Technology Update
Researchers in the UK and Russia have shown that electron chirality affects how current flows in graphene transistors. The new work could help make better tunnelling electronics devices from the carbon sheet and could even lead to a new technology, dubbed “chiraltronics”…. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/62993 Device structure
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) are the first to have used infrared nano-imaging to study how surface plasmons (collective oscillations of electrons) propagate in “moiré-patterned” graphene grown on hexagonal boron nitride. The observations, which reveal new collective plasmon modes, could help in the development of advanced plasmonic circuits for novel […]
Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the US are the first to have fabricated phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs) that emit both very bright and deep blue light. The new devices fulfill the most stringent requirements for blue pixel displays and other lighting applications…. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/63009 Electrophosphorescent device characteristics
Since the first reports of atomic force microscopy 30 years ago, single-crystal silicon cantilevers have attracted much interest for high-sensitivity imaging and sensing. The energy dissipation during the cantilever oscillation that is central to these technologies is one of the limiting factors preventing higher sensitivities and spatial resolutions. Now researchers have traced these losses to […]
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a technique that can identify molecules at very low concentrations and so can be exploited
Researchers in the US and France have succeeded in opening up the largest bandgap ever (of 0.5 eV) in graphene sheets by growing the material on the silicon face of a silicon carbide substrate. The technique could be used to engineer the electronic properties of graphene for use in applications like high-speed, high-power or high-voltage […]
Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Lanzhou University are proposing new ways to increase the power output from triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). These devices convert ambient mechanical energy into electricity and could be used for powering wearable electronics, sensor networks […]
A new tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) with an atomically thin current-carrying channel that operates at ultralow supply voltages has been unveiled by a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Rice University in Texas. The new device, which is made from a 2D semiconducting crystal and a bulk germanium substrate, can […]
Researchers at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Argonne National Lab have made solution-processed semiconductors with the highest charge mobilities ever reported for inorganic semiconductors made in this way. The work shows that high-performance inorganic semiconductors can be fabricated without the need for costly vacuum deposition techniques…….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/62524 In […]
By levitating a tiny, nano-sized diamond using light, physicists in the US and Finland have created a controllable quantum system that has optical, mechanical and spin degrees of freedom. Based on a single “nitrogen vacancy” (NV) defect in the diamond, the system could be used in devices that measure extremely weak forces – or even […]
By mimicking how a natural virus works, researchers at the CNRS and the University of Strasbourg in France have made a “chemical virus” that can cross the fatty plasma membrane barrier of a biological cell. Once inside the cell, the virus can release its molecular payload – in this case a protein called caspase 3 […]
Researchers in Germany, the US and Israel say they have discovered a new mechanism for making a protein complex mechanically stable
Methane capture and storage allows double environmental returns, since it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and it can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels. Materials that can absorb methane are attracting a great deal of interest because of the inherent danger of storage in gas […]
Mesh electronics, a macroporous network of components with mechanical properties similar to that of biological tissue, is a relatively new technology that can be used to probe activity in the brain. Now, researchers at Harvard University in the US have overcome two major challenges holding back this technology. First, they have found a way to […]
By studying how thin elastic sheets wrap themselves around a liquid droplet, researchers in the US and Japan have discovered that the “wrappers” try to enclose the maximum amount of liquid in a fixed area of sheet. The effect is rather like making samosas or calzones, where we try to stuff the maximum amount of […]
Individual perovskite quantum dots can operate as efficient room-temperature single-photon sources (or quantum emitters) that emit photons one by one, according to new work by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico. The materials might be used in light-emitting diodes, with practical applications in displays…….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/62462 Perovskite quantum dots […]
It is now possible to accurately measure the quantum Hall effect (QHE) in magnetic fields of less than 5 Tesla and at temperatures of just under 4 Kelvin
A variety of ultrathin nanomechanical diffraction gratings that have been fashioned from the “wonder material” graphene have been created by an international team of researchers. The team wanted to reduce the thickness of such gratings to the ultimate physical limit – that of a single atom. The researchers say that their graphene gratings are 10 times […]
Researchers in Switzerland, Germany and the US are reporting on a new bottom-up approach to fabricate hexagonal boron-nitrogen-carbon (h-BNC) heterostructures with atomically precise BN/C boundaries and BN to C ratios. These structures could be ideal for a variety of electronics and nonlinear optics applications………… http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/62394 On-surface synthesis of BNC
The “wonder material” graphene has another significant quality to add to its impressive list of electrical and mechanical properties: superconductivity. Physicists in Canada and Germany have shown that graphene turns into a superconductor when doped with lithium atoms – a result that could lead to a new generation of superconducting nanoscale devices…………. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/62404 Super conductor: […]
An international research team has used carbon nanotubes to enhance the efficiency of laser acceleration, bringing table-top sources for carbon-ion therapy a step closer to reality. Therapeutic ion beams are currently delivered using large, expensive particle accelerators. Laser-driven ion acceleration may one day provide a compact, cost-effective alternative – but current techniques cannot match the […]
