Technology Update

Researchers at Northwestern University in the US say that they have designed new types of artificially structured optical materials able to manipulate light in hitherto unimaginable ways. The “lattice opto-materials” as they have been dubbed were developed using Darwinian evolutionary principles thanks to a special algorithm that predicts a specific kind of lattice structure for […]

Researchers at Arizona State University in the US say that they have made a new molecular reader that might be able to sequence DNA. The device works by capturing molecules in a hole cut into a layered tunnel junction. The work is part of a global effort to develop speedy, low-cost methods to read DNA […]

Researchers in the US say that they have made the best 3D topological insulator to date – that is, a material completely insulating in the bulk but conducting at its surface. The structure, made from bismuth antimony tellurium selenide (BiSbTeSe2) might not only be of fundamental importance for testing out a number of condensed matter […]

Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada say that they have made the first perovskite-based spherical resonator laser by coating organometallic halide perovskites uniformly onto glass microspheres. The device might be employed in novel optical communications applications, and the new structure also shows promise for solar cells and photodetectors……. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/59221 A microsphere coated with […]

Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio say that they have produced a new phase map of the copper-nickel nanoalloy – a technologically important catalyst used in a wide range of industrial processes – that goes a long way in explaining how the size and shape of the nanoparticles affect the alloy’s melting […]

Physicists in the US and Taiwan say that they have found the first evidence of superconductivity in the topological insulator bismuth selenide thanks to new spectroscopic observations. The discovery is not only of fundamental importance for a number of condensed matter and particle physics theories but might even be exploited to build topological qubits for […]

Graphene laminate coatings can improve the thermal conductivity of plastic materials by up to 600 times. This new result, from an international team of researchers led by Alexander Balandin and Konstantin Novoselov, could substantially increase the potential range of practical applications for plastics, allowing them to be used in areas not possible until now – like […]

Thanks to a nanothermodynamic model, researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio led by Miguel José-Yacaman have succeeded in predicting the phase diagram of nanoscale “Tumbaga” – a gold-copper alloy that was very popular in pre-Columbian times – and have thus discovered why it looks so much like pure gold. Although still used […]

A new way to stretch single-crystal silicon (which is a rigid, brittle, material) to 10 times its original length without using a polymer support has been developed by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The feat will be an important step towards making stretchable and foldable electronics and […]

Electrochromic devices, which allow the transmittance of light to be adjusted by applying a voltage, sound like a strong competitor to liquid crystal displays. Yet despite their proposed advantages of low cost and mechanical flexibility, fragile materials and material mismatches with the electrodes have so far hindered the performance of these newcomers in display technology. […]

A new way to make graphene oxide-based aerogels containing highly crystalline graphene sheets has been developed by researchers in California. The aerogels – which might find use in catalysts, energy-storage devices, sensors, composites and even in desalination technologies – are much better than previously made foams that were of a much poorer quality…… http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/58959 Graphene […]

Nanostructured boron nitride (BN) is a technologically important material thanks to its excellent mechanical and thermal properties. It could be ideal for use in a variety of electronics and optoelectronics applications and as a good support material for graphene devices because the two materials have very similar lattice constants. However, BN is notoriously difficult to […]

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have designed the first low-noise, high-gain, broad-bandwidth Josephson travelling wave parametric amplifier using a technique called “resonant phase matching”. The scheme boosts the gain in the amplifier by more than 10 dB compared with previous such devices, bringing its value up to […]

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their development of blue LEDs. The prize is worth SEK 8m (£690,000) and will be shared by the three winners who will receive their medals at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December………. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/58844   Bright […]

Thin film interference effects can persist on both smooth and very rough substrates. This surprising new result, from researchers at Harvard University in the US, means that films exhibiting these effects (which change colour depending on their thickness) might be used in flexible electronics and optoelectronics devices, as well as to make ultra-lightweight coatings….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/58852 […]

Researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia are the first to have studied how flexible Fin field effect transistors (FinFETs) behave at high temperatures. FinFETs are the semiconductor industry’s most advanced transistors so it is important to understand how the flexible versions of these devices behave under different operating […]

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK say that they have observed “spin-triplet” excitons (electron-hole pairs) “hopping” from an organic semiconductor, pentacene, onto an inorganic semiconductor. The mechanism might be used to help reduce unwanted heat loss in photovoltaic devices – something that ultimately limits their performance….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/58875 Pentacene absorbing light