Berkeley Lab researchers have created the first fully integrated artificial photosynthesis nanosystem. While “artificial leaf” is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an “artificial forest.”

New metrics for analyzing data from small angle scattering (SAS) experiments should dramatically improve the ability of scientists to study the structures of macromolecules such as proteins and nanoparticles in solution.

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.

Seventy years ago theorists predicted superlarge nuclei would exhibit a quantum-mechanical phenomenon known as “atomic collapse.” Recently materials scientists calculated that highly-charged impurities in graphene should exhibit a corresponding state, a buildup of electrons partially localized in space and energy constituting a unique electronic resonance. By constructing artificial superlarge nuclei on graphene, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have achieved the first experimental observation of the long-sought state, with important implications for the future of graphene-based electronic devices.

Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a way to manipulate nanoparticles using an electron beam. They used an electron beam from a transmission electron microscope to trap gold nanoparticles and direct their movement. They also used the beam to assemble several nanoparticles into a tight cluster. Based on their results, the scientists believe their approach could lead to a new way to build nanostructures one nanoparticle at a time.

A team of researchers from Berkeley Lab and other institutes has shown that contrary to computer simulations, the tiny size of nanocrystals is no safeguard from defects. Studies at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source show that dislocations can form in the finest of nanocrystals when stress is applied.

If nanoscience were television, we’d be in the 1950s. Although scientists can make and manipulate nanoscale objects with increasingly awesome control, they are limited to black-and-white imagery for examining those objects. Information about nanoscale chemistry and interactions with light—the atomic-microscopy equivalent to color—is tantalizingly out of reach to all but the most persistent researchers. But that may all change with the introduction of a new microscopy tool from researchers at Berkeley Lab that delivers exquisite chemical details with a resolution once thought impossible.

Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that a concept widely accepted as describing the folding of a single individual protein is also applicable to the self-assembly of multiple proteins. Their findings provide important guidelines for future biomimicry efforts, particularly for device fabrication and nanoscale synthesis.

Berkeley Lab researchers have combined the best properties of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts by encapsulating metallic nanoclusters within the branched molecular arms of dendrimers. The results are heterogenized homogeneous nanocatalysts that are sustainable and feature high reactivity and selectivity.

Based on interactions between their constituent amino acids, proteins form specific conformations, folding and twisting into distinct, chemically directed shapes. Past efforts to predict protein structure have met with limited success, but now a scientific team in collaboration with investigators from Berkeley Lab have demonstrated that a computer modeling approach similar to one used to predict protein structures can accurately predict peptoid conformation as well.