As Laboratory Director Steve Ashby pens his last monthly column, he highlights PNNL’s accomplishments with pride and gratitude.

A breakthrough at PNNL could free friction stir from current constraints—and open the door for increased use of the advanced manufacturing technique on commercial assembly lines.

David Heldebrant was selected for the 2025 Distinguished Service Award from the American Chemical Society Division of Energy & Fuels, recognizing his impact to energy and fuels chemistry.

This summer, PNNL hosted the inaugural “As Conductive As Copper” (AC2.0) workshop, fostering a collaborative conversation on the future of the U.S. copper supply chain.

Seaweed could be a new source of critical minerals for electronics, vehicles, and buildings.

From vehicles and airplanes to solid-phase processing of metals—how Curt Lavender and his team at PNNL solve industry problems with practical ingenuity.

Researchers have developed the first coastal transport model for microplastics to understand how particles move in waterways and coastal currents.

The Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage consortium is a major effort to create superior, no-compromise batteries that replace lithium with inexpensive, domestically abundant sodium and use few—if any—critical materials.

This research helps predict how coastal forests will respond to future sea level changes which is crucial for protecting these ecosystems.

Experiments focus on catalysts for off-road vehicles that optimize the use of critical minerals while lasting longer and costing less.

The Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales: Field, Measurements, and Experiments project established a network of observational field sites across Chesapeake Bay and western Lake Erie.

Due to their inherent variability and complexity over space and time, scientists are challenged to understand the complex interactions among soil, vegetation, and water along coastal terrestrial-aquatic interfaces.

This study characterized above- and below-ground properties to explore the spatial heterogeneity of the terrestrial aquatic interface ecosystem within the Chesapeake Bay area and evaluate the major drivers of soil respiration.

CO2 separation is key for natural gas purification, but conventional techniques are high-emission processes. New research reveals a novel, doubly segmented, CO2-selective membrane that increases CO2 permeability and reduces emissions.

PNNL researchers received an award from the Materials, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) for a publication on friction riveting.

Chemical engineer Yuan Jiang is now an executive editor at Gas Science and Engineering, a cross-disciplinary journal centered on natural gases.

Ampcera has an exclusive licensing agreement with PNNL to commercially develop and license a new battery material for applications such as vehicles and personal electronics.

Led by interns from multiple DOE programs, a newly expanded dataset allows researchers to use easy-to-obtain measurements to determine the elemental composition of a promising carbon storage mineral.

A multi-institutional team of researchers systematically compared extraction techniques for characterizing plant litter composition that relies on organic matter extraction.

Sergei Kalinin, a joint appointee at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and PNNL, and Ji-Guang (Jason) Zhang, a PNNL Lab Fellow, are part of the 2024 class of National Academy of Inventors Fellows.