(PhysOrg.com) -- International team of researchers has discovered a new super-strength light alloy and had their key findings published in Nature Communications.
Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year. Now some MIT scientists have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of that process.
A new low-cost etching technique developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory can put a trillion holes in a silicon wafer the size of a compact disc.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of graphitic carbon, has great potential to make electronic devices such as radios, computers and phones faster and smaller. But its unique properties have also led to difficulties in integrating the material into such devices.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a new technique -- using a sheet of carbon just one atom thick -- to visualize the structure of molecules. The technique, which was used to obtain the first direct images of how water coats surfaces at room temperature, can also be used to image a potentially unlimited number of other molecules, including antibodies and other biomolecules.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new class of electronic logic device in which current is switched by an electric field generated by the application of mechanical strain to zinc oxide nanowires.
(PhysOrg.com) -- UC Berkeley researchers Karsten Weis, Jan Liphardt, and colleagues have used fluorescent probes called quantum dots to determine which molecules get into the nucleus via its nano-pores and which get kicked back out. Their findings could help design drugs that can get through the pores and target a cell's DNA.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have used a small crystal of ions (electrically charged atoms) to detect forces at the scale of yoctonewtons. Measurements of slight forces -one yoctonewton is equivalent to the weight of a single copper atom on Earth -- can be useful in force microscopy, nanoscale science, and tests of fundamental physics theories.
(PhysOrg.com) -- With growing interest in using nanoparticles for everything from antibacterial socks to medical imaging to electronic devices, the need to understand the environmental, health and safety risks of these particles also grows. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a simple process for producing nanocrystals that will enable studies of certain physical and chemical properties that affect how nanoparticles interact with the world around them.
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most difficult aspects of working at the nanoscale is actually seeing the object being worked on. Biological structures like viruses, which are smaller than the wavelength of light, are invisible to standard optical microscopes and difficult to capture in their native form with other imaging techniques.
Two new groundbreaking scientific papers by researchers at UC Santa Barbara demonstrate the synthesis of nanosize biological particles with the potential to fight cancer and other illnesses. The studies introduce new approaches that are considered "green" nanobiotechnology because they use no artificial compounds.
Rice University scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips that use only silicon, one of the most common substances on the planet, in a way that should be easily adaptable to nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques and promises to extend the limits of miniaturization subject to Moore's Law.
(PhysOrg.com) -- By dipping plain cotton cloth in a high-tech broth full of silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes, Stanford researchers have developed a new high-speed, low-cost filter that could easily be implemented to purify water in the developing world.
With the advent of nanometer-sized machines, there is considerable demand for stable, precise tools to measure absolute distances and distance changes. One way to do this is with a plasmon ruler. In physics jargon, a "plasmon" is the quasiparticle resulting from the quantization of plasma oscillation; it's essentially the collective oscillations of the free electron gas at a metallic surface, often at optical frequencies.
A pioneering study by researchers of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has shown that sandwiching a simple layer of silver nanoparticles can significantly improve the performance of organic transistors which are commonly used in consumer electronics.
European researchers have combined computer modelling of quantum mechanics and precision fabrication processes to create novel transparent conductive oxides made to order for a wide range of scientific and consumer applications.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a versatile, practical and efficient method for activating sites on the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and subsequently binding a wide range of molecules to them. This new method will enable large-scale manufacture of modified CNTs.
(PhysOrg.com) -- As RFID tags are becoming more widespread for tracking and identifying almost anything, researchers are continuing to develop cheap, ultralow-power memory devices for these applications. In a recent study, scientists from Cambridge have taken another step forward in this area by developing a write-once-read-many-times (WORM) memory device that requires just a fraction of the power needed by previous devices. In principle, the low-power memory can be used in any organic electronic circuit where the operation power is low.
Swiss scientists have succeeded in clearing a toxin from blood in just a few minutes, using specially produced nanomagnets. The procedure appears promising. If the method can be put into practice, it could one day help people with blood poisoning quickly and efficiently.
