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.

Long before anyone had actually isolated graphene, a honeycomb lattice of carbon just one atom thick, theorists were predicting that narrow ribbons of graphene would display extraordinary electronic, spintronic, and optical properties along their edges, including semiconductor-like band gaps that sheet graphene lacks. Now Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have used novel techniques to confirm that these nanoribbon “edge states” exist and hold great potential for nanoscale devices.

Berkeley Lab scientists at the Molecular Foundry have unraveled the mystery behind surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy – a detection method that can sense the presence of individual molecules and provide scientists with unique molecular fingerprints.

Berkeley Lab scientists at the Molecular Foundry have pioneered a new chemical mapping method that provides unprecedented insight into materials at the nanoscale. These new maps will guide researchers in deciphering molecular chemistry and interactions that are critical for artificial photosynthesis, biofuels production and light-harvesting applications such as solar cells.

Berkeley Lab’s Gabor Somorjai, widely considered the “father of modern surface chemistry,” has won a Frontiers of Knowledge Award from Spain’s BBVA Foundation. He was recognized for “his pioneering contributions to the understanding of surface chemistry and catalysis at a microscopic and molecular level.”