Technology Update
“Movies” of electrons as they move across a semiconductor junction have been made by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan using a new imaging technique. Combining photoemission electron microscopy with femtosecond laser pump-probe methods, the technique tracks the motion of electrons on timescales shorter than 1 ps. The researchers say it […]
Researchers at Stanford University in the US and the University of Oxford in the UK have developed a new perovskite that can harvest infrared photons very well. When used together with another perovskite semiconductor that can harvest visible photons, the tandem device can covert solar energy into electricity with 20% efficiency. This figure could be […]
Researchers at Hewlett Packard Labs in California, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Seoul National University are reporting on a new low-current, self-rectifying memristor
Researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have invented a new ultralow power technique to trap nanoparticles in the sub-10 nm gaps between two gold electrodes. The technique, which overcomes many of the problems encountered in traditional dielectrophoresis experiments, could help make portable biosensors….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66547 Making nanogap electrodes
Researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US are the first to combine experimental and theoretical approaches at the atomic level to study how monolayer molybdenum sulphide (a typical 2D material) fractures. Thanks to transmission electron microscopy observations, backed up with large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, […]
By functionalizing the surface of a variety of nano-objects (such as nanowires, nanosheets, nanocubes and even biological cells) with polyphenols, researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia say that they can turn them into superstructured assemblies. The technique, which literally transforms the nanobject into a LEGO brick-like structure with stubs, could be used to […]
Ordinary silicon, the material that has dominated the semiconductor industry for decades, could also make a very promising host material for quantum bits in a future quantum computer. So say researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the US, who have found that electrically […]
The Nobel Prize for Physics 2016 has been divided, one half awarded to David J Thouless, the other half jointly to F Duncan M Haldane and J Michael Kosterlitz “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”. The prize is worth SEK 8m (£629,000) and will be shared by the winners, […]
The negative refraction of electrons in graphene has been seen for the first time in experiments done by physicists in the US. The work represents an important advance in the fabrication of graphene electronic devices, and could lead to new applications of graphene such as low-power transistors……… http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66506 Wrong way: electrons undergoing negative refraction at […]
Researchers in Korea and the UK have discovered that a graphene coating on biological samples helps dissipate the charge build-up that normally occurs on the surface of these samples during non-destructive electron microscopy imaging. Such a charge build-up is usually a big problem in this context and prevents high-resolution images from being obtained…….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66514 Graphene […]
The 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines, touted to herald a second industrial revolution. Just as the constant miniaturization of the transistor over recent decades has led to mobile phones and other pocket-sized devices with […]
Researchers in the US, Japan and China are the first to have studied the anisotropic light–matter interactions in gallium telluride (GaTe), a technologically important 2D semiconductor with in-plane anisotropy. Thanks to techniques like anisotropic optical extinction and Raman spectroscopy, they have found that the anisotropy is related to various parameters such as GaTe flake thickness, […]
Researchers in Moldova and Germany have made a new type of light-driven micro-engine from arrays of titania nanotubes.
Researchers led by Qiangfei Xia and Joshua Yang at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the US have made a “diffusive” memristor that emulates how a real synapse works. The device could be used as a key element in integrated circuits and next-generation computers that mimic how the human brain works………. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66462 Memristor mimics […]
Silica nanoparticles less than 10 nm in diameter in size could be used to kill cancer cells in a process known as ferroptosis according to new work by researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The tumour-killing properties of the particles appear to be intrinsic to the particles themselves and as […]
Researchers in the US have succeeded in making an excellent multiferroic material out of two “failed” multiferroics. The new material, which is made from two types of lutetium iron oxide, could be used in ultra low-power microprocessors, storage devices and next-generation electronics…….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66478 A new magnetic ferroelectric
Since the early days of nanotechnology, people have used the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) to manipulate atoms either mechanically or from the force due to charge injection. More recently researchers have noted that charge injected from an STM tip can manipulate molecules some distance away, by “remote control”. Now experiments have visualised the quantum mechanical […]
A technique called cryogenic near-field infrared microscopy has allowed researchers to observe how the electrical properties of the correlated insulator vanadium oxide (V2O3) evolve as it switches from being a metal to an insulator
Researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia and the University of Texas at Dallas in the US have succeeded in fabricating stretchy, electrically conductive textiles based on Spandex and carbon nanotubes. The composite yarns, which were literally knitted together, could be used to make actuators and sensors for use in applications such as artificial […]
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond can be used as a magnetometer to characterise the broadband magnetic fields generated by hard-disk write heads, according to new experiments by researchers in Germany and the UK. The new work could help further miniaturize these devices so that they can store more data….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66356 A write head
Researchers in the US and Spain have developed a new way to assemble plasmonic nanoparticles using an optical technique that they have dubbed plasmon-enhanced thermophoresis. The technique, which relies on optically controlling a temperature field gradient, requires much less power than traditional methods such as optical tweezers. It could assemble nanoparticles into functional superstructures and […]
