Amine functionalized graphene oxide yields laminates with an enhanced capacity to adsorb rare earth elements, improved water transport, and greater stability for effective membrane-based separation of critical minerals.

By selectively stabilizing either a right- or left-handed helical pose of its substrate, an enzyme tunes the final product.

Five PNNL innovations earned 2026 R&D 100 Awards for advances in biotechnology, manufacturing, critical minerals, and nuclear security.

Replacing commercial acid with acidic waste enables researchers to improve nickel extraction efficiency, lower projected costs, and improve process economics.

Localized gradients in magnetic fields have long-range effects on the concentration of rare earth ions in solution, facilitating field-driven extraction of critical minerals.

Studying a series of rare earth element compounds revealed differences in their magnetic behavior that will be leveraged for separations.

PNNL researchers Daniel Deng and Yehia Ibrahim join the 2025 class of National Academy of Inventors Fellows.

Soil mineral preferentially incorporates rare earth elements based on size, with implications for critical mineral extraction.

Directionally biased electrostatic interactions are the key to significantly tuning the reduction potential of iron/sulfur clusters.

Early life exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), found in smoke, has been linked to developmental problems. To study the impacts of these pollutants, PAH metabolism in infants and adults were compared.

PMedIC, the PNNL and OHSU joint research collaboration, contributes to student success and impact in biomedicine.

Researchers used a combination of sophisticated laboratory incubations and field measurements to determine the role of microbial production and consumption of methane in soils with different exposure to tidal inundation

Researchers devised a quantitative and predictive understanding of the cloud chemistry of biomass-burning organic gases helping increase the understanding of wildfires.

Reproducible workflows for binning and visualizing nuclear magnetic resonance spectra from environmental samples.

Spatial proteomics enables researchers to link protein measurements to features in the image of a tissue sample, which are lost using standard approaches.

A streamlined informatics workflow that automatically processes complex data and provides the locations of double bonds in lipids.

Hi-C metagenomics-informed phage-host infection networks detected in soil pre- and post-drying.

Soil is a massive reservoir of carbon, holding three times the amount of carbon than in the atmosphere. Soil is a massive reservoir of carbon, holding three times the amount of carbon than in the atmosphere.

Metabolism metrics provide information about biological activity and carbon cycling in rivers. Conditions in large rivers differ from smaller rivers and require adjustments to existing methods.

Scientists developed a process (or pipeline) that combined molecular probes—a specific chemical that binds to microbes carrying out a particular function—with a method that isolated these cells from their complex community.