Science Highlights | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Two-dimensional snapshot used to reconstruct the 3D image of a particle.

Saturday Night at the Movies: 3D Sneak Preview of Dancing Platinum Particles at Atomic Resolution

Three-dimensional structure of nanocrystals in solution determined with atomic resolution using a new technique.

When light is absorbed by solar cells to make electricity, electrons and “missing electrons” are generated that move through the layers of materials in typical solar cells.

New See-Through Material for Electronics

A low-cost, stable oxide film is highly conductive and transparent, rivaling its predecessors.

Perovskite-based nanowire lasers are the most efficient known.

World’s Most Efficient Nanowire Lasers

Materials with extraordinary performance in solar cells are discovered to be efficient, tunable lasers at room temperature.

The ring pattern from the new transmission X-ray diffraction analysis is from the polycrystalline nature of the alloy - in other words, it indicates that the atoms are arranged in small crystalline regions (called grains) that have many different orientations.

Finding a Needle in a Crystalline Haystack

New X-ray technique reveals the presence of one-in-a-million large crystalline regions from metals fatiguing—stabilization schemes could lead to impervious metals.

Progressively magnified images of graphene nanoribbons grown on germanium semiconductor wafers.

Growing Graphene Ribbons in One Direction

New method to fabricate graphene nanoribbon arrays on semiconductor wafers turns semimetal into semiconductor.

Snakes on a plane: This atomic-resolution simulation of a peptoid nanosheet reveals a snake-like structure never seen before. The nanosheet’s layers include a water-repelling core (yellow), peptoid backbones (white), and charged sidechains (magenta and cyan). The right corner of the nanosheet’s top layer has been “removed” to show how the backbone’s alternating rotational states give the backbones a snake-like appearance (red and blue ribbons). Surrounding water molecules are red and white.

Understanding and Predicting Self-Assembly

Newly discovered “design rule” brings nature-inspired nanostructures one step closer.

The discovery that electrically conductive, hair-like filaments on the surface of Geobacter bacteria could mark a new paradigm for the employment of biological materials in nanoscale electron devices.

Bacteria Hairs Make Excellent Electrical Wires

This discovery could lead to low-cost, non-toxic, biological components for light-weight electronics.

A vector map of the measured deflections of an atomic-sized electron beam scanned across different polar domains in the ferroelectric bismuth ferrite. The image was recorded in about a minute by the new electron microscope pixel array detector.

New High-Capability Solid-State Electron Microscope Detector Enables Novel Studies of Materials

Device allows fast, precise measurements of electric and magnetic fields at the atomic level, providing insights into the next generation of electronic, energy production, and storage materials.