An interdisciplinary team has developed a way to track how particles charge and discharge at the nanoscale, an advance that will lead to better batteries for all sorts of mobile applications.

The White House announced $50 million in funding for ‘Battery500’, a five year effort, as part of a package of initiatives to accelerate adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S.

Now the startup, Lumeras LLC, has a viable commercial product, and scientists have a new tool for studying the behavior of complex materials.

Yi Cui and colleagues have developed new ways to improve hydrogen production and rechargeable zinc batteries.

A new device at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory allows researchers to explore the properties and dynamics of molecules with circularly polarized, or spiraling, light.

Many technologies rely upon nanomaterials that can absorb or release atoms quickly and repeatedly. New work provides a first look inside these phase-changing nanoparticles.

Adding pressure could improve the performance of solar cells made of perovskites, a promising photovoltaic material.

Wrapping silicon anode particles in custom-fit graphene cages could solve two major obstacles to using silicon in high-capacity lithium ion batteries.

SLAC and Stanford scientists discovered that a single layer of tiny diamonds increases an electron gun’s emission 13,000 fold. Potential applications include electron microscopes and semiconductor manufacturing.

SIMES scientists have discovered how to make the electrical wiring on top of solar cells nearly invisible to incoming light. The new design, which uses silicon nanopillars to hide the wires, could dramatically boost solar-cell efficiency.

SLAC, Stanford scientists discover that bombarding and stretching a catalyst opens holes on its surface and makes it much more reactive. Potential applications include making hydrogen fuel.