Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry like their solutions shaken, not stirred. In this way they have been able to engineer two-dimensional, biomimetic nanosheets with atomic precision for a wide range of applications, including the creation of platforms for sensing molecules, and membranes for filtration. To enable this self-assembly of 2D nanosheets they have developed a programmable device to rock the vial of solutions. They call it a “SheetRocker.”

Invisible terahertz light can detect explosives, image drug structures, and pinpoint skin cancer, but practical tools for using it are scarce. Now Berkeley Lab scientists have demonstrated a device made of graphene microribbons that strongly responds to terahertz light by exciting the collective electron oscillations known as plasmons. The device can be tuned with exquisite precision by varying the width of the graphene ribbons and controlling electron density.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a solution-based technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using the semiconductors cadmium sulfide for the core and copper sulfide for the shell. These inexpensive and easy-to-make nanowire solar cells hold great promise for future solar cell technology.

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.

As long ago as the Wright Brothers’ first airplane engine, metallurgists were using nanoparticles to make strong aluminum alloys – although they didn’t realize it, because scientific understanding is only decades old. Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s National Center for Electron Microscopy have now solved the mystery of one of the most promising alloys ever for strength, hardness, lightness, and resistance to corrosion and heat, one that includes core-shell nanoparticles all nearly the same size.

Berkeley Lab researchers created tetrapod molecules of semiconductor nanocrystals and watched them break a fundamental principle of photoluminescence known as “Kasha’s rule.” The discovery holds promise for multi-color light emission technologies, including LEDs.

Berkeley Lab researchers, working with scientists at Rice University, have developed a technique for mass-producing defect-free boron nitride nanoribbons (BNNRs) of uniform length and thickness. BNNRs are predicted to display magnetic and electronic properties that hold enormous potential for future devices.

Electron microscopy with mechanical testing in situ has allowed Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues at UC Berkeley and Los Alamos to devise a technique for testing irradiated materials on the nanoscale that yields results on the macroscale. The technique could accelerate new materials for nuclear power applications and improve testing of nuclear power plants already in service.

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 researchers have demonstrated the first true nanoscale waveguides for next generation on-chip optical communication systems. The waveguides are based on a quasi-particle the researchers conceptualized and created called the “hybrid plasmon polariton.”