…Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) will continue to build on JCAP’s work to advance solar fuels. # # # Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 14 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and pr…
Scientists Capture Candid Snapshots of Electrons Harvesting Light at the Atomic Scale
News Release Theresa Duque •
…e of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a solar-fuels Hub led by Caltech in partnership with Berkeley Lab, will continue to build on JCAP’s work to advance solar fuels. ### Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustain…
New $115 Million Quantum Systems Accelerator to Pioneer Quantum Technologies for Discovery Science
Feature Story Dan Krotz •
…icantly improve machine learning and optimization, transform the design of solar cells, new materials, and pharmaceuticals, and probe the mysteries of physics and the universe, among many other applications. To bring this closer to reality, the Quantum Systems Accelerator will systematically improve a wide range of advanced qubit technologies available today, including neutral atom arrays, trapped ions, and superconducting circuits. The center wil…
A Closer Look at Water-Splitting’s Solar Fuel Potential
News Release Theresa Duque •
…lectrode because the material can absorb light in the visible range in the solar spectrum, and when combined with a catalyst, its physical properties allow it to make oxygen in the water-splitting reaction. Bismuth vanadate is one of the few materials that can do this, and in this case, the addition of a small quantity of molybdenum to BiVO4 somehow improves its performance, Toma explained. When water is split into H2 and O2, hydrogen-hydrogen and…
Geothermal Brines Could Propel California’s Green Economy
News Release Julie Chao •
…is mined in Argentina, Chile, China, and Australia. The dominant method is solar evaporation of brines found in underground brine reservoirs below the surface of dried lake beds. While processing costs are low, this technique has a number of disadvantages: The process is slow (taking up to 24 months), weather-dependent, and has an extraction efficiency of only 50%. Part of Berkeley Lab’s work involves doing a technoeconomic analysis, in which it w…
Berkeley Lab Part of Multi-Institutional Team Awarded $60M for Solar Fuels Research
News Release Theresa Duque •
…cientist in Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division. A second DOE-funded solar fuels initiative – the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy to Liquid Fuels, or CHASE – will be led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and focus on the development of hybrid photoelectrodes that combine semiconductors with molecular catalysts for solar fuels production. In just a decade, pioneering work by scientists and engineers in JCAP set n…
X-Rays Recount Origin of Oddball Meteorites
News Release Glenn Roberts Jr. •
…lanetesimal” – an object that took shape during the formative stage of our solar system – that indeed was both unmelted and melted. The object likely had a molten metallic core, a solid crust, and a magnetic field that may have rivaled the Earth’s in strength. The study was published online July 24 in Science Advances. The ALS experiments used an X-ray microscopy technique known as XPEEM, coupled with a technique known as XMCD that produced greate…
SLAC’s Upgraded X-Ray Laser Facility Produces First Light
News Release Glenn Roberts Jr. •
…ating the processes that create “diamond rain” within giant planets in our solar system. The next major step in this field was set in motion in 2013, launching the LCLS-II upgrade project to increase the X-ray laser’s power by thousands of times, producing a million pulses per second compared to 120 per second today. This upgrade is due to be completed within the next two years, and the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is…
The Secret to Renewable Solar Fuels Is an Off-and-On Again Relationship
News Release Aliyah Kovner •
…rnal ACS Catalysis, the scientists performed X-ray spectroscopy on working solar fuel generator prototypes to demonstrate that catalysts made from copper oxide are superior to purely metallic-origin catalysts when it comes to producing ethylene, a two-carbon gas with a huge range of industrial applications – even after there are no detectable oxygen atoms left in the catalyst. “Many researchers have shown that oxide-derived copper catalysts are be…
Paul Alivisatos Wins Priestley Award
News Release Theresa Duque •
…nanocrystals called quantum dots can be used in light-emitting diodes and solar cells. Today, the energy-efficient technology is manufactured by Nanosys, a startup Alivisatos co-founded in 2001 to commercialize quantum dots, and is used to make electronic displays for portable readers, like the Amazon Kindle, and quantum-dot LED (QLED) televisions. And in 2015, he led a multi-institutional team, which included researchers from Berkeley Lab’s Mole…