Through two U.S. Department of Energy funding calls awarded in 2020, PNNL is partnering with industry and academia to advance battery materials and processes.
Scientists have created a single-crystal, nickel-rich cathode that is hardier and more efficient than before—important progress on the road to better lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
An international team used PNNL microscopy to answer questions about how uranium dioxide—used in nuclear power plants—might behave in long-term storage.
A new radiation-resistant material for the efficient capture of noble gases xenon and krypton makes it safer and cheaper to recycle spent nuclear fuel.
Researchers at PNNL have developed a software tool that helps universities, small business, and corporate developers to design better batteries with new materials that hold more energy.
A chemistry paper on the used nuclear fuel recycling process, led by PNNL lab fellow Gregg Lumetta, ranked 18th in Scientific Reports for downloads in 2019
PNNL and WSU researchers have improved the performance and life cycle of sodium-ion battery technology to narrow the gap with some lithium-ion batteries.
Researchers at PNNL have come up with a novel way to use silicon as an energy storage ingredient, replacing the graphite in electrodes. Silicon can hold 10 times the electrical charge per gram, but it comes with problems of its own.
PNNL and Argonne researchers developed and tested a chemical process that successfully captures radioactive byproducts from used nuclear fuel so they could be sent to advanced reactors for destruction while also producing electrical power.
Scientists have uncovered a root cause of the growth of needle-like structures—known as dendrites and whiskers—that plague lithium batteries, sometimes causing a short circuit, failure, or even a fire.
PNNL researchers have created a chemical cocktail that could help electric cars power their way through extreme temperatures where current lithium-ion batteries don’t operate as efficiently as needed.
PNNL researchers demonstrate how the excitation of oxygen atoms that contributes to better performance of a lithium-ion battery also triggers a process that leads to damage, explaining a phenomenon that has been a mystery to scientists.
It’s hot in there! PNNL researchers take a close, but nonradioactive, look at metal particle formation in a nuclear fuel surrogate material. What they found will help fill knowledge gaps and could lead to better nuclear fuel designs.
Josef "Pepa" Matyas, a materials scientist in PNNL’s Nuclear Sciences Division, has been elected a fellow of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). He will be recognized at the ACerS annual meeting on September 30, 2019, in Portland, Ore.
