Efficient solar cells require materials that absorb as much light as possible. One approach is to cover a surface in tiny wires -- dramatically increasing the surface area, but this material must be accessed quickly and affordably.

Reducing the nation’s imported oil requirements could be done using solar cells that act like green leaves, capturing sunlight and creating energy. Instead of using chlorophyll, certain low-cost solar cells use a synthetic dye, but these cells produce less electricity than desired.

Every moment, Mother Nature turns sunlight and water into energy without using extreme temperatures, high pressures, or rare metals. Researchers would like to build molecular factories that mimic these processes.

The safety aspects of lithium-ion batteries – will my laptop, car, or iPhone catch fire? – are worthy to ponder in this day of lithium-ion battery popularity. Although thin separators inside the batteries melt when the internal temperature reaches a certain point, successful shutdown is not guaranteed.

Creating mass-market devices that turn wasted heat into needed electricity could lower the nation’s need for imported oil. Increased efficiency demands designer materials that transmit electrons, but not heat.

A fossil-fuel-free way to produce electricity is with fuel cells powered by hydrogen. The challenge to using these cells more widely is creating a material that can store and release hydrogen when needed.

From the gasoline in your car’s tank to the plastic fork in your takeout dinner, catalysts  are widely used in the chemical and petroleum industries. Improving catalyzed processes requires understanding what happens inside a catalyst and borrowing from the burgeoning field of evolutionary biology.

Whether inside a nuclear reactor or outside a space satellite, materials in a highly radioactive environment continually change as the atoms shift, form defects, and heal in response to the radiation. To understand and control these defects, scientists need simulations to study the defects’ response to different scenarios.

Fueling cars and jets with domestically produced butanol, a biofuel with more energy per gallon than ethanol, requires engines that can best harness that released energy. Building such engines requires understanding the thousands of reactions that occur when butanol combusts.