Textile engineering researchers from North Carolina State University used neutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify a special wicking mechanism in a type of cotton yarn that allows the fibers to control the flow of liquid across certain strands.

The yarn is coated with chitosan, a compound derived from the shells of crabs, shrimp and lobsters that is commonly used in biomedical applications. It’s also coated with a catalase enzyme that extracts hydrogen and oxygen from hydrogen peroxide.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, are joining forces to advance decarbonization technologies from discovery through deployment through a new memorandum of understanding, or MOU.

Materials scientist and chemist Nancy Dudney has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, or NAE, for her groundbreaking research and development of high-performance solid-state rechargeable batteries.

Dudney is a Corporate Fellow of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She built an impressive career spanning decades as a group leader of Thin Film Ceramics and Distinguished Senior Research Staff member in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division until her retirement in 2021.

Spanning no less than three disciplines, Marie Kurz’s title — hydrogeochemist — already gives you a sense of the collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of her research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Still, those six syllables only hint at the vast web of relationships encompassed in her work.