Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory are now able to capture the moment less than one trillionth of a second a particle of light hits a solar cell and becomes energy, and describe the physics of the charge carrier and atom movement for the first time. The generation and dissociation of bound electron and hole pairs, namely excitons, are key processes in solar cell and photovoltaic technologies, yet it is challenging ...

  Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered a type of Weyl semimetal, a material that opens the way for further study of Weyl fermions, a type of massless elementary particle hypothesised by high-energy particle theory and potentially useful for creating high-speed electronic circuits and quantum computers. 

A research project led by the Critical Materials Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub, has identified agents for the separation of rare-earth metals that are potentially much less costly and better-performing than those currently used. Through the use of computer–aided molecular design, a collaboration of researchers from the Supramolecular Design Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Ames Laboratory, and Idaho National...

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered a topological metal, PtSn4, with an electronic structure that may lead to energy efficient computers with increased processor speeds and data storage. The electrons in topological quantum materials can travel close to speed of light thanks to unique property called Dirac dispersion. Up until now, only isolated points, called Dirac points, with relatively small numbers o...