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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.

Analysis of Clays Reacted with Simulated Hanford Tank Waste

Lead Institution
University of Arizona
Principal Investigator
Sunkyung Choi
Project type
Exploratory Research
As part of an EMSP-funded study, we have reacted clay minerals (illite, vermiculite, montmorillonite and kaolinite) in batch systems with synthetic solutions characteristic of tank waste leachate at…

Molecular Beam Epitaxy Growth of Barium Strotium Titanate

Lead Institution
Idaho National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
James (Bill) Rogers
Project type
Exploratory Research
Use molecular beam epitaxy for the deposition of barium strontium titanate thin films. Deposition on Pt substrates will allow formation of capacitor structures for measurement of electrical…

Determining the Phase Behavior of polarizable Water Models

Lead Institution
Princeton University
Principal Investigator
Athanassios Panagiotopoulos
Project type
Exploratory Research
Molecular simulation is used as a tool in the understanding of macroscopic observations from microscopic events. However, the results of a simulation are dependent on the underlying potential…

Determining the Phase Behavior of polarizable Water Models

Lead Institution
Princeton University
Principal Investigator
Athanassios Panagiotopoulos
Project type
Exploratory Research
Molecular simulation is used as a tool in the understanding of macroscopic observations from microscopic events. However, the results of a simulation are dependent on the underlying potential…

Radical Mechanisms for Antibiotic and Herbicide Biosynthesis

Lead Institution
Washington State University
Principal Investigator
Susan Wang
Project type
Exploratory Research
Antibiotic resistance is a major public health issue; hospital-acquired infections are now the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. To address this problem, new antibiotics for…

Studies of the effect of particle size on LA/ICP/MS of Heterogeneous Samples

Lead Institution
University of Florida
Principal Investigator
James Winefordner
Project type
Exploratory Research
We will be using various sample presentation methods combined with a particle impactor to control the size distribution of particles produced by laser ablation of heterogeneous soild samples and to…

Characterization of Mn Oxidation State with Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Edgar Buck
Project type
Exploratory Research
A number of Hanford?s waste storage tanks contain organic complexants that increase the solubility of radioactive strontium (Sr90) and transuranic (TRU) elements. Before this liquid fraction of the…

Immobilizing Enzymes for Useful Service

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Michael Perkins
Project type
Exploratory Research
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have discovered a method to harness the power of enzymes by successfully immobilizing high…

Effect of Porosity and Surface Finish on Whisker Growth and Morphology

Lead Institution
Washington State University
Principal Investigator
Uttara Sahaym
Project type
Exploratory Research
Pb free coatings of electronic component leads and lead frames bring up the reliability issues of these components since pure Sn platings are highly prone to spontaneous whisker formation…

HP Itanium II Cluster Software Development and Application Porting

Lead Institution
Hewlett-Packard Company
Principal Investigator
Werner Hahn
Project type
Exploratory Research
This team will continue work on the development and testing of the HP Cluster Administration Package (CAP) software currently used on the EMSL HPCS2 computer system. Work will be concentrated in the…

Analysis of Iron Mineralogy of clay sediments exposed to reducing conditions

Lead Institution
Idaho National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
David Cooper
Project type
Exploratory Research
Iron associated with sedimentary iron oxide and clay minerals is a ubiquitous source of Fe(3) for assimilatory and dissimilatory microbial Fe-reduction. Previous data has shown that (i) microbial…

3-D Imaging of the photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides

Lead Institution
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Principal Investigator
Ronald Mackenzie
Project type
Exploratory Research
The aim is to obtain a 3-D imaging of Rhodobacter sphaeroides as part of a team effort to make an "electronic cell" Alice Dohnalkova will obtain electron microscope images of the organism…

Fabrication of Nanoelectrode Array base on Aligned Carbon Nanotube

Lead Institution
Boston College
Principal Investigator
Yi Tu
Project type
Exploratory Research
We have synthesized the carbon nanotube array on conducting substrates at Boston College. We need to use electrochemical instrument and SEM at EMSL to evaluate the property of carbon nanotubes for…

Alpha Project

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
David Camp
Project type
Exploratory Research
The Alpha Project employs a multidisciplinary approach that focuses on the prediction of quantitative events in a biological system through the investigation of functional genomics in combination…

NCI-III

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
David Camp
Project type
Exploratory Research
The first phase of this project focuses on following 5 specific milestones agreed to by the review committee. Scientific milestone 1: Demonstrate the ability to process and analyze soluble stable…