SLAC topics

Energy sciences RSS feed

One of the most urgent challenges of our time is discovering how to generate the energy and products we need sustainably, without compromising the well-being of future generations by depleting limited resources or accelerating climate change. SLAC pursues this goal on many levels.

Studies of atomic-level processes

Animation
As this animation shows, polaronic distortions start very small and rapidly expand outward in all directions to a diameter of...
Animation of polaronic distortions expanding in an atomic lattice
Illustration

An illustration shows polarons – fleeting distortions in a material’s atomic lattice ––in a promising next-generation energy material, lead hybrid perovskite.

Polarons, bubbles of distortion in a perovskite lattice.
News Feature

SLAC and Stanford partner with two Illinois universities to create the Center for Quantum Sensing and Quantum Materials, which aims to unravel mysteries associated...

Illustration of quantum processes
Press Release

Adding polymers and fireproofing to a battery’s current collectors makes it lighter, safer and about 20% more efficient.

Conceptual illustration of advantages of redesigned current collector.
News Feature

Daniel Ratner, head of SLAC’s machine learning initiative, explains the lab’s unique opportunities to advance scientific discovery through machine learning.

Physicist Daniel Ratner.
News Feature

For decades Z-X Shen has ridden a wave of curiosity about the strange behavior of electrons that can levitate magnets.

Portrait of Stanford and SLAC Professor Z-X Shen
News Feature

Theory suggests that quantum critical points may be analogous to black holes as places where all sorts of strange phenomena can exist in a...

Illustration of changes in charge stripes as a superconductor approaches a quantum critical point
Illustration

Researchers used SLAC’s ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) as an electron camera to take snapshots of a three-atom-thick layer of a promising material as it...

UED electron camera takes snapshots of dynamic ripples.
News Feature

They discovered the messy environment of a chemical reaction can actually change the shape of a catalytic nanoparticle in a way that makes it...

Illustration of catalyst nanoparticle and car with exhaust emissions
News Feature

The advance opens a path toward a new generation of logic and memory devices that could be 10,000 times faster than today's.

Fanciful illustration based on electron orbitals
News Feature

Turning a brittle oxide into a flexible membrane and stretching it on a tiny apparatus flipped it from a conducting to an insulating state...

Close up of strain pattern produced by stretching membrane
News Feature

Hitting molecules with two photons of light at once set off unexpected processes that were captured in detail with SLAC’s X-ray laser. Scientists say...

Closeup image of molecular movie frames