Technology Update
Graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) could make good biosensors but before they can be employed in such applications, researchers need to quantify the thermal noise limit in these devices. A team at Oregon State University and Cornell University has now done just this by measuring the impedance between a graphene sheet and the liquid it is […]
Researchers in the US and China have developed a new ultrafast, clean and scalable technique to suspend layers of 2D materials like graphene, molybdenum sulphide, molybdenum selenide and tin sulphide above various patterned substrates. The technique, which is a general one (it may even be applied to other nanomaterials such as nanotubes and nanowires), could […]
It is official: buckminsterfullerenes or “buckyballs” (spherical molecules made up of 60 carbon atoms) exist in our galaxy,
“Truncated” protein nanopores can be used to sequence DNA quickly and cheaply, according to new experiments by researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK. Their work could help meet and even surpass the famous “$1000 genome” target set by the US National Health Institute……. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/61914 The truncated pores used to detect DNA and […]
The ability to sequence DNA has opened up the possibility of personalised medicine uniquely tailored to an individual’s genetic make-up. Optical sensing could provide the high-throughput DNA sequencing that would help make personalised medicine practically viable, but these approaches demand nanoporous membranes fabricated to high-level specifications that have so far only been achieved with painstaking […]
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK and IBM in the US have developed a new bottom-up self-assembly technique to grow quantum dots in semiconducting nanowires. Being able to precisely control the properties of complex heterostructures like these means that they could be used to make building blocks for devices like single-electron transistors, […]
The capacity of a lithium-ion battery can be nearly doubled by using an anode made from tiny nanoparticles of silicon wrapped in several layers of graphene.
A new nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique that can identify and quantify the ionic species responsible for storing charge in supercapacitors could help researchers better understand these devices on the molecular scale. The work could ultimately lead to improved supercapacitors……… http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/61814 Clare Grey
IBM Research has announced that it has succeeded in fabricating working test chips whose smallest features approach 7 nm. The breakthrough, achieved in collaboration with GlobalFoundries, Samsung and researchers at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering means that it may now be possible to pack more than 20 billion transistors onto […]
It is now possible to create and controllably steer light-like wakes – which are 2D analogues of Cerenkov radiation, water wakes created by boats and ships, and the sonic boom produced by some aircraft. So say researchers from the US, Singapore and Italy, who have been studying surface plasmons (light-like waves confined on the surface […]
It is now possible to synthesise bimetallic nanowires made from silver and gold whose length can be precisely controlled thanks to new experiments by researchers in Spain, Germany, Belgium and France. Since the wires made also have roughly the same molecular weight, their “surface plasmon resonances” can be tailored too – in the near- and […]
Researchers have succeeded in controlling “hyperbolic polaritons” for the first time
Silicon’s inability to produce light efficiently has been stymying attempts to develop optical devices from the microelectronics industry’s favourite element. Fabricating the material in a nanocrystalline form could help but many promising applications – such as waveguides, CMOS chips and non-volatile memories – are not compatible with the high temperatures used to produce silicon nanocrystals. […]
Spectrometry – the measurement of the relative contributions of different wavelengths in a light source – is an invaluable analytical technique used by science and technology professionals in a broad range of disciplines. Now a spectrometer has been developed using quantum-dot materials, which allows the devices to be made as small and cheap as smart […]
The first high-performance, flexible storage device based on the ferroelectric material lead zirconium titanate (or PZT) has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia. The nonvolatile memory boasts the highest polarization, capacitance and endurance values ever reported for a flexible ferroelectric capacitor. The device might find applications in wearable electronics, health-monitoring systems and ultradense information-storage […]
Nanocapsules with cores containing natural ingredients could be used to destroy bacterial biofilms without harming mammalian cells, according to new work by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in the US. As well as being antimicrobial, the capsules also appear to increase the number of fibroblasts in the cells being treated, which means that […]
The “Verwey” transition is the temperature (of around 123 K) at which magnetite (Fe3O4) goes from a being metal to an insulator. Thanks to new experiments on stoichiometric Fe3O4 nanocrystals, researchers at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and Seoul National University in Korea have now found that this transition disappears in particles that are smaller […]
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University have observed backward phase matching in a nonlinear metamaterial for the first time.
Researchers at Imperial College London have succeeded in growing ultrathin synthetic membranes that can filter out small molecules from organic solutes. The films, which are made from polyamide, are less than 10 nm thick and work by allowing solvents to pass through them while retaining larger solute molecules. They can also be made to have a […]
The first on-chip, visible-light source that uses “wonder material” graphene as a filament has been created by an international team of researchers. The team found that small strips of freely suspended graphene, attached to metal electrodes, can reach temperatures of up to 2800 K, allowing it to emit visible light. The research, while preliminary, opens up […]
Researchers at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California have succeeded in controlling the optical response of atomically thin materials on very short time-scales. The finding advances our understanding of many-body phenomena in low-dimensional systems and could help in the development of photonic devices from these novel nanostructured materials….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/61577 The experimental […]
