Facilities
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is home to a number of highly sophisticated experimental user facilities. These research laboratories are designed to serve laboratory researchers, engineers, and technical staff, as well as external researchers from universities, industries, foreign institutions and other government laboratories. The state-of-the-art facilities are shared with the scientific and technical community, providing the use of unique and specialized technology, equipment and instrumentation.
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Manufacturing Demonstration Facility
As the nation's premier research laboratory, ORNL is one of the world's most capable resources for transforming the next generation of scientific discovery into solutions for rebuilding and revitalizing America's manufacturing industries. The lab's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility provides industry access to unique research facilities that reduce the risk and enable pathways for revolutionary manufacturing processes and materials technologies. From concept to commercialization, ORNL's world-leading facilities and expertise enable research focused on reducing the energy intensity of US industry, supporting development of new products, and strengthening our nation's clean-energy economy to meet the commercial and defense needs of tomorrow.
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High Temperature Materials Laboratory
The High Temperature Materials Laboratory (HTML) is a DOE User Facility dedicated to solving materials problems that limit the efficiency and reliability of systems for power generation and energy conversion, distribution and use. The six user centers in the High Temperature Materials Laboratory specialize in materials characterization. They are dedicated to working with industry and universities to develop materials-based, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly transportation technologies that will enable the United States to use less petroleum. Technologies of interest include lightweighting and propulsion materials, thermoelectrics, materials for energy storage, and catalysts.
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Spallation Neutron Source
SNS is an accelerator-based neutron source that will provide the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. When ramped up to its full beam power of 1.4 MW, SNS will be eight times more powerful than today’s best facility. This versatile scientific tool will give researchers more detailed snapshots of the smallest samples of physical and biological materials than ever before possible. The diverse applications of neutron-scattering research will provide opportunities for experts in practically every scientific and technical field.
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(Coming Soon!)Carbon Fiber Technology CenterA new, stimulus-funded research center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help strengthen the very 'fiber' of America's automotive and energy industries.
- Oak Ridge establishes carbon fiber composites consortium
- Harper Awarded Contract for Complete State-of-the-Art Carbon Fiber Processing Line at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- ORNL receives Recovery Act funding for Carbon Fiber Technology Center
- Fourteen companies have agreed to join with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to establish the Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Composites Consortium, which will work to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercial application of new low-cost carbon fiber and composites materials in many different industry sectors.
- ORNL to install full-scale carbon fiber pilot line from Harper Int'l
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use the pilot scale carbon fiber process line, valued at $12 million, to help the lab develop lignin-based carbon fiber precursor material.
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Center for Advanced Thin-film Systems (CATS)
This user-accessible facility consists of four co-located evaluation laboratories that include a wide variety of spectroscopic, ellipsometric, and physical measurement capabilities. The facility was designed with a wide variety of optical sources and instrumentation capabilities to address the anticipated needs of photovoltaic system developers. The CATS laboratory is equipped with multiple mobile workstation platforms to permit the rapid re-configuration of experiment stations.
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Thin Film Deposition and Analytical Facilities
A fully equipped clean room facility with material deposition and analytical capabilities is available for material development studies. These facilities include a Trion Technologies ORION Plasma Enhanced CVD System, Tystar Tytan LPCVD System, Electron-Beam Evaporator, DC Magnetron Sputtering System, Trion Technologies ORACLE RIE System, Reynolds Tech Acid/Caustic Etch Bench, Filmetrics F-20 & F-40 Thin Film Measurement System, as well as a variety of surface profilometers and microscopic instruments.
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Multiprogram Research Facility
Responding to new international realities, the Department of Energy's national laboratories are supporting the effort to deliver the science and technology needed to protect U.S. homeland and national security interests worldwide. The challenge is to support DOE's mission and maximize the potential of DOE's S&T base by leveraging critical, classified national security, nonproliferation, and homeland security programs.
In the new Multiprogram Research Facility (MRF), DOE's research complex at Oak Ridge is a state-of-the-art, secure S&T facility that provides the appropriate infrastructure and environment to integrate multidisciplinary scientific capabilities for sensitive defense, nonproliferation, and homeland security activities. Begun in February 2005, the new 214,000-sq.-ft facility houses a significant upgrade in classified capabilities critical to many of DOE's research and training activities.
The MRF's mission includes support for classified projects in the Department of Energy "Work for Others" program. The new building provides classified space for research and development activities in support of weapons of mass destruction analysis; nonproliferation research, training, and operations; cyber security research and development; geospatial analysis; advanced thermal hydraulic research; inorganic membrane research and prototyping; and myriad special activities for which appropriate infrastructure is either lacking or inadequate. The MRF complex also contains chemical, biological, material, and electronics laboratories; fabrication and training spaces; supporting offices; and necessary support infrastructure. The facility's training capabilities include a 400-seat auditorium equipped to permit interactive, real-time control of outstations.
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High-Performance Computing
The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was established in 1992. In 2004 the center was designated by the Secretary of Energy as the Leadership Computing Facility for the nation, designed to provide unclassified research a resource 100 times more powerful than current capabilities.
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Oak Ridge Science & Technology Park
The Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park is all about collaboration. It's the perfect location for companies that are already collaborating with ORNL, and for those companies interested in pursuing new relationships and potential partnerships.
http://www.ornl.gov/adm/partnerships/industrial/technology_park.shtml