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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. 

EMSL projects displayed on the EMSL web site project page reflect project abstracts and information migrated to this page before April 30, 2024. To review current and past EMSL user projects, visit EMSL Science Central.™ 

 

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

Salt Cake Waste Fractional Crystallization and Displacement Washing

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Gary Josephson
Project type
Exploratory Research
New methods to separate sodium salts of nitrate, nitrite, carbonate, and sulfate from salt-cake waste at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington State will be investigated. These salts make up the bulk of…

Surface Assessment of BxCy Thin Film on Si

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
April Carman
Project type
Exploratory Research
Two diode devices obtained from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, will be studied with respect to surface morphology, stoichiometry and think layer thickness via scanning electron microscopy.

Electroforming Copper

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Glen Dunham
Project type
Exploratory Research
Ultrapure copper components will be created by electroplating.

XPS investigations of transition metal doped oxide semiconductors

Lead Institution
Boise State University
Principal Investigator
Alex Punnoose
Project type
Exploratory Research
In a recent paper, accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters, we have shown that tin dioxide when doped with less than or equal to 1% cobalt produces room temperature ferromagnetism…

Modeling Dynamically and Spatially Complex Materials

Lead Institution
Cornell University
Principal Investigator
Richard Hennig
Project type
Exploratory Research
The stability and dynamics of complex materials is an important problem in materials science. The specific problems of interest in our research include the martensitic phase transformations of…

Effects of Ice-Clearing Chemicals

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Elizabeth Stephens
Project type
Exploratory Research
SEM analysis of exposed coupons from the field.

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…

Aging of lean NOX traps

Lead Institution
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Bruce Bunting
Project type
Exploratory Research
Lean NOX traps (LNT) ard one of the promising ways of catalytically reducing NOX from lean burn engines, such as diesels. The major problem with these devices is durability. ORNL is currently…

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…