This issue...
News in Brief
View from the Inside
Wow! Fermilab Confirms the Tau
Superweld
Working Science
People
About
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This issue...
News in Brief
View from the Inside
Wow! Fermilab Confirms the Tau
Superweld
Working
Science
People
About
Subscribe Free
This issue...
News in Brief
View from the Inside
Wow! Fermilab Confirms the Tau
Superweld
Working Science
People
About
Subscribe Free
|
News in Brief
New Molecular Level Insights into Plastic Battery Materials
A promising way to store electrical energy is the "plastic battery"a lightweight system based on the electrochemistry of polymer/lithium-ion solutions. These solutions, known as solid polymer electrolytes, or SPE's, exhibit behavior especially critical to battery operation and optimization. However, the nature of lithium ion transport in these systems, a critical factor in battery performance, remains poorly understood.
An important advance in improving this understanding was made recently by Professor Jim Selser at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, when he used laser light scattering and viscometry measurements to reveal that the SPE is not the uniform and featureless medium it was thought to be. Instead, it is a highly structured random network formed by extensive inter-and intra-polymer connections. This discovery has raised new questions about how the structure and dynamic behavior in these unique systems impacts lithium ion transport, and ultimately, battery performance. This work was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences/Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division.
Contact: Jim Selser, University of Nevada, selser@physics.unlv.edu
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The Human Genome Project and the Department of Energy
Did you know that the Human Genome Project was begun in 1986 by DOE scientists as a way to explore mutations caused by exposure from radiation? Read all about it in a Special Report from the Office of Science.
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National Academy of Sciences Joins PubSCIENCE!
PubSCIENCE, the Department of Energy's website for accessing peer-reviewed scientific literature, recently announced that the National Academy of Sciences has joined the PubSCIENCE partnership of more than twenty-five scientific and technical journal publishers. The addition of NAS in this partnership represents the continued growth of a new era of information management and availability.
The National Academy of Sciences publishes one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which covers the biological, physical, and social sciences. PubSCIENCE users will now be able to search PNAS citations from the present time forward in conjunction with citations from more than 1,000 other scientific and technical journals.
With a single query, PubSCIENCE users can search more than 1.8 million records for information from publicly or privately funded research in the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines. In addition to the citations provided by the primary publishers of scientific and technical journal literature, more than one million multi-source journal citations dating back over 25 years from the DOE's Energy Science and Technology Database (EDB) are also available. This search capability is available free of charge to scientists, researchers, academia, industry, and the public.
PubSCIENCE was developed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), supported by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. PubSCIENCE is part of a suite of Internet tools that give the public access to the most comprehensive collection of energy, science, and technology information in the world.
Contact: Walter Warnick, OSTI, (301) 903-7996, walter.warnick@science.doe.gov
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Catalysts Are Like People
It's the defects that make them interesting. Increasingly stringent emission requirements for cars of the future will
soon make existing automotive catalytic converter technologies obsolete.
Nano-crystalline ceria, CeO2, is widely used in automotive catalytic converters as a catalyst support to maintain the supply of oxygen vital to the catalytic function, but until recently there has been no adequate explanation of how it works or how to improve its properties.
Recent neutron diffraction experiments carried out at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Laboratory have revealed the presence of a high density of defects in the crystalline structure of the ceria that are directly tied to the function of the catalyst support. Specifically, the research group led by Professors Takeshi Egami and John Vohs of the University of Pennsylvania found that the atomic defects (oxygen ions moving out of the correct sites and moving into wrong
sites) play a key role in storing and releasing oxygen in and out of ceria, and that maintaining and regenerating these defects is the key to the durability of the system. They have also explained why adding some zirconia, ZrO2, leads to a more durable catalyst support. Neutron diffraction results show that zirconia stabilizes defects and facilitates defect regeneration.
This fundamental discovery could lead to development of even more durable catalytic systems. This research is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences/Chemical Sciences program.
Contacts: Takeshi Egami, University of Pennsylvania, egami@seas.upenn.edu; John Vohs, University of Pennsylvania, vohs@seas.upenn.edu
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Carbon Capture
Ever wonder if the carbon dioxide that keeps pouring into our atmosphere could be captured and turned into something useful? The answer is at your fingertips in a report published on the web by the Office of Science. The report, Carbon Sequestration Research and Development, describes advanced options for chemically or biologically transforming carbon dioxide into environmentally safe, potentially marketable products. The idea of sequestering or storing carbon remains an unexplored option to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The report outlines a research agenda to implement several carbon sequestration options in the next 10 to 50 years.
This work was supported by DOE's Office of Science. Print copies of this report can be obtained from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at (865) 576-8401.
More information on carbon sequestration and research programs may be found at the Office of Science's Carbon Sequestration webpage, and the
Office of Fossil Energy's Carbon Sequestration: Expanding Global Options webpage.
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