Lithium-ion batteries power everything from smart phones to electric cars, but especially when it comes to lowering the cost and extending the range of all-electric vehicles, they need to store a lot more energy. The critical component for energy storage is the anode, and Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a new anode material that can absorb eight times the lithium and has far greater energy capacity than today’s designs.

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.

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 have won four DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program awards, in the second year of the planned annual award program. The five-year, $2.5 million awards are intended to support young scientists in the formative stages of their careers. The winners were chosen from over a thousand applicants by outside scientific experts.

A little disorder goes a long way, especially when it comes to harnessing the sun’s energy. Berkeley Lab scientists jumbled the atomic structure of the surface layer of titanium dioxide nanocrystals, creating a catalyst that is both long lasting and effective in collecting solar energy to help extract hydrogen from water.

Individual nanocrystals are remarkably strong. But under stress, complex nanostructures quickly fail because of internal strains. New research at the National Center for Electron Microscopy on hollow nanospheres shows that engineering can greatly increase the strength of complex nanoparticles. The results could lead to stronger nanostructures and large-scale alloys as well.

Hailed as the world’s most powerful transmission electron microscope, TEAM 0.5 is living up to expectations. Berkeley Lab researchers have produced stunning images of individual carbon atoms in graphene, the two-dimensional crystalline form of carbon that is highly prized by the electronics industry.

Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — TEAM 0.5, the world’s most powerful transmission electron microscope — capable of producing images with half‑angstrom resolution (half a ten-billionth of a meter), less than the diameter of a single hydrogen atom — has been installed at the Department of Energy’s National Center [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — As structures made of metal get smaller — as their dimensions approach the micrometer scale (millionths of a meter) or less — they get stronger. Scientists discovered this phenomenon 50 years ago while measuring the strength of tin “whiskers” a few micrometers in diameter and a few [...]

Contact: Dan Krotz, (510) 486-4019, dakrotz@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — Here’s a pollution-control tip from nature: Deep inside a flooded mine in Wisconsin, scientists from several institutions including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a world in which bacteria emit proteins that sweep up metal nanoparticles into immobile clumps. Their [...]