Researchers at the Berkeley Lab have developed the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved. Scientists with [...]

In a new study, researchers demonstrate an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude in the spin coherence time of nitrogen-vacancy centers as compared with previous measurements. The findings could advance quantum sensing, enable squeezing and many-body entanglement, and open a path to simulating driven, interaction-dominated quantum many-body Hamiltonians. From brain to heart to [...]

New climate change research from the Berkeley Lab suggests that boreal forests will likely shift north and will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict. It’s difficult to imagine how a degree or two of warming will affect a location. Will it rain less? What will happen to the area’s vegetation? New [...]

In a new study, physicists from the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley used data from the ALPHA Experiment at CERN to measure antimatter gravity directly, presenting the first direct evidence of how atoms of antimatter interact with gravity. The atoms that make up ordinary matter fall down, so do antimatter atoms fall up? Do they [...]

Scientists have developed black titanium dioxide nanoparticles that are able to absorb infrared as well as visible and ultraviolet light, improving the efficiency with which black titanium dioxide can use sunlight to split water molecules for the production of hydrogen. A unique atomic-scale engineering technique for turning low-efficiency photocatalytic “white” nanoparticles of titanium dioxide into [...]

Using an ultrahigh-precision visible light microscopy technique called PALM, scientists at the Berkeley Lab have discovered a way to boost the yields of sugars for making biofuels, which should help reduce production costs. Catalysis may initiate almost all modern industrial manufacturing processes, but catalytic activity on solid surfaces is poorly understood. This is especially true [...]

A new study details how researchers genetically manipulated secondary cell walls in plants to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of sugars for biofuels. When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it’s generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material [...]

Using metamaterial surfaces, researchers were able to amplify the signal of the photonic Spin Hall Effect, making it directly observable with simple detection techniques, and control the propagation of light and circular polarization. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have once again demonstrated the incredible capabilities of [...]

Scientists from the Berkeley Lab discovered that when topological insulators are hit with a laser beam, the spin polarization of the electrons they emit can be completely controlled in three dimensions. Plain-looking but inherently strange crystalline materials called 3D topological insulators (TIs) are all the rage in materials science. Even at room temperature, a single [...]

Using an artificial atomic nuclei fabricated on graphene, a team of researchers imaged the “atomic collapse” states theorized to occur around super-large atomic nuclei. The first experimental observation of a quantum mechanical phenomenon that was predicted nearly 70 years ago holds important implications for the future of graphene-based electronic devices. Working with microscopic artificial atomic [...]

Researchers have taken a step forward towards producing artificial photosynthesis systems that would provide clean, green and renewable energy. Using pulses of X-rays from SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, researchers were able to simultaneously image at room temperature the atomic and electronic structures of photosystem II, a metalloenzyme critical to photosynthesis. From providing living cells [...]

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have developed an algorithm and a computational pipeline that combs through large sets of images and identifies tumor subtypes, helping shed light on whether tumor subtype can predict the effectiveness of therapies and allowing scientists to learn more about the genetic and molecular mechanisms that control tumor signatures. How’s this for [...]