#materials sciences division

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‘Lasers Rewired’: Scientists Find a New Way to Make Nanowire Lasers

‘Lasers Rewired’: Scientists Find a New Way to Make Nanowire Lasers

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have found a simple new way to produce nanoscale wires that can serve as tiny, tunable lasers.

The nanowires, with diameters as small as 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter) and a blend of materials that has also proven effective in next-generation solarcell designs, were shown to…

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2D Islands in Graphene Hold Promise for Future Device Fabrication

2D Islands in Graphene Hold Promise for Future Device Fabrication

In what could prove to be a significant advance in the fabrication of graphene-based nanodevices, a team of Berkeley Lab researchers has discovered a new mechanism for assembling two-dimensional (2D) molecular “islands” that could be used to modify graphene at the nanometer scale. These 2D islands are comprised of F4TCNQ molecules that trap electrical charge in ways that are potentially useful…

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Diamonds May Be the Key to Future NMR/MRI Technologies

Diamonds May Be the Key to Future NMR/MRI Technologies

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have demonstrated that diamonds may hold the key to the future for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies

In a study led by Alexander Pines, a senior faculty scientist with Berkeley Lab’s…

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The Artificial Materials That Came in From the Cold

The Artificial Materials That Came in From the Cold

It has often been said that nature is history’s greatest innovator and if that is true then scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are learning from the best.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a freeze-casting technique that enables them to design and create strong, tough and lightweight materials comparable to bones,…

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Nanocarriers May Carry New Hope for Brain Cancer Therapy

Nanocarriers May Carry New Hope for Brain Cancer Therapy

Glioblastoma multiforme, a cancer of the brain also known as “octopus tumors” because of the manner in which the cancer cells extend their tendrils into surrounding tissue, is virtually inoperable, resistant to therapies, and always fatal, usually within 15 months of onset. Each year, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) kills approximately 15,000 people in the United States. One of the major…

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Berkeley Lab Wins Seven 2015 R&D 100 Awards

Berkeley Lab Wins Seven 2015 R&D 100 Awards

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has won seven 2015 R&D 100 awards. This year’s winners include a high-capacity anode for rechargeable batteries, a technique to synthesize the lightest, strongest material ever made, and a new way to analyze and visualize mass spectrometry data.

The technologies may lead to advances in healthcare,…

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On the way to Multiband Solar Cells

On the way to Multiband Solar Cells

When visiting California’s central valley in the summertime, it’s hard to imagine that solar energy isn’t single-handedly meeting the west coast’s energy needs. But one problem with modern solar cells is that while the solar spectrum covers a wide range of energies they can only harness light of a single energy,. This means that very little of the available energy is actually captured.

One…

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A New Way to Look at MOFs

A New Way to Look at MOFs

An international collaboration of scientists led by Omar Yaghi, a renowned chemist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has developed a technique they dubbed “gas adsorption crystallography” that provides a new way to study the process by which metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) – 3D crystals with extraordinarily large internal surface areas – are able to store immense…

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