elements in electronics, novel memory architectures in spintronics, and more efficient energy conversion in photovoltaic cells.

Berkeley Lab researchers have found a way to make copper-catalyzed click chemistry biocompatible. By adding a ligand that minimizes the toxicity of copper but still allows it to catalyze the click chemistry reaction, the researchers can safely use their reaction in living cells.

Berkeley Lab researchers won two of the 2011 R&D 100 awards, also known as the “Oscars of Innovation.” The winning inventions were a nanostructured antifogging technology for glass, and a new version of MRI technology – called Magnetic Resonance Microarray Imaging – that delivers results a million times faster than conventional MRI.

Berkeley Lab and German researchers have developed the world’s first three-dimensional plasmon rulers, capable of measuring nanometer-scale spatial changes in macromolecular systems. These 3D plasmon rulers could provide unprecedented details on such critical dynamic events in biology as the interaction of DNA with enzymes, the folding of proteins, the motion of peptides or the vibrations of cell membranes.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a powerful tool for chemical analysis and, in the form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an indispensable technique for medical diagnosis. But its uses have been limited by the need for strong magnetic fields and big, expensive, superconducting magnets. Now Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have demonstrated that they can do NMR in a zero magnetic field without using any magnets at all.