NanoComputer

Semiconductors grown on graphene at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) may be an important research breakthrough. At the centre of the research efforts are Professor Helge Weman, Professor Bjørn-Ove Fimland and post-doctoral fellow Dong-Chul Kim. The team is now working on translating the results of their basic research into an initial prototype. “Solar cell and LED technology will be the initial areas to see new products using semiconductors grown on graphene,” Dr Weman believes.

Under-priced fossil-fuel energy is the primary contributor to global warming. Sunlight is an alternative source with enormous potential, but solar energy will have to become less expensive and more efficient. Semiconductor nanowires based on graphene may just finally tip the scales in favour of solar energy.

“If semiconductor nanowires grown on graphene are used in solar cells, the same amount of sunlight can be converted to energy using one-tenth the volume of materials used in thin-film solar cells. And that means we’ve cut down on even more material by growing the semiconductors on graphene instead of on a thick semiconductor substrate. New research also shows that graphene has additional unique properties that enhance the efficiency of a solar cell,” Dr Weman explains.“We are pioneers in that we are using graphene for something other than basic research. We may already have our first prototype in place by the end of 2013, but we don’t wish to reveal what it is yet,” Dr Weman says. “The field we are working with – using graphene as a replacement for silicon and other semiconductor substrates in electronics and solar cells – entails many new opportunities“.

Source: http://www.forskningsradet.no/

Physicist Florian Nitze, from Umeå University – Sweden -, has developed new catalysts to improve the capacity of fuel cells, able to power mobile phones or laptops, using environmental friendly formic acid. Fuel cells are different from batteries in that they require a constant source of fuel and oxygen to run. The technology is already commercially available but formic acid fuel cells still suffer from low power and lifetime.
The effect of a catalyst is to reduce the energy loss and to increase the rate of the chemical reactions, which leads to a higher efficiency in the fuel cell.
In his thesis, Florian Nitze has developed new catalysts based on a combination of material science and nanotechnology – engineering close to the atom level.

“Especially catalysts of palladium-nanoparticles attached to a unique helical formed carbon nanofibre proved to have a long lifetime and a very high potential to be used in formic acid fuel cells. The helical formed carbon nanofibre has a high electrical conductivity and a surface that is very easy to decorate with nanoparticles, “ says Florian Nitze.
Formic acid can be produced from renewable sources, i.e. wood, and is therefore a highly environmentally friendly alternative.
“One of the major advantages over Li-ion batteries, which are dominating the battery market, is that the charging only takes seconds by simple refueling with formic acid,” says Florian Nitze.
Source: http://www.teknat.umu.se/

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating high-quality semiconductor thin films at the atomic scale – meaning the films are only one atom thick. The technique can be used to create these thin films on a large scale, sufficient to coat wafers that are two inches wide, or larger.

“This could be used to scale current semiconductor technologies down to the atomic scale – lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), computer chips, anything,” says Dr. Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper on the work. “People have been talking about this concept for a long time, but it wasn’t possible. With this discovery, I think it’s possible.”
“The key to our success is the development of a new growth mechanism, a self-limiting growth,” Cao says. The researchers can precisely control the thickness of the MoS2 layer by controlling the partial pressure and vapor pressure in the furnace. Partial pressure is the tendency of atoms or molecules suspended in the air to condense into a solid and settle onto the substrate. Vapor pressure is the tendency of solid atoms or molecules on the substrate to vaporize and rise into the air.

Source: http://news.ncsu.edu/

Better integration of photonic and electronic components in nanoscale devices may now become possible, thanks to work by Khuong Phuong Ong and Hong-Son Chu from the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing and their co-workers in Singapore and the US. From computer simulations, they have identified that the compound BiFeO3 has the potential to be used to efficiently couple light to electrical charges through light-induced electron oscillations known as plasmons. The researchers propose that this coupling could be activated, controlled and switched off, on demand, by applying an electrical field to an active plasmonic device based on this material. If such a device were realized on a very small footprint it would give scientists a versatile tool for connecting components that manipulate light or electric currents.

Thin poles standing in water barely affect waves rolling past them. Similarly, nanostructured devices typically do not interact with light waves

Many devices used in everyday life — whether they be televisions, mobile phones or barcode scanners — are based on the manipulation of electric currents and light. At the micro- and nano-scales, however, it is typically challenging to integrate electronic components with photonic components. At these small dimensions, the wavelengths of light become long relative to the size of the device. Consequently, the light waves are barely detectable by the device, just as passing waves simply roll past thin poles in a water body (see image).

Source: http://www.research.a-star.edu.sg/research/6656

More powerful batteries could help electric cars achieve a considerably larger range and thus a breakthrough on the market. Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry at ETH Zurich and Empa -Switzerland – have now developed a nanomaterial which enables considerably more power to be stored in lithium ion batteries. They provide power not only for electric cars, but also for electric bicycles, smartphones and laptops; nowadays, rechargeable lithium ion batteries are the storage media of choice when it comes to supplying a large amount of energy in a small space and light weight.

Monodisperse tin nanodroplets in an electron microscopic

During the development of the nanomaterial, the issue of the ideal size for the nanocrystals arose, which also carries the challenge of producing uniform crystals. “The trick here was to separate the two basic steps in the formation of the crystals – the formation of as small as a crystal nucleus as possible on the one hand and its subsequent growth on the other,” explains Maksym Kovalenko, head of the research team at ETH Zurich. By influencing the time and temperature of the growth phase, the scientists were able to control the size of the crystals. “We are the first to produce such small tin crystals with such precision,” says the scientist.

Source: http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/

A team of IBM researchers working on a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded program have found a way to transmit massive amounts of data with unprecedentedly low power consumption. Scientists predict that the supercomputers of the future—so-called “exascale computers“—will enable them to model the global climate, run molecular-level simulations of entire cells, design nanostructures, and more.

“We envision machines reaching the exascale mark around 2020, but a great deal of research must be done to make this possible,” says Jonathan E. Proesel, a research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. To reach that mark, researchers must develop a way to quickly move massive amounts of data within the supercomputer while keeping power consumption in check.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/

A researcher from North Carolina State University has developed a technique for creating high-density ceramic materials that requires far lower temperatures than current techniques – and takes less than a second, as opposed to hours. Ceramics are used in a wide variety of technologies, including body armor, fuel cells, spark plugs, nuclear rods and superconductors. At issue is a process known as “sintering,” which is when ceramic powders (such as zirconia) are compressed into a desired shape and exposed to high heat until the powder particles are bound together into a solid, but slightly porous, material. But new research from Dr. Jay Narayan, John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State, may revolutionize the sintering process.

“This technique allows you to achieve ‘theoretical density,’ meaning it eliminates all of the porosity in the material,” Narayan says. “This increases the strength of the ceramic, as well as improving its optical, magnetic and other properties.”
Source: http://news.ncsu.edu/

While the demand for ever-smaller electronic devices has spurred the miniaturization of a variety of technologies, one area has lagged behind in this downsizing revolution: energy-storage units, such as batteries and capacitors. Now, Richard Kaner, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Maher El-Kady, a graduate student in Kaner‘s laboratory, may have changed the game.The UCLA researchers have developed a groundbreaking technique that uses a DVD burner to fabricate micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitors — devices that can charge and discharge a hundred to a thousand times faster than standard batteries. These micro-supercapacitors, made from a one-atom–thick layer of graphitic carbon, can be easily manufactured and readily integrated into small devices such as next-generation pacemakers.The new cost-effective fabrication method, described in a study published this week in the journal Nature Communications, holds promise for the mass production of these supercapacitors, which have the potential to transform electronics .

“The integration of energy-storage units with electronic circuits is challenging and often limits the miniaturization of the entire system,” said Kaner,. “This is because the necessary energy-storage components scale down poorly in size and are not well suited to the planar geometries of most integrated fabrication processes.” “Traditional methods for the fabrication of micro-supercapacitors involve labor-intensive lithographic techniques that have proven difficult for building cost-effective devices, thus limiting their commercial application,” El-Kady said. “Instead, we used a consumer-grade LightScribe DVD burner to produce graphene micro-supercapacitors over large areas at a fraction of the cost of traditional devices. Using this technique, we have been able to produce more than 100 micro-supercapacitors on a single disc in less than 30 minutes, using inexpensive materials.”
Source: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/

Scientists in the joint research project “FUNgraphen” are pinning their hopes for new technologies on a particular form of carbon: They have developed new carbon macromolecules and molecular carbon composite materials with special properties. The molecules are derived from graphene, a substance that consists of individual layers of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern. The process previously necessary to make use of this substance was complex and expensive and thus of little value for most plastics applications. A research group at the Freiburg Materials Research Center (FMF) of the University of Freiburg – Germany – led by the chemist Prof. Dr. Rolf Mülhaupt, managing director of the FMF, has now succeeded in combining graphene with polymers, making them fit for plastics applications, and preparing them for material optimization on a kilogram scale.

“The applications range from printed electronics to printed catalysts with a pore design for the production of fine chemicals with simple catalyst recovery,” says Mülhaupt.

Source: http://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de

Scientists at CSIRO and RMIT University in Australia have produced a new two-dimensional material that will revolutionise the electronics market, making “nano” more than just a marketing term. The researchers have adapted a revolutionary material known as graphene to create a new conductive nano-material. The material – made up of layers of crystal known as molybdenum oxides – has unique properties that encourage the free flow of electrons at ultra-high speeds.

“Within these layers, electrons are able to zip through at high speeds with minimal scattering,” Dr Zhuiykov said. “The importance of our breakthrough is how quickly and fluently electrons – which conduct electricity – are able to flow through the new material.”
RMIT’s Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh said the researchers were able to remove “road blocks” that could obstruct the electrons, an essential step for the development of high-speed electronics.
“Instead of scattering when they hit road blocks, as they would in conventional materials, they can simply pass through this new material and get through the structure faster,” Professor Kalantar-zadeh said.
“Quite simply, if electrons can pass through a structure quicker, we can build devices that are smaller and transfer data at much higher speeds“.

Source: http://www.csiro.au/

According to the University of Delaware‘s Professor Bingqing Wei, stretchable electronics are the future of mobile electronics, leading giants such as IBM, Sony and Nokia to incorporate the technology into their products.
Beyond traditional electronics, potential stretchable applications include biomedical, wearable, portable and sensory devices, such as cyber skin for robotic devices and implantable electronics. All established classes of high-performance electronics exploit single-crystal inorganic materials, such as silicon or gallium arsenide, in forms (i.e., semiconductor wafers) that are fundamentally rigid and planar. The human body is, by contrast, soft and curvilinear. This mismatch in properties hinders the development of devices capable of intimate, conformal integration with biological tissues, for applications ranging from basic measurement of electrophysiological signals, to delivery of advanced therapies, to establishment of human-machine interfaces. One envisioned solution involves the use of organic electronic materials, whose flexible properties have generated interest in them for potential use in paper-like displays, solar cell, and other types of consumer electronic devices.

“Advances in soft and stretchable substrates and elastomeric materials have given rise to an entirely new field,” says Wei, a mechanical engineering professor at UD.
But even if scientists can engineer stretchable electronics — what about their energy source?
“Rechargeable and stretchable energy storage devices, also known as supercapacitors, are urgently needed to complement advances currently being made in flexible electronics,” explains Wei.
Source: http://rogers.matse.illinois.edu

By using electric voltage instead of a flowing electric current, researchers from UCLA‘s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have made major improvements to an ultra-fast, high-capacity class of computer memory known as magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM.. The UCLA team’s improved memory, which they call MeRAM for magnetoelectric random access memory, has great potential to be used in future memory chips for almost all electronic applications, including smart-phones, tablets, computers and microprocessors, as well as for data storage, like the solid-state disks used in computers and large data centers.
The research team was led by principal investigator Kang L. Wang, UCLA‘s Raytheon Professor of Electrical Engineering, and included lead author Juan G. Alzate, an electrical engineering graduate student, and Pedram Khalili, a research associate in electrical engineering and project manager for the UCLA–DARPA research programs in non-volatile logic.
“The ability to switch nanoscale magnets using voltages is an exciting and fast-growing area of research in magnetism,” Khalili said. “This work presents new insights into questions such as how to control the switching direction using voltage pulses, how to ensure that devices will work without needing external magnetic fields, and how to integrate them into high-density memory arrays“.

Source: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/

A University of Texas at Arlington physics professor has helped create a hybrid nanomaterial that can be used to convert light and thermal energy into electrical current, surpassing earlier methods that used either light or thermal energy, but not both. The team used the nanomaterial to build a prototype thermoelectric generator that they hope can eventually produce milliwatts of power. Paired with microchips, the technology could be used in devices such as self-powering sensors, low-power electronic devices and implantable biomedical micro-devices, UT Arlington associate physics professor Wei Chen said.

“If we can convert both light and heat to electricity, the potential is huge for energy production,” Chen said. “By increasing the number of the micro-devices on a chip, this technology might offer a new and efficient platform to complement or even replace current solar cell technology.”
Source: https://www.uta.edu/

Sensors and other electronics are usually made of rigid and stiff material such as metals and plastics. They cannot be stretched, twisted or thrown, and should be handled with care. But that is about to change. Researchers from the Institute of Textiles and Clothing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed a new technology that allows electronics to drape around our body comfortably. Defying our imagination, the researchers have engineered a new fabric that can conduct electricity, paving the way for stretchable electronics.

Principal investigator Prof. Tao explained, “Our new fabric can be stretched like a rubber band and has high sensitivity to strain. We’ve also made another one that can withstand and respond to very high pressure up to 2000kPa. They are water-proof, washable and excellent in resistance to fatigue.”
Source: http://www.polyu.edu.hk

Imagine being able to store thousands of songs and high-resolution images on data devices no bigger than a fingernail. Researchers from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered that an ultra-smooth surface is the key factor for “self-assembly” – a cheap, high-volume, high-density patterning technique.

This allows manufacturers to use the method on a variety of different surfaces.The discovery paves the way for the development of next generation data storage devices, with capacities of up to 10 Terabits/in2 which could lead to significantly greater storage on much smaller data devices.

Source: http://www.a-star.edu.sg/

Researchers at Tampere University of Technology, Finland, will explore paths toward a completely new way of designing and making logic circuits that consume no current and can be written and read with light. The key idea behind the project is the so-called quantum dot cellular automaton (QCA). In QCAs, pieces of semiconductor so small that single electronic charges can be measured and manipulated are arranged into domino like cells. Like dominos, these cells can be arranged so that the position of the charges in one cell affects the position of the charges in the next cell, which allows making logical circuits out of these “quantum dominos”. But, no charge flows from one cell to the next, i.e. no current. This, plus the extremely small size of QCAs, means that they could be used to make electronic circuits at densities and speeds not possible now. However, realisation of the dots and cells and making electrical connections to them has been a huge challenge.
Professors Donald Lupo from Department of Electronics, Mircea Guina and Tapio Niemi from Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), and Nikolai Tkachenko and Helge Lemmetyinen from Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, want to investigate a completely new approach. They want to attach tailor-made molecules, optical nanoantennas, to the quantum dots, which can inject a charge into a dot or enable charge transfer between the dots when light of the right wavelength shines on them.
Laser light is emitted from the end of a cadmium sulfide nanowire.

Simultaneously, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information. The research was conducted by associate professor Ritesh Agarwal and graduate student Brian Piccione of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Post-doctoral fellows Chang-Hee Cho and Lambert van Vugt, also of the Materials Science Department, contributed to the study.
Source: http://www.tut.fi/en/current/electronics-without-current-finnish-team-to-research-the-future-of-nanoelectronics-p032013c2
AND
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-make-first-all-optical-nanowire-switch

If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from Star Trek, don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented reality glasses. Instead, Glass looks like only the headband of a pair of glasses — the part that hooks on your ears and lies along your eyebrow line — with a small, transparent block positioned above and to the right of your right eye. That, of course, is a screen, and the Google Glass is actually a fairly full-blown computer.

click and enjoy the video demonstration

Or maybe like a smartphone that you never have to take out of your pocket. Inside the right earpiece — that is, the horizontal support that goes over your ear — Google has packed memory, a processor, a camera, speaker and microphone, a step toward the nanocomputer, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and a battery. All inside the earpiece. Google has said that eventually, Glass will have a cellular radio, so it can get online; at this point, it hooks up wirelessly with your phone for an online connection. The tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely. There’s nothing at all between your eyes and whatever, or whomever, you’re looking at. And yet when you do focus on the screen, shifting your gaze up and to the right, that tiny half-inch display is surprisingly immersive. It’s as though you’re looking at a big laptop screen or something.
Have a look on competitors (Apple, Microsoft, DARPA) similar projects on www.quantglass.com

Norwegian University of Science and Technologie -NTNU- researchers have patented and are commercializing GaAs nanowires grown on graphene, a hybrid material with competitive properties. Semiconductors grown on graphene are expected to become the basis for new types of device systems, and could fundamentally change the semiconductor industry. The technology underpinning their approach has recently been described in a publication in the American research journal Nano Letters.

The new patented hybrid material offers excellent optoelectronic properties, says Professor Helge Weman, a professor at NTNU‘s Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, and CTO and co-founder of the company created to commercialize the research, CrayoNano AS. “We have managed to combine low cost, transparency and flexibility in our new electrode,” he adds.
Source: http://www.ntnu.edu/news/2012-news/semiconductors-on-graphene

The nuclear magnetic resonance apparatus – developed by the University of Sheffield – Department of Physics and Astronomy – will allow for further developments and new applications for nanotechnology which is increasingly used in harvesting solar energy, computing, communication developments and also in the medical field. Scientists can now analyse nanostructures at an unprecedented level of detail without destroying the materials in the process, a limitation researchers across the world faced before the Sheffield experts’ breakthrough.

Dr Alexander Tartakovskii, who led a team of researchers, said: “We have developed a new important tool for microscopy analysis of nanostructures”. Development requires careful structural analysis, in order to understand how the nanostructures are formed, and how we can build them to enhance and control their useful properties. Existing structural analysis methods, key for the research and development of new materials, are invasive: a nanostructure would be irreversibly destroyed in the process of the experiment, and, as a result, the important link between the structural and electronic or photonic properties would usually be lost. This limitation is now overcome by our new techniques, which rely on inherently non-invasive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probing.”

The results open a new way of nano-engineering, a full characterisation of a new material and new semiconductor nano-device without destroying them meaning more research and development and device fabrication processes.
Source: http://www.shef.ac.uk/news/nr/nanotechnology-nuclear-magnetic-resonance-apparatus-nanostructures-1.203614

Harvard scientists have created a type of “cyborg” tissue for the first time by embedding a three-dimensional network of functional, biocompatible, nanoscale wires into engineered human tissues.As described in a paper published Aug. 26 in the journal Nature Materials, a research team led by Charles M. Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, and Daniel Kohane, a Harvard Medical School professor in the Department of Anesthesia at Children’s Hospital Boston, developed a system for creating nanoscale “scaffolds” that can be seeded with cells that grow into tissue.
“The current methods we have for monitoring or interacting with living systems are limited,” said Lieber. “We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.”

Charles M. Lieber explains: “With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.”
Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/08/merging-the-biological-electronic/

Our fingers are precision instruments, but there are plenty of things they are not sensitive enough to detect. Now we can augment their talents – using wearable electronic fingertips that provide tingling feedback about whatever we touch. John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues have designed a flexible circuit that can be worn over the fingertips. It contains layers of gold electrodes just a few hundred nanometres thick, sandwiched between layers of polyimide plastic to form a "nanomembrane". This is mounted on a finger-shaped tube of silicone rubber, allowing one side of the circuit to be in direct contact with the fingertips. On the other side, sensors can be added to measure pressure, temperature or electrical properties such as resistance.

Researchers from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials  Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore  have  developed  an innovative method for creating sharp, full-spectrum colour images at  100,000 dots per inch (dpi), using  metal-laced nanometer-sized structures, without the need for inks or dyes. In comparison, current industrial printers such as inkjet and laserjet printers  can only achieve up to 10,000 dpi while research grade methods are able to dispense dyes for only single colour images. This novel breakthrough allows colouring to be treated not as an inking matter but as a lithographic matter, which can potentially revolutionise the way images are printed and be further developed for use in high-resolution reflective colour displays as well as high density optical data storage.

University of Illinois chemists found that DNA can shape gold nanoparticle growth similarly to the way it shapes protein synthesis, with different letters of the genetic code producing gold circles, stars and hexagons. DNA holds the genetic code for all sorts of biological molecules and traits. But University of Illinois researchers have found that DNA’s code can similarly shape metallic structures. DNA segments can direct the shape of gold nanoparticles – tiny gold crystals that have many applications in medicine, electronics and catalysis. Led by Yi Lu, the Schenck Professor of Chemistry at the U. of I., the team published its surprising findings in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

“DNA-encoded nanoparticle synthesis can provide us a facile but novel way to produce nanoparticles with predictable shape and properties,” Lu said. “Such a discovery has potential impacts in bio-nanotechnology and applications in our everyday lives such as catalysis, sensing, imaging and medicine.”

Source: http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0808nanoparticles_YiLu.html

Your next smartphone screen might be brighter, the synthetic oil in your car might perform better and computer chips might be more durable — all thanks to minuscule particles that are starting to be manufactured in Baltimore. Startup company Pixelligent Technologies is ramping up production of a pair of nanocrystal additives made with zirconia and hafnia, which promise to boost the performance of products in a wide range of industries,The  nanomaterials can be used to strengthen plastics. They also can be dissolved in solvents to make coatings that help electronic displays emit more light, and they can be dispersed in lubricants to provide extra protection against wear and tear in engines.

"We're the first in the world to make these materials at this scale," said Craig Bandes, the company's CEO.

Souce: http://www.pixelligent.com/technology/technology-overview/

Graphene,  the 'miracle material undergoes a self repairing process to mend holes. This discovery has been made by researchers at The University of Manchester and the SuperSTEM  facility at STFC's Daresbury Laboratory (United Kingdom). Graphene, which is made of sheets of carbon just one atom thick, is a promising material for a wide range of future applications due, for instance, to its exceptional electronic properties.

The team, led by Professor Kostya Novoselov, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for exploiting the remarkable properties of graphene's, was originally looking to gain a deeper understanding into how metals interact with graphene, essential if it is to be integrated into practical electronic devices in the future

Source: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=8544