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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.

Tapping mode AFM for real-time analysis of DNA hybridization on microarrays

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Eileen Jutras
Project type
Exploratory Research
Recent advances in AFM make visualization of surface/DNA and DNA/protein interactions possible. Presently, we are designing nucleic acid based microarrays for the detection of bacterial pathogens…

Mapping of the contaminants in soil thin sections

Lead Institution
Oregon State University
Principal Investigator
Oleg Povetko
Project type
Exploratory Research
Dynamic models of the transport and fate of radionuclides in ecosystems include many parameters that can not be easily estimated and often their estimates vary by many orders of magnitude. This…

Plasma Coating for Surface Passivation of Silica-coated Wafers

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Suresh Baskaran
Project type
Exploratory Research
he surface of silica coating prepared by Sol-gel process contains large amount of adsorbed water molecules. The presence of these polar molecules adversely affect the properties of the Silica…

Roughness Measurements of Microchannel Surfaces

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
David Pfund
Project type
Exploratory Research
Surface roughness may influence the heat transfer coefficients in microchannel heat exchangers, particularly in cases of boiling. Roughness may also influence flow regimes in two-phase flow. We…

Surface films on molybdenum

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
James Cowin
Project type
Exploratory Research
We are looking at surfaces of molybdenum with the scanning electron microscope, to look at the quality of overlayer films on the molybdenum and to check their chemical composition.

SEM X-ray mapping of ceramic joints

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Charles Lewinsohn
Project type
Exploratory Research
The objective is to understand the microstructure of ceramic joints fabricated by a novel method. The method was developed at PNNL and the current work involves an SBIR contract at Sienna…

Surface Characterization of Iron Bearing and Matrix Minerals

Lead Institution
Montana State University
Principal Investigator
Brent Peyton
Project type
Exploratory Research
Using Atomic Force Microscopy, the surfaces of various iron bearing and matrix minerals will be examined to determine the topography and degree of roughness. Images will be collected of the…

Surface Characterization of Iron Bearing and Matrix Minerals

Lead Institution
Montana State University
Principal Investigator
Brent Peyton
Project type
Exploratory Research
Using Atomic Force Microscopy, the surfaces of various iron bearing and matrix minerals will be examined to determine the topography and degree of roughness. Images will be collected of the…

Test mass characterization for precision gravitational tests

Lead Institution
University of Washington
Principal Investigator
Charles Hoyle
Project type
Exploratory Research
In order to accurately characterize the test masses used in our worl-leading tests of the gravitational inverse-square law at the University of Washington, we must know the surface roughness and…

57Fe Mossbauer Spectroscopic Study of Fe Redox Centers in Titanium Silicates

Lead Institution
Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Org. (ANSTO)
Principal Investigator
Victor Luca
Project type
Exploratory Research
Novel microporous titanosilicates display unique sorption and catalytic properties and are consequently being intensively studied. For instance TS-1, a member of the MFI topological family, when…

Infrared Spectroscopic Investigations of Mixed-Metal Layered Hydroxides

Lead Institution
Michigan State University
Principal Investigator
Robert Kirkpatrick
Project type
Exploratory Research
Mixed-metal layered hydroxides are among the few oxide-based materials that have significant permanent anion exchange capacity due to isomorphous substitution. They occur naturally and in cement…

Characterization of chromate reductase of Pseudomonas putida

Lead Institution
Stanford University
Principal Investigator
A Matin
Project type
Exploratory Research
A soluble chromate reductase has been purfied to homogeneity n Dr. Matin's Lab at Stanford University. It is very likely that this enzyme reduces toxic Cr(V1) to nontoxic Cr(III). to…

Bonding and electron density distributions in layered silicate minerals

Lead Institution
Sandia National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Randy Cygan
Project type
Exploratory Research
Layered silicate minerals play an important role in the transport/fixation of radionuclide contaminants. Interlayer charge distributions are know to have a substantial effect on the cation exchange…

The electronic structure of LiNb03 polymorphs

Lead Institution
Sandia National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
David Teter
Project type
Exploratory Research
The recent discover of the first esperimentally verifed oxide in the inverse perovskite structure has led to varied theoretical efforts to explain it. Perovskites of the form AB03 typically have…

epr of lithium polymer battery electrolyte

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Peter Rieke
Project type
Exploratory Research
brief spectral look at epr spectra of lithium polymer battery electrolyte

Determination of Iron Speciation in H2S Treated Sediment

Lead Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Principal Investigator
Kirk Cantrell
Project type
Exploratory Research
Research is being conducted to determine the effectiveness of H2S treatment of vadose zone sediments as a method to treat reducible contaminants such as chromate, in situ. We have conducted two long…