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Projects

As a scientific user facility, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) provides expertise, instrumentation, and resources to 250 projects each year. 

Projects displayed below reflect information and abstracts that were published before April 30, 2024. To review current EMSL user projects, visit Science Central™.

  • Projects beginning at or after given date.
    Projects ending at or before given date.

Enhancing Molecular Graphics Display

Lead Institution
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Principal Investigator
Robert Lewis
Project type
Exploratory Research
This project seeks to develop a molecular graphics visualization system that is capable of visualizing quatities in addition to molecular postions such as velocities, accelerations, and uncertainties.

Testing of carbon based materials for hydrogen storage

Lead Institution
University of Washington
Principal Investigator
Aaron Feaver
Project type
Exploratory Research
The proposed research will involve utilization of Yong Wang's equipment to determine hydrogen storage capacity of various carbon based materials. The samples will be prepared by the University…

Computational Investigation of Acid Base, Surface Complexation, and Oxidation/Reduction Reaction Mechanisms on Iron Oxide and Iron Silicate Surfaces (Felmy Rustad BES, PNNL SCOPE #22130).

Lead Institution
Washington State University
Principal Investigator
Andrew Felmy
Project type
Exploratory Research
This project is directed at providing a molecular scale understanding of surface complexation reactions occurring at oxide, oxyhydroxide, and silicate mineral surfaces through the use of molecular…

Chalcogenide Surface Science

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Bradley Johnson
Project type
Exploratory Research
Chalcogenide nanowires have been observed to form on soda lime glass and fused quartz substrates. These materials have potential application for analytical and photonic devices. Further research is…

Characterization of Cr(III) Solid Phases

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Dhanpat Rai
Project type
Exploratory Research
As a part of an EMSP project, we are developing thermodynamic data for trivalent chromium solid and aqueous species for use in developing technologies to remove Cr from HLW tanks. Our preliminary…

Charge Separation Kinetics in the ?-Cr2O3/?-Fe2O3 System

Lead Institution
Central Washington University
Principal Investigator
David Laman
Project type
Exploratory Research
Thin nano-films of the ?-Cr2O3/?-Fe2O3 system are currently being grown in EMSL. As a result of their nanometer scale dimensions, these films have potential as high-efficiency photoinduced charge…

Surface cleanliness of Si wafer after laser treatment

Lead Institution
Washington State University
Principal Investigator
Louis Scudiero
Project type
Exploratory Research
The samples are silicon coupons (1cm square or smaller) that were laser irradiated. This process is supposed to remove hydrocarbon contaminants essentially and leave behind a clean Si surface. …

XPS studies of coablt phthalocyanine thin films

Lead Institution
Washington State University
Principal Investigator
Kerry Hipps
Project type
Exploratory Research
Dense well-ordered monolayers of cobalt(II) phthalocyanine, CoPc, on Au(111) have been made and studied by our group using XPS, UPS, and STM. These films have all been grown by thermal deposition in…

Surface Characterization of Calcium Phosphates

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Wendy Shaw
Project type
Exploratory Research
Determination of calcium phosphate phases are important in many biomineralization processes from nucleation to growth to inhibition. The factors controlling phase in materials development are…

Mossbauer Spectroscopic Investigations of Fe Doped SnO2 powders

Lead Institution
Boise State University
Principal Investigator
Alex Punnoose
Project type
Exploratory Research
Recently we have successfully developed Fe doped SnO2 which are ferromagnetic and semiconducting at room temperature. Our detailed structural and morphological studies using x-ray diffraction and…

Electronic structure study of platinum clusters

Lead Institution
CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Principal Investigator
Alessandro Fortunelli
Project type
Exploratory Research
Edo Apra has been invited as a visiting scientist within the Molecular Modeling Laboratory at the Institute for the Physical-Chemical Processes (IPCF) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR)…

SEM of protein assisted calcium phosphate nucleation

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Wendy Shaw
Project type
Exploratory Research
Proteins are often thought to aid in biomineralization and nucleation of the mineral is one process that some proteins have been seen to contribute to. To date, amelogenin, a key component in enamel…

Chemical Discovery Through Advanced Computing

Lead Institution
University of Tennessee
Principal Investigator
Robert Harrison
Project type
Exploratory Research
We plan to model using classical and quantum approaches the novel electronic and optical properties of single molecule PPV (MPV) systems on glass substrates. This is in collaboration with…

size selected gas-phase soot aerosol oxidation

Lead Institution
University of Maryland, College Park
Principal Investigator
Michael Zachariah
Project type
Exploratory Research
We have been doing size selected gas-phase soot aerosol oxidation studies where we electrostatically separate soot particles extracted from a combustion source. We then measure the kinetics of…

Photon-Stimulated Desorption of Cations from Ionic Solutions

Lead Institution
Georgia Institute of Technology
Principal Investigator
Janine Captain (Herring)
Project type
Exploratory Research
The most basic task in understanding heterogeneous reactions is to understand the states of the reactants that take part in the proposed reactions. Ionized or solvated species (Cl-) will behave much…

Arabidopsis thaliana

Lead Institution
Max-Planck-Institut fur Molekulare Pflanzenphysiologie, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Phys
Principal Investigator
Martina Schad
Project type
Exploratory Research
Arabidopsis is a full sequenced organism which is favored used for plant research. Since the vascular bundle is an organ of vitally importance in plants, not only for the transport of water and…