News Releases

Physical Sciences

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 1-Jul-2025 01:10 ET (1-Jul-2025 05:10 GMT/UTC)

Nanofibers yield stronger, tougher carbon fiber composites

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an innovative new technique using carbon nanofibers to enhance binding in carbon fiber and other fiber-reinforced polymer composites – an advance likely to improve structural materials for automobiles, airplanes and other applications that require lightweight and strong materials.

Journal: Advanced Functional Materials

Maximal entanglement sheds new light on particle creation

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have shown that particles produced in collimated sprays called jets retain information about their origins in subatomic particle smashups.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Study tracks chromium chemistry in irradiated molten salts

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory report that radiation-induced chemical reactions may help mitigate the corrosion of metals in a new type of nuclear reactor cooled by molten salts.

Journal: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Gas injection setup in new fusion system is guided by public-private research

DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have determined that six gas valves provide the best protection against plasma disruptions in SPARC, a next-generation, experimental fusion system. By refining the setup for the fusion vessel’s massive gas injection system, researchers are ensuring that disruptions — sudden jets of plasma that can damage the fusion vessel’s inner walls — are controlled efficiently, paving the way for safer, more robust fusion power plants.

Journal: Nuclear Fusion
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, DOE/US Department of Energy

Moiré than meets the eye

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have discovered that phasons, low-temperature quasiparticles found in crystal lattices, enable interlayer excitons to move at very low temperatures, when motion should stop. In addition to contributing to foundational materials science knowledge, this discovery could help improve the stability of quantum technologies, such as using excitons as qubits.

Rising Stars: PPPL researchers honored in 2024 Physics of Plasmas Early Career Collection

DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Physics of Plasmas Early Career Collection will feature journal articles from Frances Kraus, Jason Parisi and Willca Villafana.

Web search formulas offer a first step for protecting critical infrastructure

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists are exploring how web search engine technology might also keep the lights on, the water running and the trains moving.

Funder: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

New computer code could lead to simpler, less costly stellarators for fusion power

DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Physicists have created a new computer code that could speed up the design of the complicated magnets that shape the plasma in stellarators, making the systems simpler and more affordable to build.

Journal: Nuclear Fusion
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy

Scientists discover new heavy-metal molecule ‘berkelocene’

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have discovered “berkelocene,” the first organometallic molecule to be characterized containing the heavy element berkelium. The breakthrough disrupts long-held theories about the chemistry of the elements that follow uranium in the periodic table.

Journal: Science

A new way to engineer composite materials

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study led by researchers at Berkeley Lab outlines a way to engineer pseudo-bonds in materials. Instead of forming chemical bonds, which is what makes epoxies and other composites so tough, the chains of molecules entangle in a way that is fully reversible.

Journal: Advanced Materials

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