NREL provides fundamental and applied materials science discovery and problem-solving for current and next-generation renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies.

State-of-the-art advances in materials science come from a combination of experiments and computations. The image shows modeled electronic density of states (top panel) of the experimentally observed amorphous/crystalline interface (bottom panel). Note the electronic states that appear in the bandgap of the narrow-gap crystalline semiconductors (left and right sides of the image) when it is placed in contact with the wide-bandgap amorphous material (middle of image).

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Kirstin Alberi is the director of the Materials Science Center. The center is part of the Materials, Chemical, and Computational Science directorate, led by Associate Laboratory Director Bill Tumas.