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A National User Facility for the Scientific Community

EMSL Science Themes

The vision that directed the development of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) has led to significant scientific progress. EMSL plans to maintain its scientific impact during a second decade of operation by focusing attention and capability development in specific areas identified as high-priority science themes. These science themes help define and direct development of key capabilities and collections of user projects that can have significant impacts on important areas of environmental molecular science that are critical to DOE and the nation. The science themes provide the basis for decision making by EMSL management on future investments in expertise and capital equipment.

Because the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory is a National Scientific User Facility for the U.S. Department of Energy, science themes are selected to meet key criteria including relevance to DOE and the nation, impactful environmental molecular science, and the ability to grow a vibrant national user program.

With these factors in mind, EMSL, in collaboration with the scientific community, DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) leadership, and our Science Advisory Committee has selected four science themes:

Within each of these science themes, more directed topical areas are being developed. Each of these four themes is described briefly below.

Atmospheric Aerosol Chemistry

Atmospheric aerosols play an important role in global climate change. Variations of aerosols are recognized as a significant forcing factor that alters the planetary radiation balance onto and away from the Earth, thus contributing to global temperature change. The effects of climate forcing caused by aerosols are not well understood, especially in the case of anthropogenic aerosols. Indeed, the effect of aerosols has been one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in efforts to interpret climate change that occurred in the past century and to project future climate change.

This science theme is designed to advance the state of knowledge of aerosol physics and chemistry from the molecular level to regional and global scales and their impacts on climate change. State-of-the-art instrumentation at EMSL will be used to characterize the size, composition, density, morphology, chemical reactivity, and cloud interactions of aerosol particles. The research will employ a collaborative, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach that will combine both the unique analytical capabilities of EMSL and the research expertise of EMSL scientific staff and the user community.

This science theme is formulated around the following specific, key scientific topical areas that the aerosol chemistry and atmospheric science communities face today and will continue to face in the future:

  • Developing a novel analytical platform for comprehensive chemical and physical characterization of organic aerosols
  • Evaluating dynamics of cloud-aerosol interactions and their climatic impacts
  • Gaining critical knowledge of life cycle and long-term aging of aerosols in the atmospheric environment.

Understanding the role of aerosols in climate change is an important scientific challenge that is critical to more accurately predict the environmental impact of future energy technology options. This science theme addresses the chemical and physical properties of organic aerosols that are of key relevance to cloud formation and climate change. Aerosols are constantly evolving, and the changes they undergo profoundly alter their impact and even how long they live or how far they travel. Providing the scientific foundation to better predict how and when these properties change is necessary so policy makers can make environmentally sound decisions about process that generate aerosols.

Biological Interactions and Dynamics

Understanding and optimizing the response or performance of biological systems to the interaction with its environment can have a significant impact on achieving viable solutions to several problems of national concern. For example, anaerobic microbial metabolism is of direct relevance to national missions in environmental cleanup and site stewardship, clean and secure energy, and basic science. Thus, molecular-level measurements and the corresponding insight into biochemical processes could lead to new predictive computational models that provide an improved basis for using microbes effectively and safely to mitigate the impacts of energy-production activities on the environment and human health.

Recent advances in whole-genome sequencing for a variety of organisms and improvements in high-throughput instrumentation have contributed to a rapid transition of the biological research paradigm towards understanding biology at a systems level. As a result, biology is evolving from a descriptive to a quantitative, ultimately predictive science where the ability to collect and productively use large amounts of biological data is crucial. Understanding how the ensemble of proteins in cells gives rise to biological outcomes is fundamental to systems biology. These advances will require new technologies and approaches to measure and track the temporal and spatial disposition of proteins in cells and how protein complexes give rise to specific activities.

To help facilitate the transition of biology to a more quantitative science, the EMSL will develop capabilities, and encourage user proposals, with a focus on key topical areas:

  • Understanding the protein and metabolite composition of cells as well as the activities and structures of individual proteins or protein complexes.
  • The dynamics of protein composition or localization, and their assembly into multiprotein complexes.
  • Investigating properties of biological membranes and the interaction of cells with their environment.

The expanded understanding of the structure, function, and dynamics of multi-protein complexes will provide information needed for optimizing the response of biological systems (e.g., microbes) in particular environments such as those associated with fuel production or contaminant metabolism. Metabolite profiling will improve our understanding of how cells respond to changes in their environment or energy state. These efforts will require extending current capabilities in high-throughput mass spectrometry and NMR. Enhanced capabilities to examine microbial membranes and interfacial interactions will require the development of new techniques, such as cryo-TEM, and multimodal and multispectral microscopy. These techniques generate large amounts of data that will be handled by an integrated data management system.

Geochemistry/Biogeochemistry and Subsurface Science

One of the most challenging and pressing issues confronting DOE and the Nation is the safe and cost-effective management of environmental pollutants and the remediation of hazardous waste sites. DOE is responsible for managing some 40 million cubic meters of contaminated soils and 1.7 trillion gallons of contaminated groundwater. Across the United States, thousands of Superfund sites exist with various levels and types of contamination (e.g., organic materials, heavy metals, inorganic materials, radionuclides).

Molecular level processes, such as aqueous complexation, adsorption to different mineral phases, or microbial reduction of redox active metals, often control the transport and fate of contaminants in the environment. These processes occur in complicated subsurface environments that are chemically and physically heterogeneous. Understanding the structure, chemistry, and nano-scale geometric properties of the mineral/water and microbe/mineral interfaces are therefore key aspects of developing a mechanistic understanding of contaminant transport. As a result molecular level studies of interfacial geochemistry and biogeochemical reactions have been an active area of research for more than a decade. Unraveling these phenomena at the molecular level and determining their impact on contaminant migration and transformation in the environment is a key objective of this science theme area.

This science theme will focus EMSL's scientific resources on the following key topical areas:

  • Interfacial molecular geochemistry and biogeochemistry
  • Understanding the chemistry of radionuclides in the subsurface
  • Understanding the fact and transport of chemical and microbial species in the subsurface.

Research in the area of biogeochemistry and subsurface science is well established in EMSL. We propose to build on our strength in that area by focusing on key scientific questions/challenges in the area of molecular geochemistry and biogeochemistry, linking Subsurface Flow and Transport Experimental Laboratory capabilities to molecular-science capabilities, and gaining better access to use of radioactive materials.

Science of Interfacial Phenomena

Interfaces control many chemical and physical properties of natural and engineered materials critical to environmental and energy related research and technology. Tailored or designed surfaces and interfaces are important both as model systems for detailed study of processes that occur on natural heterogeneous materials in the environment and to design materials with new properties for technological use, such as energy production or catalysis. It is likely that the behaviors of complex heterogeneous materials in the environment can never be fully understood without model systems that allow specific aspects of that complexity to be examined in detail. Likewise, material systems with interfaces optimized to have specific properties are essential for the advanced technologies needed for a secure environment and a stable energy future for the nation.

Examples of technologies that rely on improved understanding and control of molecular-level structural, dynamic, and transport properties of interfaces include: hydrogen production and storage, chemical sensors and radiation detectors, solid-oxide fuel cell research and development, materials for next-generation nuclear reactors, thin-film solar cells, new generations of selective catalysts, and the development of solid-state lighting.

Because of their environmental importance EMSL has become a premier laboratory for the study of oxide materials and mineral surfaces. These materials have an increasing importance in many new technology areas and will remain our main focus. As such, it is crucial to understand the scientific issues associated with designed surfaces and interfaces that can be effectively used in a particular physical and chemical process. Compared to what is known at the atomic and molecular levels for metal and semiconductor materials, much less is known about metal oxides. The complexity of the structures involved often makes them difficult to study, both theoretically and experimentally. The scientific expertise developed over the past years and the research capabilities available at EMSL are ideally suited to helping advance our understanding of these scientific issues.

Interfacial research activities associated with environmental geochemistry, biology, and atmospheric chemistry are not covered here because these are being captured under the science themes of Biogeochemistry and Subsurface Science, Biological Interactions and Dynamics, and Atmospheric Aerosol Chemistry. In particular, this science theme will focus on the following topical areas:

  • Catalytic structure-function relationships to allow precise control of catalytic activity and selectivity
  • Gaining critical knowledge of photocatalysis and photochemistry
  • Design material systems with specialized charge and mass transport properties.

This science theme focuses on developing an understanding of catalytic structure-function relationships at the atomic level that will allow precise control of catalytic activity and selectivity. In addition, the science will address in a definitive and comprehensive way, for the first time, the effect of nanoscaling on the surface chemistry of well-defined metal oxides. Highly controlled experiments in the growth, characterization, and reactivity of oxide nanodots and continuous films of nanometer thickness will elucidate the effects of quantum-confined and strain-driven electronic structures on the thermal and photochemistries of select materials. The research capabilities and expertise in EMSL will also enable the design of material systems with specialized atomic, electronic, and ionic transport properties. EMSL is an ideal place for this research to be performed because it is a premier oxide laboratory and has provided the foundation for several current research areas including surface chemistry and catalysis. As part of this research, several one-of-a-kind capabilities are planned for development in the near future. These capabilities will make EMSL a unique facility that will attract many world-class scientists as users.