NanoComputer

University of Nebraska-Lincoln materials engineers have developed a structural nanofiber that is both strong and tough, a discovery that could transform everything from airplanes and bridges to body armor and bicycles. Their findings are featured on the cover of this week’s April issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal, ACS Nano.

“Whatever is made of composites can benefit from our nanofibers,” said the team’s leader, Yuris Dzenis, McBroom Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a member of UNL‘s Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience. “Our discovery adds a new material class to the very select current family of materials with demonstrated simultaneously high strength and toughness.”
Source: http://newsroom.unl.edu/

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Kansas State University have demonstrated a spray-on mixture of carbon nanotubes and ceramic that has unprecedented ability to resist damage while absorbing laser light.*
Coatings that absorb as much of the energy of high-powered lasers as possible without breaking down are essential for optical power detectors that measure the output of such lasers, which are used, for example, in military equipment for defusing unexploded mines. The new material improves on NIST‘s earlier version of a spray-on nanotube coating for optical power detectors** and has already attracted industry interest.
Micrograph of one strand of a new spray-on super-nanotube composite developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Kansas State University. The multi-wall nanotube core is surrounded by a ceramic shell. The composite is a promising coating for laser power detectors.
“It really is remarkable material,” NIST co-author John Lehman says. “It’s a way to make super-nanotubes. It has the optical, thermal and electrical properties of nanotubes with the robustness of the high-temperature ceramic.”
Source: http://www.nist.gov/

In Harvard’s Pierce Hall, the surface of a small germanium-coated gold sheet shines vividly in crimson. A centimeter to the right, where the same metallic coating is literally only about 20 atoms thicker, the surface is a dark blue, almost black. The colors form the logo of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), where researchers have demonstrated a new way to customize the color of metal surfaces by exploiting a completely overlooked optical phenomenon. For centuries it was thought that thin-film interference effects, such as those that cause oily pavements to reflect a rainbow of swirling colors, could not occur in opaque materials. Harvard physicists have now discovered that even very “lossy” thin films, if atomically thin, can be tailored to reflect a particular range of dramatic and vivid colors.

Gold films colored with nanometer-thick layers of germanium.
The discovery is the latest to emerge from the laboratory of Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS, whose research group most recently produced ultrathin flat lenses and needle light beams that skim the surface of metals.

Source: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/applied-physics-as-art

Considered a major a fuel of the future, hydrogen could be used to power buildings, portable electronics and vehicles – but this application hinges on practical storage technology. But for the first time, engineers at the University of New South Wales in Australia have demonstrated that hydrogen can be released and reabsorbed from a promising storage material, overcoming a major hurdle to its use as an alternative fuel source. The researchers from the Materials Energy Research Laboratory in nanoscale (MERLin) at UNSW have synthesised nanoparticles of a commonly overlooked chemical compound called sodium borohydride and encased these inside nickel shells. Their unique “core-shell” nanostructure has demonstrated remarkable hydrogen storage properties, including the release of energy at much lower temperatures than previously observed.
“No one has ever tried to synthesise these particles at the nanoscale because they thought it was too difficult, and couldn’t be done. We’re the first to do so, and demonstrate that energy in the form of hydrogen can be stored with sodium borohydride at practical temperatures and pressures,” says Dr Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou from the School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW.

Source: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/nano-structures-realise-hydrogen%E2%80%99s-energy-potential

Researchers at TU/e -Technische Universiteit in Eindhoven (Nederland) – have for the first time developed a coating with a surface that repairs itself after damage. This new coating has numerous potential applications – for example mobile phones that will remain clean from fingerprints, cars that never need to be washed, and aircraft that need less frequent repainting. The results were published in the 17 July edition of the journal Advanced Materials.

Functional coatings, for example with highly water-resistant or antibacterial properties, have at their surface nano-sized molecular groups that provide these specific properties. But up to now, these molecular groups are easily and irreversibly damaged by minor contact with their surface (such as by scratching), quickly causing their properties to be lost. This has been a big limitation to the possible applications of these coatings. Researcher Catarina Esteves of the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at TU/e and her colleagues have now found a solution to this problem. 

Source: http://www.tue.nl/en/university/news-and-press/news/you-may-never-need-to-wash-your-car-again-thanks-to-new-coating-technology/

How to raise the RAM memory limits of smartphones and tablets that limit the number of applications that can be run  at on time?  Elad Mentovich, a Ph.D. student at Tel Aviv University, has made a vertical transistor based on a single carbon-60 molecule that he reckons could be the basis for both a logic transistor and a memory element. Major companies in the memory industry have already expressed interest in the technology, said Mentovich, 

Because the memory is a based on a single molecule of carbon in a spherical form it can be as small as one-nanometer in diameter, making it a candidate for post-CMOS integration. The molecular memory is ready to produced in existing wafer fabs Mentovich asserts. This new type of carbon-based transistors ramps up speed and memory for mobile devices.

Source: http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v99/i3/p033108_s1?isAuthorized=no

At the right temperature, with the right catalyst, there's no reason a perfect single-walled carbon nanotube 50,000 times thinner than a human hair can't be grown a meter long.

Defects in nanotubes heal very quickly in a very small zone at or near the iron catalyst before they ever get into the tube wall, according to calculations by theoretical physicists at Rice University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Tsinghua University. Courtesy of Feng Ding/Rice/Hong Kong Polytechnic.

The  study of  the self-healing mechanism that could make such extraordinary growth possible, is important to scientists who see high-quality carbon nanotubes as critical to advanced materials and, if they can be woven into long cables, power distribution over the grid of the future.

Source: http://news.rice.edu/2012/06/15/nanotubes-seek-perfection-from-the-start/

Scavenging energy in our living environment is a feasible approach for powering micro/nanodevices and mobile electronics due to their small size, lower power consumption, and special working environment. Nanomaterials have shown unique advantages for energy conversion, including solar cells,  The type of energy to be harvested depends on the applications. For mobile, implantable and personal electronics, solar energy may not be the best choice because solar is not vailable in many cases under which the electronic devices will be utilized. Alternatively, mechanical energy, including vibration, air flow, and human physical motion, is available almost everywhere and at all times, which is called random energy with irregular amplitude and frequencies. Nanogenerator (NG) is a technology that has been developed for harvesting this type of energy using well-aligned nanowire (NW) arrays and sophisticated fabrication procedures,

 

Enjoy the video 

 

Pr. Zhong Lin Wang from Georgia Tech and his team present a simple, cost-effective, robust, and scalable approach for fabricating a nanogenerator that gives an output power strong enough to continuously drive a commercial liquid crystal display. 

Source: http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/zlwang/paper/2010/10_NL_06.pdf

Chemical reactions on the surface of metal oxides, such as titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, are important for applications such as solar cells that convert the sun's energy to electricity. Now University of Washington scientists have found that a previously unappreciated aspect of those reactions could be key in developing more efficient energy systems.

New systems could include cells that would produce more electricity from the sun's rays, or hydrogen fuel cells efficient enough for use in automobiles, said James Mayer, a UW chemistry professor. "As we think about building a better energy future, we have to develop more efficient ways to convert chemical energy into electrical energy and vice versa," said Mayer.

Chemical reactions that change the oxidation state of molecules on the surface of metal oxides historically have been seen as a transfer solely of electrons. The new research shows that, at least in some reactions, the transfer process includes coupled electrons and protons.
Source: http://www.newswise.com/articles/new-twist-on-old-chemical-process-could-boost-energy-efficiency

High-temperature superconductivity doesn't happen all it once. It starts in isolated nanoscale patches that gradually expand until they take over. That discovery, from atomic-level observations at Cornell and the University of Tokyo, offers a new insight into the puzzling "pseudogap" state observed in high-temperature superconductors; it may be another step toward creating new materials that superconduct at temperatures high enough to revolutionize electrical engineering.

Scanning tunneling microscope image of a partially doped cuprate superconductor shows regions with an electronic "pseudogap" (rounded rectangle) others with no progress from the original insulator (dashed circles). As doping increases, pseudogap regions spread and connect, making the whole sample a superconductor. 

Superconductivity, in which an electric current flows with zero resistance, was first discovered in metals cooled very close to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius). New materials called cuprates — copper oxides "doped" with other atoms — superconduct as "high" as -123 Celsius.

Source: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May12/CuprateEvolution.html

Mass production of nanoscale components for the next generation of computers is now possible.  Researchers in Ireland have developed a new technology using materials called bulk metallic glasses to produce high-precision molds for making tiny plastic components. The components, with detailed microscopically patterned surfaces could be used in the next generation of computer memory devices and microscale testing kits and chemical reactors.

"Our technology is a new process for mass producing high-value polymer components, on the micrometer and nanometer-scale," explains Gilchrist. "This is a process by which high-volume quantities of plastic components can be mass produced with one hundred times more precision, for costs that are at least ten times cheaper than currently possible."

In their article published in the latest edition of Materials Today, Michael Gilchrist, David Browne and colleagues at University College Dublin explain how bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) were discovered about thirty years ago. These materials are a type of metal alloy, but instead of having a regular, crystalline structure like an everyday metal such as iron or an alloy like bronze, the material's atoms are arranged haphazardly. This disordered, or amorphous atomic structure is similar to the amorphous structure of the silicon and oxygen atoms in the glass we use for windows and drinking vessels.

Source: http://www.materialstoday.com/view/25895/making-microscopic-machines-using-metallic-glass/

Scientists at the University of South California – USC, have developed a method to produce cheap, stable solar cells made from nanocrystals so small they can exist as a liquid ink and be painted or printed onto clear surfaces.The solar nanocrystals are about four nanometers in size — meaning you could fit more than 250,000,000,000 on the head of a pin — and float them in a liquid solution, so "like you print a newspaper, you can print solar cells," said Richard L. Brutchey, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. 

Brutchey and USC postdoctoral researcher David H. Webber developed a new surface coating for the nanocrystals, which are made of the semiconductor cadmium selenide. Their research is featured as a "hot article" this month in the international journal for inorganic chemistry Dalton Transactions.

Source: http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/newsroom/news_release.php?id=2707

The most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity has been invented by a team from the University of Exeter – Great Britain. Called  GraphExeter , the material could revolutionise the creation of wearable electronic devices, such as clothing containing computers, phones and MP3 players.

GraphExeter could also be used for the creation of ‘smart’ mirrors or windows, with computerised interactive features. Since this material is also transparent over a wide light spectrum, it could enhance by more than 30% the efficiency of solar panels

Source: http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/physics-astronomy/news/title_206443_en.html

A new x-ray microscope probes the inner intricacies of materials smaller than human cells and creates unparalleled high-resolution 3D images. By integrating unique automatic calibrations, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are able to capture and combine thousands of images with greater speed and precision than any other microscope. The direct observation of structures spanning 25 nanometers – or 25 billionths of a meter – will offer fundamental advances in many fields, including energy research, environmental sciences, biology, and national defense. This innovative full field transmission x-ray microscope (TXM), was developed at Brookhaven Lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS). A paper published in the April 2012 Applied Physics Letters details the experimental system that rapidly combines 2D images taken from every angle to form digital 3D constructs.

This 3D reconstruction of a lithium-ion battery electrode, composed of 1,441 individual images captured and aligned by the TXM, reveals nano-scale structural details to help guide future energy research.

“We can actually see the internal 3D structure of materials at the nanoscale,” said Brookhaven physicist Jun Wang, lead author of the paper and head of the team that first proposed this TXM. “The device works beautifully, and it overcomes several major obstacles for x-ray microscopes. We’re excited to see the way this technology will push research.”

Source: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1406&template=Today

Collecting solar energy to convert to electricity is not a new concept. However, there are significant advantages to space solar power compared to ground solar power. Solar energy in space is seven times greater per unit area than on the ground. The collection of solar space energy is not disrupted by nightfall and inclement weather, thus avoiding the need for expensive energy storage. You can see the findings from The National Space Society (NSS)   pusblished a few months ago, a ground-breaking space solar power study conducted by the  International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).

With space solar power technology, energy can be collected from space and transmitted wirelessly anywhere in the world,” said Mark Hopkins, the leading Executive Officer of the National Space Society. “This technology could be the answer to our energy crisis. We look forward to sharing the results of the IAA’s study, and exploring the potential that space solar power has for creating thousands of green energy jobs,” he added.

Source: http://blog.nss.org/
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/SSPprizes2011.pdf 

It seems like an ordinary morning at first, but when you go to the kitchen for breakfast, something is wrong. Your toast is burned but the toaster is cold. “This is a new phenomenon we’re observing, exclusively at the nanoscale, and it is completely contrary to our intuition and knowledge of Joule heating at larger scales—for example, in things like your toaster,” says Baloch, who conducted the research while a graduate student at the University of Maryland. “The nanotube’s electrons are bouncing off of something, but not its atoms. Somehow, the atoms of the neighboring materials—the silicon nitride substrate—are vibrating and getting hot instead.”

 
“We now know that silicon nitride can absorb energy from a current-carrying nanotube in this way, but we would like to test other materials, such as semiconductors and other insulators,” Cumings explains.  “If we can really understand how this phenomenon works, we could start engineering a new generation of nanoelectronics with integrated thermal management.”

Source: http://www.eng.umd.edu/html/news/news_story.php?id=6398

Researchers at CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland funded nanoscience institute based in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), have discovered a new material that could transform the quality, lifespan and efficiency of flat screen computers, televisions and  solar cells.  The research team was led by Prof Igor Shvets, a CRANN, a  Principal Investigator who comments: "this is an exciting development with a range of applications and we are hopeful this initial research will attract commercial interest in order to explore its industrial use.  The new material could lead to innovations such as window-integrated flat screens and to increase the efficiency of certain solar cells, thus significantly impacting on the take-up of solar cells, which can help us to reduce carbon emissions.”

Devices that the new material could be used with such as solar cells, flat screen TVs, computer monitors, LEDs all utilise materials that can conduct electricity and at the same time are see-through.  These devices currently use transparent conducting oxides, which are a good compromise between electrical conductivity and optical transparency. They all have one fundamental limitation: they all conduct electricity through the movement of electrons

Source: http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v99/i11/p111910_s1?isAuthorized=no

 Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have developed a new catalyst that reversibly converts hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide to a liquid under very mild conditions. The work — described in a paper published online March 18, 2012, in Nature Chemistry — could lead to efficient ways to safely store and transport hydrogen for use as an alternative fuel.

“This is not the first catalyst capable of carrying out this reaction, but it is the first to work at room temperature, in an aqueous (water) solution, under atmospheric pressure — and that is capable of running the reaction in forward or reverse directions depending on the acidity of the solution,” said Brookhaven chemist Etsuko Fujita, who oversaw Brookhaven’s contributions to this research. “When the release of hydrogen is desired for use in fuel cells or other applications, one can simply flip the ‘pH switch’ on the catalyst to run the reaction in reverse,” said Brookhaven chemist James Muckerman, a co-author on the study. He noted that the liquid formic acid might also be used directly in a formic-acid fuel cell.

Source: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1400&template=Today

Printing three dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using “two-photon lithography”. With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer  is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices (see video). This opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine.

The video shows the 3d-printing process in real time. Due to the very fast guiding of the laser beam, 100 layers, consisting of approximately 200 single lines each, are produced in four minutes.
CLICK HERE TO ENJOY THE VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

This amazing progress was made possible by combining several new ideas. “It was crucial to improve the control mechanism of the mirrors”, says Jan Torgersen (TU Vienna). The mirrors are continuously in motion during the printing process. The acceleration and deceleration-periods have to be tuned very precisely to achieve high-resolution results at a record-breaking speed.

Source: http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/7444/

Nanowires — microscopic fibers that can be “grown” in the lab — are a hot research topic today, with a variety of potential applications including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and sensors. Now, a team of MIT researchers has found a way of precisely controlling the width and composition of these tiny strands as they grow, making it possible to grow complex structures that are optimally designed for particular applications.

Nanowires fabricated using the new techniques developed by Silvija Gradečak and her team can have varying widths, profiles and composition along their lengths, as illustrated here, where different colors are used to indicate compositional variations. 

Silvija Gradečak, professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts  Insitute of Technology, and her team,  were able to control and vary both the size and composition of individual wires as they grew. Nanowires are grown by using “seed” particles, metal nanoparticles that determine the size and composition of the nanowire. By adjusting the amount of gases used in growing the nanowires, Gradečak was  able to control the size and composition of the seed particles and, therefore, the nanowires as they grew. “We’re able to control both of these properties simultaneously,” she says.

The results are described in a new paper authored by Silvija Gradečak and her team, published in the journal Nano Letters.
Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/controlled-nanowire-growth-0222.html

Dr. Saeed Sarkar from the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council announced that over 2,600 university lecturers have so far worked on nanotechnology in their articles and theses, and there are more than 12,000 nanotechnology experts at the MSc and PhD levels in Iran. 

Investigation by researchers with California University showed that Iran ranked 4th in a 2010 world’s ranking which indicates the portion of nanotech-related scientific articles (out of total scientific publications) published by the researchers of a country. The study also reported that about 12% of the international journal papers of Iranian researchers are connected to nanotechnology. On another investigation which assessed countries by the total number of nanotech scientific published articles, Iran managed to rank 14th.

A different concern: Western countries have to think that nanotechnology could be developed as well for war purposes. See the spybird drone developed by the US Defense agency DARPA: http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=242

:Source: http://en.nano.ir/index.php/news/show/2544

Micro-engineering, physicists from the University of South Wales in Australia – UNSW - have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal. The tiny electronic device, described today in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates. This unprecedented atomic accuracy may yield the elementary building block for a future quantum computer ( or nanocomputer) with unparalleled computational efficiency. Until now, single-atom transistors have been realised only by chance, where researchers either have had to search through many devices or tune multi-atom devices to isolate one that works.

“But this device is perfect”, says Professor Michelle Simmons, group leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at UNSW. “This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy.” The microscopic device even has tiny visible markers etched onto its surface so researchers can connect metal contacts and apply a voltage, says research fellow and lead author Dr Martin Fuechsle from UNSW.

“Our group has proved that it is really possible to position one phosphorus atom in a silicon environment – exactly as we need it – with near-atomic precision, and at the same time register gates,” he says. 

Source: http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/single-atom-transistor-%E2%80%9Cperfect%E2%80%9D

Dr William Parnell’s team from the  School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester, England, have been working on the theory of invisibility cloaks which, until recently, have been merely the subject of science fiction. In recent times, however, scientists have been getting close to achieving ‘cloaking’ in a variety of contexts. The work from the team at Manchester focuses on the theory of cloaking devices which could eventually help to protect buildings and structures from vibrations and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

According to the mathematician, “This research has shown that we really do have the potential to control the direction and speed of elastic waves. This is important because we want to guide such waves in many contexts, especially in nano-applications such as in electronics for example. 

“If the theory can be scaled up to larger objects then it could be used to create cloaks to protect buildings and structures, or perhaps more realistically to protect very important specific parts of those structures.”, he added. This ‘invisibility’ could prove to be of great significance in safeguarding key structures such as nuclear power plants, electric pylons and government offices from destruction from natural or terrorist attacks.You can read old posts from nanocomputer.com, relating researches about 'invisble sounds' and objects.
http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=1464
http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=716
http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=1168

Source: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=7968

Workers with existing allergic conditions could have worse reactions when exposed to nanoparticles (http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=1452). Worse, nanomedecine portends the release of dangerous nanoparticles, nanorobots or nanoelectronic devices that will wreak havoc in the body (http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=990). For instance, scientists from Brown University say that nanoparticules of nickel  may trigger cancer (http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=446).
When human lung epithelial cells are exposed to equivalent doses of nano-sized (left) or micro-sized (right) metallic nickel particles, activated HIF-1 alpha pathways (stained green) appear mostly with the nanoparticles.

 In a project funded by the Danish Environemntal Protection Agency (EPA), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and National Research Centre for the Working Environment have initiated the development of a  screening tool called NanoRiskCat (NRC) for the evaluation of exposure and hazard of nanomaterials contained in products for professional and private use. Authored by Steffen Foss Hansen and Anders Braun from DTU's Department of Environmental Engineering and Keld Alstrup-Jensen from the National Research Centre for the Working Environment Environmental Project, the 268-page report on the NanRiskCat screening tool can be downloaded as a PDF file from the Danish EPA's website.The project's aim was to identify, categorize and rank the possible exposure and hazards associated with a nanomaterial in a product.

Source: http://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2011/12/978-87-92779-11-3.pdf

By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of  engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity. The researchers from the University at Buffalo, Army Research Laboratory and Air Force Office of Scientific Research have developed a new, nanomaterials-based technology that has the potential to increase the efficiency of photovoltaic cells up to 45 percent.

Specifically, the scientists have shown that embedding charged quantum dots into solar cells can improve electrical output by enabling the cells to harvest infrared light, and by increasing the lifetime of photoelectrons. The technology can be applied to many different photovoltaic structures.

A new company the researchers founded, OPtoElectronic Nanodevices LLC. (OPEN LLC), is commercializing this technology.

Source: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13138