PSE News & Highlights

Four Argonne physicists named APS fellows

December 18, 2012 -- Four scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have been named fellows of the American Physical Society for 2012. Read the story.

Two Argonne scientists named 2012 AAAS fellows

December 5, 2012 -- Computational scientist Paul Fischer and chemist Lin Chen of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Read the story.

Department of Energy awards up to $120 million for battery hub to Argonne-led group

November 30, 2012 -- U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was joined today by Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to announce that a multi-partner team led by Argonne National Laboratory has been selected for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish a new Batteries and Energy Storage Hub. Read the story.

Dark energy camera to probe universe's biggest mysteries

September 17, 2012 -- Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. On Sept. 12, that ancient starlight found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly-constructed Dark Energy Camera -- the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created -- captured and recorded it for the first time. Read the story.

Dark energy: Q&A with Steve Kuhlmann

September 17, 2012 -- Why do we care about dark energy in the first place? Read the story.

Scientists develop affordable way to generate medical isotopes

October 15, 2012 -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a safe and affordable way to ensure a reliable U.S. supply of certain medical isotopes. Although the invention is at a conceptual stage, it has the potential to provide critical medical diagnostic material for small regional hospitals. Read the story.

Accelerating Materials Innovation: Argonne's High Throughput Research (HTR) Laboratory

September 4, 2012 -- A brochure highlighting the capabilities and applications of Argonne's new HTR laboratory. View the brochure.

Sterling science: Strain in silver nanoparticles creates unusual “twinning”

August 27, 2012 -- When twins are forced to share, it can put a significant strain on their relationship. While this observation is perhaps unsurprising in the behavior of children, it is less obvious when it comes to nanoparticles. Read the story.

The research bench meets industry: New facility scales up production of battery materials

August 21, 2012 -- Cue Argonne’s new Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF): using its state-of-the-art labs and equipment, researchers can safely determine fast and economical ways of producing large quantities of advanced battery materials for commercial testing. Read the story.

Nestor Zaluzec Honored

August 6, 2012 -- Nestor Zaluzec has received the Microanalysis Society’s Presidential Science Award, which honors a senior scientist for outstanding technical contributions to the field of microanalysis over a sustained period. The award winner is chosen annually by the society’s president. Read the story.

Award-winning technology provides a breakthrough in particle physics

August 3, 2012 -- High-energy physics, it turns out, is a lot like life - it's all about the timing. In order to identify the tiny subatomic particles that erupt from the atom-smashing experiments that occur in subterranean laboratories like the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, scientists need detectors that have split-second reflexes. Read the story.

Carrado Gregar inducted into American Chemical Society

August 2, 2012 -- Kathleen Carrado Gregar, the User and Outreach Programs Manager at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, has been elected to the 2012 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Read the story.

Off to a good start: Argonne's rising stars in battery research shine

July 27, 2012 -- Looking at Fikile Brushett, a director's postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, one would hardly guess that he is already two years out of graduate school and about to start a faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read the story.

Two Argonne physicists win Presidential Early Career Awards

July 23, 2012 -- Two scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have received the 2011 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the nation's highest honor for researchers in the beginning stages of their independent research careers. Read the story.

The long, winding road to advanced batteries for electric cars

July 18, 2012 -- Batteries have come a long way since Alessandro Volta first discovered in 1800 that two unlike metals, when separated by an acidic solution, could produce an electric current. In their evolution, batteries have taken on various forms, ranging from lead-acid, to nickel-metal hydride, to current-day lithium-ion. Read the story.

Five scientists join ranks of Argonne Distinguished Fellows

July 18, 2012 -- The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has named scientists Khalil Amine, Larry Johnson, Ernst Rehm, Marc Snir and Brian Stephenson as Distinguished Fellows, the laboratory’s highest scientific and engineering rank. Read the story.

Hints of Higgs: Argonne scientists make significant contributions to search for elusive particle

July 4, 2012 -- Particle physics researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have been intimately involved with the effort to find the Higgs boson - the elusive particle that could explain why various subatomic particles have mass. Read the story.

Argonne's role in the search for the Higgs boson

June 29, 2012 -- The search for the Higgs boson - the elusive particle that could explain why various subatomic particles have mass - has reached a new stage. Read the story.

Argonne flows into utility-scale battery research

June 28, 2012 -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed an all-organic non-aqueous lithium-ion redox flow battery that would help expand use of large-scale solar and wind energy on the nation's electrical grid. Read the story.

Nuclear fuel recycling could offer plentiful energy

June 22, 2012 -- Imagine the mess if we mined one ton of coal, burned five percent of it for energy, and then threw away the rest. That is what happens with uranium for nuclear fuel today. Read the story.

Argonne wins four R&D 100 Awards

June 20, 2012 -- Four technologies developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have received this year’s R&D 100 awards. Read the story.

Catching some rays: Organic solar cells make a leap forward

June 13, 2012 -- Drawn together by the force of nature, but pulled apart by the force of man – it sounds like the setting for a love story, but it is also a basic description of how scientists have begun to make more efficient organic solar cells. Read the story.

New nanomaterials method answers tough challenges

June 8, 2012 -- When searching for the technology to boost computer speeds and improve memory density, the best things come in the smallest packages. Read the story.

Battery researcher wins Argonne-Northwestern Early Career Award

June 7, 2012 -- Materials scientist Lynn Trahey of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has received the 2012 Northwestern-Argonne Early Career Investigator Award for Energy Research for her proposal to investigate new materials to improve the performance of anodes in lithium-ion batteries. Read the story.

Lab Breakthrough: Nanomaterials Discoveries Lead to Possible Cancer Treatment

June 4, 2012 -- As part of DOE's Lab Breakthrough series, this video and Q&A highlight the work of Argonne nanoscientist Elena Rozhkova, who is studying ways to enlist nanoparticles to treat brain cancer. Read the story.

Pyroprocessing Technologies: Recycling Used Nuclear Fuel for a Sustainable Energy Future

June 1, 2012 -- This brochure highlights Argonne's work with pyroprocessing technologies. View the brochure.

Scientists uncover photosynthetic puzzle

May 21, 2012 -- Quantum physics and plant biology seem like two branches of science that could not be more different, but surprisingly they may in fact be intimately tied. Read the story.

Argonne, Universities partner to design advanced materials

May 14, 2012 -- The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory today announced major new efforts with Northwestern University and the University of Chicago to advance the research and development of new materials to help solve the nation's challenges in the fields of energy, health and security. Read the story.

New class of battery materials discovered

May 9, 2012 -- Researchers have discovered a new class of battery electrode materials that will be essential to attaining safe and efficient lithium (Li) and sodium (Na) rechargeable energy storage systems for vehicle and large-scale electric utility use. Read the story.

Increasing the Life of Batteries

May 9, 2012 -- Argonne's Battery Post-test Facility. Download the brochure.

Energy to Renew Our World

April 26, 2012 -- Argonne's energy research. Download the brochure.

Building economical, high-power rf accelerating cavities

April 13, 2012 -- The Advanced Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) group of Argonne’s High Energy Physics (HEP) Division has recently demonstrated a highly economical method for building high-power rf accelerating cavities. Read the story.

Littlewood to speak at WIST

April 11, 2012 -- Peter Littlewood (PSE), associate laboratory director, will present during an informal discussion at the next Women in Science and Technology (WIST) First Friday Forum on Friday, April 13, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Building 203, Room R150. Read the story.

Geesaman chairs DOE/NSF advisory panel

April 11, 2012 -- Distinguished Argonne Fellow Donald Geesaman has been appointed chair of the U.S. Department of Energy/National Science Foundation Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) for a three-year term. Read the story.

New isotope measurement could alter history of early solar system

April 2, 2012 -- The early days of our solar system might look quite different than previously thought, according to research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory published in Science. The study used more sensitive instruments to find a different half-life for samarium, one of the isotopes used to chart the evolution of the solar system. Read the story.

Diamond brightens the performance of electronic devices

March 12, 2012 -- Two new studies have revealed a new pathway for materials scientists to use previously unexplored properties of nanocrystalline-diamond thin films. While the properties of diamond thin films are relatively well-understood, the new discovery could dramatically improve the performance of certain types of integrated circuits by reducing their "thermal budget." Read the story.

Exciting new work from ANSER

March 1, 2012 -- Using ultrafast near IR transient spectroscopy, ANSER has now discovered that new polymers with high power conversion efficiencies are capable of ultrafast exciton splitting on their own following the trend of their intrinsic local dipole moments related to charge density difference between the building blocks in these charge transfer polymers. Read the story.

New picture of atomic nucleus emerges

March 1, 2012 -- When most of us think of an atom, we think of tiny electrons whizzing around a stationary, dense nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, collectively known as nucleons. Read the story.

Aronson, Snezhko microrobots in BES report

February 27, 2012 -- Igor Aronson and Oleksiy Snezhko's work on micro-robotics is featured on the cover and within the 2011 Basic Energy Science's (BES) Summary Report. Read the report.

Presentation by Peter Littlewood, "Physics of Sustainability"

February 17, 2012 -- Lecture given by Argonne's Peter Littlewood at Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, England. Read the story.

Sattelberger is Chair-Elect of AAAS Chemistry Section

February 13, 2012 -- Al Sattelberger, Argonne's Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for Energy Engineering & Systems Analysis, has been elected Chair-Elect of the Chemistry Section of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS). Read the story.

Argonne's Gian Felcher receives NSSA's Sustained Research Prize

February 3, 2012 -- Argonne physicist Gian Felcher is the recipient of the 2012 Sustained Research Prize of the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA) "for pioneering the development of neutron reflectometry and demonstrating its application to magnetic and polymer film systems." Read the story.

Two Startup Companies Use Argonne’s Technology to Compete in “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator”

February 1, 2012 -- Two startup companies, California Lithium Battery and Umpqua Energy, are using Argonne National Laboratory’s technology to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator Challenge," a competition where Americans vote online for the most innovative and promising startup companies that are using technologies from the Department’s national laboratories to develop new products and businesses. Read the story.

Battery, heal thyself: Inventing self-repairing batteries

January 11, 2012 -- Imagine dropping your phone on the hard concrete sidewalk—but when you pick it up, you find its battery has already healed itself. Read the story.