Feature Articles

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a novel experimental platform called OpeN-AM to study additively manufactured metal in real time using beams of neutrons. The experimental system features a robotic arm that 3D-prints metal welds to create complex shapes and objects. The entire process is automated by special software that controls the robotic arm and determines to make neutron measurements. Understanding how welds form and behave at the microscopic scale will provide insights into optimizing the technology more mainstream industrial use.

To cool quantum computing components, researchers use machines called dilution refrigerators. Researchers and engineers from the SQMS Center are building Colossus, the largest, most powerful refrigerator at millikelvin temperatures ever made. The new machine will enable new physics and quantum computing experiments.

On their way to market, technologies often reach what is called the “valley of death,” the point where a researcher or institution has developed a promising idea, has received funding through grants, and then runs out of cash to move the idea beyond the laboratory. How much easier would it be if the private sector found investors and raised capital, leaving research scientists free to do what they do best? Idaho National Laboratory is on a new path of exploration, as it has executed multiple agreements with Innovyz USA, a Chicago-based company that works with universities and laboratories to find new technologies ready for commercialization.

Sandia National Laboratories engineers are working on a device that would help ensure captured carbon dioxide stays deep underground — a critical component of carbon sequestration as part of a climate solution.

Scientists have developed a qubit platform formed by freezing neon gas into a solid, spraying electrons from a light bulb’s filament onto it, and trapping a single electron there. This system shows great promise as an ideal building block for quantum computers.

What are quantum repeaters, and how do they work? This explainer lays what these devices do, their role in entanglement swapping, and how the Q-NEXT quantum center is advancing the technology.

The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense teamed up to create a series of weld filler materials that could dramatically improve high-strength steel repair in vehicles, bridges and pipelines. This novel weld wire could help revitalize America’s aging infrastructures, which in 2021 received a C- grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers.