Tag Archives: berkeley lab

An Inside Look at a MOF in Action

By Guest PostDecember 28, 2013Scienceals, atmosphere, berend smit, berkeley lab, carbon dioxide gas, david prendergast, gas adsorption, gas molecules, global climate change, inside look, jacs, jeff kortright, jeffrey long, jeffrey neaton, metal organic framework, mg mof 74, mof in action, molecules, nano, nexafs, open metal site, roberta poloni, thomas mcdonald, united states, vulcan, walter drisdell

Berkeley Lab Researchers Probe Into Electronic Structure of MOF May Lead to Improved Capturing of Greenhouse Gases

A unique inside look at the electronic structure of a highly touted metal-organic framework (MOF) as it is adsorbing carbon dioxide gas should help in the design of new and improved MOFs for carbon capture and storage. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have recorded the first in situ electronic structure observations of the adsorption of carbon dioxide inside Mg-MOF-74, an open metal site MOF that has emerged as one of the most promising strategies for capturing and storing greenhouse gases. (more…)

Holistic Cell Design by Berkeley Lab Scientists Leads to High-Performance, Long Cycle-Life Lithium-Sulfur Battery

By Guest PostDecember 15, 2013Scienceberkeley lab, cairns, eetd, energy, holistic cell design, lithium sulfur battery, long cycle life, min kyu song, specific energy, storage capacity loss, yuegang zhang

Battery could find use in mobile applications, and eventually, electric vehicles with 300-mile range

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated in the laboratory a lithium-sulfur (Li/S) battery that has more than twice the specific energy of lithium-ion batteries, and that lasts for more than 1,500 cycles of charge-discharge with minimal decay of the battery’s capacity. This is the longest cycle life reported so far for any lithium-sulfur battery.

Demand for high-performance batteries for electric and hybrid electric vehicles capable of matching the range and power of the combustion engine encourages scientists to develop new battery chemistries that could deliver more power and energy than lithium-ion batteries, currently the best performing battery chemistry in the marketplace. (more…)

Taking a New Look at Carbon Nanotubes

By Guest PostDecember 7, 2013Scienceactin filaments, advancing nanotube technology, anisotropic, berkeley lab, carbon nanotubes, crystal, Environment, feng wang, functional device, fused silica substrate, graphene nanoribbons, human hair, kaihui liu, molecule, na, nanobiomaterials, nanorods, numerical aperture, optical anisotropy, plethora, polarization, semiconductor nanowires, species, substrates, xiaoping hong

Berkeley Researchers Develop Technique For Imaging Individual Carbon Nanotubes

Despite their almost incomprehensibly small size – a diameter about one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair – single-walled carbon nanotubes come in a plethora of different “species,” each with its own structure and unique combination of electronic and optical properties. Characterizing the structure and properties of an individual carbon nanotube has involved a lot of guesswork – until now.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have developed a technique that can be used to identify the structure of an individual carbon nanotube and characterize its electronic and optical properties in a functional device. (more…)

New Ideas Needed to Meet California’s 2050 Greenhouse Gas Targets: Berkeley Lab Study

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2013Environment2050, average fuel efficiency, berkeley lab, berkeley lab study, california, carbon dioxide, co2 equivalent, electricity generation, emissions reductions, ghgis, ghgis model, greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gas targets, heavy duty vehicles, hydrofluorocarbons, jeff greenblatt, light duty vehicles, methane, new model, nitrous oxide, scenario 1, scenario 2, waste

California is on track to meet its state-mandated targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for 2020, but it will not be able to meet its 2050 target without bold new technologies and policies. This is the conclusion of the California Greenhouse Gas Inventory Spreadsheet (GHGIS), a new model developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to look at how far existing policies and technologies can get us in emissions reductions.

A 2005 executive order requires California to reduce its emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons—to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. “This is quite a stringent requirement, and even if we aggressively expand our policies and implement fledgling technologies that are not even on the marketplace now, our analysis shows that California will still not be able to get emissions to 85 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent per year by 2050,” said Jeff Greenblatt, a Berkeley Lab researcher who created the GHGIS. (more…)

Diamond Imperfections Pave the Way to Technology Gold

By Guest PostNovember 23, 2013Scienceadvanced technology, berkeley lab, combination of theory, creation of qubits, data, dephasing, detection, diamond defects, Diamond Imperfections, diamond impurities, dmitry budker, electronic dynamic, electronic spectroscopy, electronic state phenomena, graham fleming, magnetic field, magnetometry, nanophotonics, nanoscale, nitrogen vacancy, non radiative relaxation, NV center, quantum information, quantum information processing, quantum mechanical effects, quantum spin, relaxation, spectroscopic signals, spin addressing, Technology Gold, Thomas Oliver, timescale, vanessa huxter, Vibrational, vibrational coherences

Berkeley Study Provides Unprecedented Details on Ultrafast Processes in Diamond Nitrogen Vacancy Centers

From supersensitive detections of magnetic fields to quantum information processing, the key to a number of highly promising advanced technologies may lie in one of the most common defects in diamonds. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have taken an important step towards unlocking this key with the first ever detailed look at critical ultrafast processes in these diamond defects. (more…)

Less Toxic Metabolites, More Chemical Product

By Guest PostNovember 17, 2013Scienceamorphadiene, antimalarial drug artemisinin, berkeley lab, biomass, chemical product, e coli, energy crops, environmental condition, escherichia coli, fuzhong zhang, jay keasling, jbei, lignin, metabolite regulatory system, microbial growth, mrna stability, nature biotechnology, renewable fuels, ribosome binding, robert dahl, toxic metabolites

The first dynamic regulatory system that prevents the build-up of toxic metabolites in engineered microbes has been reported by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). The JBEI researchers used their system to double the production in Escherichia coli (E. coli) of amorphadiene, a precursor to the premier antimalarial drug artemisinin.

Using genome-wide transcriptional analysis, the JBEI researchers identified native regions of DNA – called “promoters” – in E. coli that respond to toxic metabolites by promoting the expression of protective genes. They then developed a system based on these promoters for regulating artificial metabolic pathways engineered into the E.coli to enable the bacterium to produce amorphadiene. (more…)

On the Road to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

By Guest PostOctober 11, 2013Sciencealexei fedorov, berkeley lab, bi2se3, bismuth strontium, calcium copper oxide, China, decoherence problem, Environment, eryin wang, fault tolerant, hao ding, high temperature superconductivity, majorana zero mode, mysterious quasiparticle, quantum computing, quantum data bit, qubit, shuyun zhou, supercomputer, topological surface state, tsinghua university, xi chen, xray photons

Collaboration at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Induces High Temperature Superconductivity in a Toplogical Insulator

Reliable quantum computing would make it possible to solve certain types of extremely complex technological problems millions of times faster than today’s most powerful supercomputers. Other types of problems that quantum computing could tackle would not even be feasible with today’s fastest machines. The key word is “reliable.” If the enormous potential of quantum computing is to be fully realized, scientists must learn to create “fault-tolerant” quantum computers. A small but important step toward this goal has been achieved by an international collaboration of researchers from China’s Tsinghua University and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). (more…)

New Results from Daya Bay – Tracking the Disappearance of Ghostlike Neutrinos

By Guest PostOctober 7, 2013Scienceacrylic vessel, antineutrinos, Beijing, berkeley lab, beta beams, China, daya bay, daya bay collaboration, disappearance, electron, electron neutrinos, evolution of universe, ghostlike neutrinos, hong kong, jim siegrist, kam biu luk, kamland, ling ao, liquid holding, mass hierarchy, mass splitting, millions of quadrillions, minos, muon, neutrino energy, neutrino oscillations, south dakota, steve kettell, super beams, tau, universe

Daya Bay neutrino experiment releases high-precision measurement of subatomic shape shifting and new result on differences among neutrino masses

The international Daya Bay Collaboration has announced new results about the transformations of neutrinos – elusive, ghostlike particles that carry invaluable clues about the makeup of the early universe. The latest findings include the collaboration’s first data on how neutrino oscillation – in which neutrinos mix and change into other “flavors,” or types, as they travel – varies with neutrino energy, allowing the measurement of a key difference in neutrino masses known as mass splitting.

“Understanding the subtle details of neutrino oscillations and other properties of these shape-shifting particles may help resolve some of the deepest mysteries of our universe,” said Jim Siegrist, Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the primary funder of U.S. participation in Daya Bay. (more…)