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Physical and Life Sciences
New ultralight silver nanowire aerogel is boon for energy and electronics industries
A new ultralight silver nanowire aerogel could be a boost to the energy and electronics industries. Metal foams (or porous metals) represent a new class of materials with unique properties including lightweight, high surface area, high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have created a new…
Scientists estimate death rates from air pollution caused by the impact of climate change
A recent study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators is the first to use an ensemble of global chemistry climate models to estimate death rates from air pollution caused by the impact of climate change on pollutant concentrations. Ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter are detrimental to human health. Their future…
Atomic-scale simulations go the distance to resolve the 'jiggle, wiggle' of metal strength
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have dived down to the atomic scale to resolve every "jiggle and wiggle" of atomic motion that underlies metal strength. In a first-of-its-kind series of computer simulations focused on metal tantalum, the team predicted that, on reaching certain critical conditions of straining, metal plasticity (the ability to…
LLNL researchers to study soil microbiome
A new Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) initiative to study how the soil microbiome (microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria, microfauna and viruses) controls the mechanisms that regulate organic matter stabilization in soil can move forward after the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research awarded an LLNL team $2.5…
A solid pathway toward hydrogen storage
An inexpensive and useful layered superconductor compound also may be an efficient solid-state material for storing hydrogen. The Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Materials Network (EMN) consortium approach to accelerate material discovery and development is starting to pay off. Through theory and experimentation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists…
Twenty summers of nuclear forensics and actinide science
In 1998, the Actinide Sciences Summer Program began training the next generation of actinide scientists (those who study elements 89 through 103 in an effort to identify the origin and behavior of nuclear materials). On August 5, this longstanding program, renamed the Nuclear Forensics Summer Internship Program (NFSIP) in 2008, bid farewell to its 20th class. As a…
2017 Research Slam is a hit
On Sept. 7, 2017, 12 postdoc finalists of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's 2017 Research Slam! talked for three minutes each about their work before a distinguished panel of judges. The postdocs were competing for monetary prizes of two, three and four thousand dollars for third, second and first place winners, but perhaps the biggest prize was the chance to…
Lab wins six DOE commercialization grants
For two years running, Lab researchers have exceeded expectations for capturing Department of Energy (DOE) Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) grants. In 2016, the first year of the TCF competition, Rich Rankin, the head of the Lab’s Innovation and Partnerships Office (IPO), expected LLNL might win one proposal. The Lab won two. This year, Rankin and others hoped Lab…
Lab researchers achieve '4D printed' material
For the first time, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have successfully 3D printed composite silicone materials that are flexible, stretchable and possess shape memory behavior, a discovery that could be used to create form-fitting cushioning activated by body heat, such as in a helmet or shoe. As described in their paper published online by…
Using synthetic biology for chlamydia vaccines
A multidisciplinary scientific team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has made significant advances in developing a vaccine for chlamydia using synthetic biology, sponsored by a two-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. They detail their work in a recent paper published in the Journal of Biochemistry (JBC): "Cell-Free Production of a Functional…
Lab physicist elected SPIE senior member
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicist Regina Soufli has been elected as an SPIE senior member. SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, bestows the senior member designation on individuals who have distinguished themselves through their professional experience and their active involvement within both the optics community and SPIE. Soufli…
Unlocking the History of the Solar System
Detailed chronologic investigations performed by Livermore researchers using newly developed techniques to precisely date individual samples with confidence indicated that all the samples solidified within a narrow window of time.
The Widest, Deepest Images of a Dynamic Universe
Unaided and under the darkest conditions, the human eye can see only about 9,000 stars around Earth. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)—looking at only half of the night sky—is expected to detect an estimated 17 billion stars and discover so much more over the course of a 10-year mission.
Fast heat flows in warm dense aluminum
Thermal conductivity is one of the most crucial physical properties of matter when it comes to understanding heat transport, hydrodynamic evolution and energy balance in systems ranging from astrophysical objects to fusion plasmas. In the warm dense matter (WDM) regime, experimental data are very rare, so many theoretical models remain untested. But LLNL researchers have…
Reducing reflectivity in solar cells and optics with micro- and nanoscale structures
When it comes to solar cells, less is more -- the less their surfaces reflect a sun’s rays, the more energy can be generated. A typical fix to the problem of reflectivity is an anti-reflective coating, but that might not always be the best solution, depending on the application. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have come up with guidelines for an…
Perfecting the spider's art to support NIF targets
Materials scientist Xavier Lepró can’t grow his "spider webs" fast enough to swing from skyscrapers like Spiderman, but he can best another web-maker, Mother Nature, when it comes to consistency. Lepró helped pioneer the spinning of spider-silk-like yarns for use in suspending target capsules inside NIF hohlraums. These yarns are even stronger than the silks spun by the…
Carbon nanotubes worth their salt
Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) scientists, in collaboration with researchers at Northeastern University, have developed carbon nanotube pores that can exclude salt from seawater. The team also found that water permeability in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with diameters smaller than a nanometer (0.8 nm) exceeds that of wider carbon nanotubes by an order of magnitude. The nanotubes,…
Using real-world data, Lab scientists answer key questions about an atmospheric release
In the event of an accidental radiological release from a nuclear power plant reactor or industrial facility, tracing the aerial plume of radiation to its source in a timely manner could be a crucial factor for emergency responders, risk assessors and investigators. Utilizing data collected during an atmospheric tracer experiment three decades ago at the Diablo Canyon…
Lab scientist takes a leap in the dark
He could have been a professional trombone player in a jazz ensemble or a chef specializing in New Mexican cuisine. However, Michael Schneider took a very different path. He became an explorer looking for the meaning of the universe in the form of dark energy. With the help of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), due to come online in 2019, he plans to see more…
Shock front probed by protons
A shock front is usually considered as a simple discontinuity in density or pressure. Yet in strongly shocked gases, the atoms are ionized into electrons and ions. The large difference in the electron pressure across the shock front can generate a strong electric field. In experimental campaigns using the OMEGA EP laser at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at the…
