Enabling Capabilities

Enabling Capabilities

The DOE Office of Science (SC) is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the U.S., providing more than 40 percent of total funding in this area. Sandia has active research programs funded by the SC Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Biological & Environmental Research (BER), and Fusion Energy Sciences (FES). This work is foundational to many mission areas at Sandia from energy to nuclear weapons to national security generally. The Office of Science is renowned for its ability to build and operate user facilities to enable fundamental research that are open to researchers from around the world on the basis of peer reviewed proposals.

Basic Energy Sciences

The Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program supports fundamental research focused in the natural sciences—in areas of direct relevance to DOE missions within chemical, condensed matter, materials, and geological sciences. The BES program plans, constructs, and operates major scientific user facilities to serve researchers worldwide. Sandia has significant BES activities in materials sciences, chemical sciences, and geosciences, hosting the Solid State Lighting Science (SSLS) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) as well as two BES user facilities—the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT, joint with Los Alamos National Laboratory) and the Combustion Research Facility (CRF).

• Materials Science and Engineering
• Chemical Sciences
• Geosciences Research Program

Biological and Environmental Research

The Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program advances environmental and biomedical knowledge that promotes national security through improved energy production, development, and use; international scientific leadership that underpins the nation’s technological advances; and research that improves the quality of life for all Americans. In addition, BER develops and delivers the knowledge needed to support the President’s National Energy Plan.

Fusion Energy Sciences

The Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program is the national basic research effort in advanced plasma science, fusion science, and fusion technology—the knowledge base needed for an economically and environmentally attractive fusion energy source. As a major contributor to this effort, Sandia’s Fusion Technology Program studies the interactions of plasmas and materials, the behavior of materials exposed to high-heat fluxes, and the interfaces of plasmas and fusion reactor walls.

Advanced Scientific Computing Research

The Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program supports world-class, high-performance computing and networking infrastructures as well as supporting fundamental research in mathematical and computational sciences to enable researchers in DOE scientific disciplines to analyze and predict complex phenomena for scientific discovery. ASCR’s programs have helped establish computation as a third pillar of science (along with theory and physical experiments). Sandia has extensive ASCR programs in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and in SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) partnerships that link ASCR programs to activities throughout the Office of Science including BES, BER, and FES.

Enabling Capabilities News

Water Not So “Squishy” Under PressureWhen squeezed to pressures and temperatures like those inside giant planets, water molecules are less squeezable than anticipated, defying a set of decades-old equations used to describe watery behavior over a range of conditions. Studying how molecules behave in such environments will help scientists better understand the formation and composition of ice giants like Uranus [...]

Molecular Simulations Guide Nanowire ResearchSimulation plays a critical role in design—even in very, very, very, small structures. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are performing simulations at microscopic levels (with help from CEI’s EnSight software) in order to predict the performance of nanowires. Nanowire performance is affected by deformities in the wires. Researcher Jonathan Zimmerman and others at Sandia perform [...]

New Liquid Salt Electrolytes Could Lead to Cost-Effective Flow BatteriesSandia researchers have developed a new family of liquid salt electrolytes, known as metal-based ionic liquids (MetILs), that could lead to batteries able to cost-effectively store three times more energy than today’s batteries. The research, published in Dalton Transactions, might lead to devices that can help economically and reliably incorporate large-scale intermittent renewable energy sources, [...]