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Scientists are working on ways to build atomic structures to specifications and are studying these methods on a larger scale using ‘big atoms.’ These ‘big atoms’ are micro-particles of silica mixed into liquid crystals. Silica particles, when mixed into liquid crystals, can act a lot like individual atoms. The geometry of the particles determines how they interact with each other the same way the electrons around an atom determine how it interacts with other atoms. Scientists can observe interactions in these ‘big atoms’ with optical microscopes, removing the need for atomic-scale imaging.

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The ITER fusion reactor will use rippled magnetic fields to prevent bursts of heat and particles that can damage the walls of the reactor. Physicists have now compared computer simulations of plasma with experimental measurements to understand how controlled magnetic ripples outside the plasma can suppress these bursts.

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Probing observations, satellite data, and climate models, scientists supported by the DOE’s Office of Science are exploring atmospheric rivers’ role in the water and climate cycles. But navigating through the data proved to be trickier than the scientists expected.

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John Kitchin is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide $60 million to establish multidisciplinary teams to develop new tools and techniques to harness supercomputers for scientific discovery.

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Tsuyoshi Tajima is a research and development engineer and a team leader in the Accelerator Operations and Technology Division at the U.S. Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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The Department of Energy has a vital role to play in the national response to COVID-19. Researchers have already used tools at national laboratories to make major inroads to analyzing the virus and its spread.

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Astrophysicists supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science are developing these guides in the form of computer models that rely on machine learning to examine the LSST data.

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Stanislav Boldyrev is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Arthi Jayaraman is a full professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Material Sciences and Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide up to $100 million over five years for research on artificial photosynthesis for the production of fuels from sunlight.

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The Department of Energy’s Office of Science is accepting nominations for the 2020 Enrico Fermi Award.

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To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology at their heart – qubits. Qubits are the quantum version of conventional computers’ most basic form of information, bits. The DOE’s Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.

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Recent experiments in the DIII-D tokamak demonstrate that more turbulence at the edge of the plasma can result in it being hotter.

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Scientists have created new inorganic crystals made of stacks of atomically thin sheets.

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Scientists used unique scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to control how electrons moved on the surface of a bismuth-based material (Bi2Te2Se).

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Recent research has shown that 2D materials may have potential as light sources that emit light as single photons.

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Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that conventional computers can’t. To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology in qubits. The DOE’s Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.

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Researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to “see” the electron interactions and pairings at the heart of twisted bilayer graphene's novel properties.

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Scientists may have discovered a quantum phase where magnetic moments of electrons (the strength and orientation of a magnet) inherently change over time and never become ordered even at absolute zero temperature.

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Researchers are increasingly using computer models to predict how light will interact with metamaterials. Scientists used machine learning techniques to analyze databases of information. The computer program predicted the ideal metamaterial design for absorbing low-energy light.

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Scientists can control their branch sizes and surfaces to make them more stable and more effective catalysts. By creating branched nanoparticles from the metal ruthenium, researchers developed a way to increase the speed of catalysis while maintaining the catalyst’s stability.

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Scientists grew tungsten disulfide 2D crystals over donut shapes. With this approach, they created strain that changed the materials’ growth dynamics and light emission properties.

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Researchers recently measured a surprising effect for a new type of superconductor: bismuth palladium.

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Scientists created devices based on one Weyl semimetal, tantalum arsenide. They observed that this material was able to convert more light to electricity than any other material. The conversion was 10 times higher than previous measurements with other materials.

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Researchers developed open-source software that can classify viruses in ways that previous tools could not.

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Using advanced computational methods to find working designs, researchers created six protein pairs in cells.

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Using supercomputer simulations and a large dataset of materials, scientists found a connection between distortions in the material’s atomic structure and the amount of energy required to separate a proton from the material.

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The Big Questions series features perspectives from the five recipients of the Department of Energy Office of Science’s 2019 Distinguished Scientists Fellows Award describing their research and what they plan to do with the award. Ian Foster is the director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Data Science and Learning Division.

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The Big Questions series features perspectives from the five recipients of the Department of Energy Office of Science’s 2019 Distinguished Scientists Fellows Award describing their research and what they plan to do with the award. Sally Dawson is a senior scientist at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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Marivi Fernández-Serra is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University.

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The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it will establish Quantum Information Science Centers to help lay the foundation for these technologies. As Congress put forth in the National Quantum Initiative Act, the DOE’s Office of Science will make awards for at least two and up to five centers.

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This is a continuing profile series on the directors of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facilities. These scientists lead a variety of research institutions that provide researchers with the most advanced tools of modern science including accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, light sources and neutron sources, as well as facilities for studying the nano world, the environment, and the atmosphere.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $625 million over the next five years to establish two to five multidisciplinary Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers in support of the National Quantum Initiative.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide up to $75 million over five years for research to develop sustainable bioenergy crops tolerant of environmental stress and resilient to changing environmental conditions.

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Daniel W. Bardayan is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, formerly a senior research staff member in the Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Tennessee.

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U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) will award 158 grants totaling $32 million to 118 small businesses in 32 states. Funded through DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, these selections are for Phase I research and development.

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David Shih is an associate professor in the New High Energy Theory Center of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

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Scientists built a system with curved electrodes to concentrate sound waves.

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Scientists have created a new class of material that uses sunlight to absorb and fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

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Scientists studied how the bacteria transport electrons across their cell wall. The bacteria use a method that’s different from other, known electricity-producing bacteria. They also found that hundreds of other bacterial species use this same process.

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Researchers found a way to create lasers smaller than red blood cells.

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New research demonstrates that microbial communities that are simplified but still representative may offer a way to explore more complex ones. In particular, they can help scientists uncover the mechanisms that drive the ecology of groups of soil microbes.

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Scientists predict a warming Earth will cause more droughts that are more severe in the grasslands of the central United States. This research found that soil drying affects the microbial community in several ways.

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Researchers developed a new theoretical framework called minimal interspecies interaction adjustment (MIIA). It predicts how surrounding organisms and other factors drive changes in interactions in microbial communities.

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Benjamin Monreal is the Agnar Pytte Associate Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Case Western Reserve University.

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Gene mutations can interfere with how the body expresses genes and cause disease. To better understand this connection, researchers recently developed a model of the transcription preinitiation complex (PIC).

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Computer storage devices often use magnetic materials printed on very thin films. In this study, researchers rotated cobalt-iron alloy thin films relative to an applied magnetic field. Unexpectedly, depending on the rotation angle, a sizeable change - up to 400% - was seen in how well the material holds on to energy.

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Scientists developed a new model to describe how large, periodic bursts of plasma known as edge localized modes (ELMs) erode parts of tokamak walls. Tokamaks are devices used to study the process of fusion.

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Researchers from TAE Technologies used the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to support their fusion research. The company is working to develop the world’s first fusion device that can generate electricity and is commercially viable.