NanoComputer

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

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology, international semiconductor consortium SEMATECH and Texas State University have demonstrated that use of new methods and materials for building integrated circuits can reduce power—extending battery life to 10 times longer for mobile applications compared to conventional transistors.

“The tunneling field effect transistors have not yet demonstrated a sufficiently large drive current to make it a practical replacement for current transistor technology,” says Sean Rommel, an associate professor of electrical and microelectronic engineering. “But this work conclusively established the largest tunneling current ever experimentally demonstrated”, providing a practical basis for low-voltage transistor technologies.

Source: http://www.rit.edu/news/

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/

A team of scientists from Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork and the National University of Singapore have found new ways to combat overheating in mobile phones and laptops, and could also aid in electrical stimulation of tissue repair for wound healing. By finding out how molecules behave in these devices, a ten-fold increase in switching efficiency was obtained by changing just one carbon atom. Dr. Damien Thompson at the Tyndall National Institute, UCC and a team of researchers at the National University of Singapore led by Prof. Chris Nijhuis designed and created the devices, which are based on molecules acting as electrical valves, or diode rectifiers.

“These molecules are very useful because they allow current to flow through them when switched ON and block current flow when switched OFF. The results of the study show that simply adding one extra carbon is sufficient to improve the device performance by more than a factor of ten. We are following up lots of new ideas based on these results, and we hope ultimately to create a range of new components for electronic devices,” explains Dr. Damien Thompson.
Source: http://www.tyndall.ie/node/23446

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/

Scientists from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Switzerland – are producing hydrogen from sunlight, water and rust. They’re paving the way for an economic and ecological solution for storing renewable energy. How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically viable method for solar hydrogen production. The device, still in the experimental stages, is described in an article published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Their prototypes shared the same basic principle: a dye-sensitized solar cell – invented by Michael Grätzel, a colleague from University of Geneva, – combined with an oxide-based semiconductor. The device is completely self-contained.

Source: http://actu.epfl.ch/

Researchers at the Carnegie Institution have discovered a new efficient way to pump heat using crystals. The crystals can pump or extract heat, even on the nanoscale, so they could be used on computer chips to prevent overheating or even meltdown, which is currently a major limit to higher computer speeds. The research is published in the Physical Review Letters.Ronald Cohen, staff scientist at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory and Maimon Rose, originally a high school intern now at the University of Chicago carried out the research. They performed simulations on ferroelectric crystals—materials that have electrical polarization in the absence of an electric field. The electrical polarization can be reversed by applying an external electrical field.

“The electrocaloric effect pumps heat through changing temperature by way of an applied electric field,” explained Cohen. “The effect has been known since the 1930s, but has not been exploited because people were using materials with high transition temperatures. We found that the effect is larger if the ambient temperature is well above the transition temperature, so low transition temperature materials are preferred.”
Source: http://carnegiescience.edu/

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 Rice University are designing transparent, two-terminal, three-dimensional computer memories on flexible sheets that show promise for electronics and sophisticated heads-up displays or quant glass.The technique based on the switching properties of silicon oxide, a breakthrough discovery by Rice in 2008, was reported today in the online journal Nature Communications.The Rice team led by chemist James Tour and physicist Douglas Natelson is making highly transparent, nonvolatile resistive memory devices based on the revelation that silicon oxide itself can be a switch At 5 namometer, it shows promise to extend Moore’s Law, which predicted computer circuitry will double in power every two years. Current state-of-the-art electronics are made with 22 nm circuits.

The research by Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science; lead author Jun Yao, a former graduate student at Rice and now a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard; Jian Lin, a Rice postdoctoral researcher, and their colleagues details memories that are 95 percent transparent, made of silicon oxide and crossbar graphene terminals on flexible plastic.The Rice lab is making its devices with a working yield of about 80 percent, “which is pretty good for a non-industrial lab,” Tour said. “When you get these ideas into industries’ hands, they really sharpen it up from there.”
Source: http://news.rice.edu/2012/10/02/visionary-transparent-memory-a-step-closer-to-reality/

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

Researchers have learned how to mass produce tiny mechanical devices that could help cell phone users avoid the nuisance of dropped calls and slow downloads. The devices are designed to ease congestion over the airwaves to improve the performance of cell phones and other portable devices. “There is not enough radio spectrum to account for everybody’s handheld portable device,” said Jeffrey Rhoads, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.
The overcrowding results in dropped calls, busy signals, degraded call quality and slower downloads. To counter the problem, industry is trying to build systems that operate with more sharply defined channels so that more of them can fit within the available bandwidth.

“To do that you need more precise filters for cell phones and other radio devices, systems that reject noise and allow signals only near a given frequency to pass,” said Saeed Mohammadi, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who is working with Rhoads, doctoral student Hossein Pajouhi and other researchers.
Source: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2012/Q3/nanoresonators-might-improve-cell-phone-performance.html

A new “nano machine shop” that shapes nanowires and ultrathin films could represent a future manufacturing method for tiny structures with potentially revolutionary properties. The structures might be tuned for applications ranging from high-speed electronics to solar cells and also may have greater strength and unusual traits such as ultrahigh magnetism and “plasmonic resonance,” which could lead to improved optics, computers and electronics. The researchers used their technique to stamp nano- and microgears; form tiny circular shapes out of a material called graphene, an ultrathin sheet of carbon that holds promise for advanced technologies; and change the shape of silver nanowires, said Gary Cheng, an associate professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University.

“We do this shaping at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, like a nano-machine shop,” said Cheng, who is working with doctoral students Ji Li, Yiliang Liao, Ting-Fung Chung and Sergey Suslov and physics professor Yong P. Chen.
Source: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2012/Q3/nano-machine-shop-shapes-nanowires,-ultrathin-films.html

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

Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A mere milligram of the molecule could encode the complete text of every book in the Library of Congress and have plenty of room to spare. All of this has been mostly theoretical —until now. In a new study, researchers from Harvard University stored an entire genetics textbook in less than a picogram of DNA—one trillionth of a gram— an advance that could revolutionize our ability to save data.

“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet,” said Harvard University molecular geneticist George Church, the project’s senior researcher.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577593291643488120.html?mod=WSJUK_hpp_MIDDLELSMini

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.

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/

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

A multi-institutional team of researchers, led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has provided the first atomic-scale insights into the ferroelectric properties of nanocrystals. This breakthrough is critical for the development of the next generation of data storage devices as  one-inch chips storing terabytes of data. Working with the world’s most powerful transmission electron microscope, the researchers mapped the ferroelectric structural distortions in nanocrystals of germanium telluride, a semiconductor, and barium titanate, an insulator.

Atomic-resolution images of germanium telluride nanoparticles from Berkeley Lab’s TEAM I electron microscope, and electron holographic images of barium titanate nanoparticles (below) from BNL yielded the first detailed experimental information on ferroelectric order at the nanoscale.

“As we scale down our device technology from the microscale to the nanoscale, we need a better understanding of how critical material properties, such as ferroelectric behavior, are impacted,” says Paul Alivisatos, director of Berkeley Lab and one of the principal investigators in this research. “Our results provide a pathway to unraveling the fundamental physics of nanoscale ferroelectricity at the smallest possible size scales.”
Let's remind similar researches by an IBM team, described in a Nanocomputer.com former article. http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=1620, and by a french team from CNRS-Paris. http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=2590

Source: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2012/07/10/ferroelectricity-on-the-nanoscale/

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology - GEORGIA TECH –  have discovered yet another way to harvest small amounts of electricity from motion in the world around us – this time by capturing the electrical charge produced when two different kinds of plastic materials rub against one another. Based on flexible polymer materials, this “triboelectric” generator could provide alternating current (AC) from activities such as walking.  And because these triboelectric generators can be made nearly transparent, they could offer a new way to produce active sensors that might replace technology now used for touch-sensitive device displays.

Diagram shows a new high-output, flexible and transparent trioboelectric nanogenerator produced from transparent polymer materials.

“The fact that an electric charge can be produced through this principle is well known,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "What we have introduced is a gap separation technique that produces a voltage drop, which leads to a current flow, allowing the charge to be used. This generator can convert random mechanical energy from our environment into electric energy.”

Source: http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/

Energy efficiency is the most significant challenge standing in the way of continued miniaturization of electronic systems, and miniaturization is the principal driver of the semiconductor industry. “As we approach the ultimate limits of Moore’s Law , however, silicon will have to be replaced in order to miniaturize further,” said Jeffrey Bokor, deputy director for science at the Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor at UC-Berkeley.

A team of Stanford engineering professors, doctoral students, undergraduates, and high-school interns, led by Professors Subhasish Mitra  and H.-S. Philip Wong , took on the challenge and has produced a series of breakthroughs that represent the most advanced computing and storage elements yet created. Since nanotube transistors were demonstrated in 1998, researchers imagined a new age of highly efficient, advanced computing electronics. That promise, however, is yet to be realized due to substantial material imperfections inherent to nanotubes that left engineers wondering whether CNTs would ever prove viable. The Stanford design approach has two striking features in that it sacrifices virtually none of CNTs’ energy efficiency and it is also compatible with existing fabrication methods and infrastructure, pushing the technology a significant step toward commercialization. “The first CNTs wowed the research community with their exceptional electrical, thermal and mechanical properties over a decade ago, but this recent work at Stanford has provided the first glimpse of their viability to complement silicon CMOS transistors,” said Larry Pileggi, Tanoto Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University..

Source: http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-engineers-perfecting-carbon-nanotubes-high-energy-efficient-computing

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

Putting  into a microchip Graphene, has proven difficult. Scientists are working hard on it as graphene is the wonder material that could solve the problem of making ever faster computers and smaller mobile devices. The answer may lie in new nanoscale systems based on ultrathin layers of materials with exotic properties. Called two-dimensional layered materials, these systems could be important for microelectronics, various types of hypersensitive sensors, catalysis, tissue engineering and energy storage. Researchers at Penn State have applied one such 2D layered material, a combination of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride, to produce improved transistor performance at an industrially relevant scale.

“Other groups have shown that graphene on boron nitride can improve performance two to three times, but not in a way that could be scaled up. For the first time, we have been able to take this material and apply it to make transistors at wafer scale,” said Joshua Robinson, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State.

Source: http://live.psu.edu/story/59873#rssEarth_and_Mineral_Sciences

Researchers at University College London – Great Britain, have developed  the first purely silicon oxide-based ‘Resistive RAM’ memory chip that can operate in ambient conditions – opening up the possibility of new super-fast memory. Resistive RAM (or ‘ReRAM’) memory chips are based on materials, most often oxides of metals, whose electrical resistance changes when a voltage is applied – and they “remember” this change even when the power is turned off. ReRAM chips promise significantly greater memory storage than current technology, such as the Flash memory used on USB sticks, and require much less energy and space.

Dr Tony Kenyon, UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: “Our ReRAM memory chips need just a thousandth of the energy and are around a hundred times faster than standard Flash memory chips. The fact that the device can operate in ambient conditions and has a continuously variable resistance opens up a huge range of potential applications."

Source: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/May2012/120518-new-silicon-memory-chip