NanoComputer

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

A Spanish and French research team have described a new technique for measuring the temperature inside a single cell without altering the cell’s metabolism. 

The new technique uses transfected green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a temperature nanoprobe and measures the polarization anisotropy of the GFP fluorescence. This rapid and non-invasive thermal nanoscopy differs from previous intents in that it does not alter cellular processes with the introduction of synthetic nano-objects. Furthermore, it is fully compatible with widespread GFP cellular biology.This advance complements the optical toolbox for biologists and could help to provide new understanding of cellular processes, such as those involved in Cancer.

The research is published in NanoLetters, by Jon Donner, Sebastian Thompson and Mark Kreuzer in the group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO, Romain Quidant, in collaboration with Guillaume Baffou, ex-ICFOnian now at Institut Fresnel in Marseille, France, 

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl300389y

Ultrapowerful microscopes, computers and solar cells could result from the research on "hyperbolic metamaterials". Scientists from Purdue University have shown how to create the metamaterials without the traditional silver or gold previously required,Using the metals is impractical for industry because of high cost and incompatibility with semiconductor manufacturing processes. The metals also do not transmit light efficiently, causing much of it to be lost. The Purdue researchers replaced the metals with an "aluminum-doped zinc oxide," or AZO.

"This means we can have a completely new material platform for creating optical metamaterials, which offers important advantages," said Alexandra Boltasseva, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering."Alternative plasmonic materials such as AZO overcome the bottleneck created by conventional metals in the design of optical metamaterials and enable more efficient devices," Boltasseva adds : "We anticipate that the development of these new plasmonic materials and nanostructured material composites will lead to tremendous progress in the technology of optical metamaterials, enabling the full-scale development of this technology and uncovering many new physical phenomena."

Source: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120514BoltassevaHyperbolic.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

Not to pick up electrons, but tweezers made of electrons. A recent paper by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Virginia (UVA) demonstrates that the beams produced by modern electron microscopes can be used not just to look at nanoscale objects, but to move them around, position them and perhaps even assemble them.

The tool is an electron version of the laser “optical tweezers” that have become a standard tool in biology, physics and chemistry for manipulating tiny particles. Except that electron beams could offer a thousand-fold improvement in sensitivity and resolution. Optical tweezers were first described in 1986 by a research team at Bell Labs. The general idea is that under the right conditions, a tightly focused laser beam will exert a small but useful force on tiny particles. Not pushing them away, which you might expect, but rather drawing them towards the center of the beam. Biochemists, for example, routinely use the effect to manipulate individual cells or liposomes under a microscope.
Source: http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/headlines.php?date=2011-11-09