Who We Are

The High Temperature Materials Laboratory (HTML) is a national user facility designed to support the development of advanced materials. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Transportation Technologies in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

HTML provides researchers from U.S. industries, universities, and governmental agencies with hands-on access to a skilled staff and to a number of sophisticated, often one of-a-kind, instruments or facilities for materials characterization. Located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the 64,500 square foot building houses six "user centers," which are clusters of specialized equipment designed for specific types of properties measurements. The HTML also has a neutron beamline facility at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at ORNL and a synchrotron beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The HTML was conceived and built in the mid-1980s in response to the oil embargoes of the 1970s. The concept was to build a facility that would allow direct work with American industry, academia, and government laboratories in providing advanced high-temperature materials such as structural ceramics for energy-efficient engines. HTML's scope of work has since expanded to include other, non-high-temperature materials of interest to transportation as well as other industries.

Most, but not all, projects involve materials primarily related to the transportation industry. Ceramics, metal- and ceramic-matrix composites, lightweight materials such as aluminum and magnesium alloys, steels, and electronic materials have all been characterized at HTML.