Technology Update
Researchers have taken another important step towards making flexible photovoltaics and solar cells thanks to a new class of two-dimensional crystals called semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs).
Graphene can be used to make highly sensitive gas and chemical sensors – but only if the carbon material contains defects.
Spin lifetimes in graphene appear to be limited by magnetic defects.
Researchers in the US have made a remarkable discovery about how an iron nanocrystal moves through a carbon nanotube that does not have a uniform diameter.
Multiferroics, which are both ferroelectric and magnetic, are promising for a wide range of applications, such as ferromagnetic resonance devices, photovoltaics and magnetoelectric memory cells.
Researchers in the US have succeeded in growing single atomic layers of the naturally occurring mineral tungstenite for the first time.
A team of researchers from Denmark, Germany and China say that they have created a new type of highly conducting 2D electron gas at the interface between strontium titanate and alumina
The first detailed study of triple-walled carbon nanotubes using resonant Raman spectroscopy has revealed that the outer walls of both double- and triple-walled CNTs protect the innermost tubes from interacting with their environment.
Researchers at Rice University in the US have made a new hybrid microsupercapacitor from graphene and carbon nanotube carpets with electrochemical properties that could come in useful for portable electronics and renewable power applications. At 2.42 mWh/cm3 in an ionic liquid, the device also has twice the energy density per volume of conventional aluminium electrolytic capacitors…… […]
Ionizing imaging modalities, often working in tandem with a contrast agent, are required to visualize optically transparent organs such as the bladder and lymph nodes. As a result, research is ongoing to find alternative methods that rely on non-ionizing radiation. Writing in Physics in Medicine and Biology, researchers from Korea and the US present one […]
Researchers in Korea and the US have succeeded in opening up a bandgap in graphene sheets by adding 2D silicon islands to the carbon material. If further improved, the technique could be used to engineer the electronic properties of graphene for use in a host of device applications….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/52081
Indium phosphide (InP) nanowires could be used to make highly efficient solar cells say researchers in Sweden and Germany. Cells made of these nanowires have efficiencies as high as 13.8% while covering only about 12% of the surface of a device. They can also convert as much as 71% of incoming sunlight with energy higher […]
Hot electrons cool down in graphene via a disorder-assisted “supercollision” process.
Researchers at Rice University in the US have made a new, seamless, 3D hybrid material from graphene and carbon nanotubes. The material, which has an extremely high surface area of more than 2000 m2/g, could be used to fabricate energy storage and nanoelectronic devices with superior properties….. http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/51832
Researchers in Australia and France have unveiled a new and simple technique to fabricate mechanically robust protein capsules
Single-walled carbon nanotube transistors containing a silicon oxynitride gate dielectric layer might be ideal for use in the harsh, ionizing environment of space.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have put forward a way to make an “electron cloak” – or an object that is invisible to electrons.
About 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water worldwide.
The coating, which repels almost every type of liquid and solid, from blood and crude oil to ice and bacteria, received a 2012 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine.
Using the compound eyes of the humble moth as their inspiration, an international team of physicists has developed new nanoscale materials that could reduce the radiation dosages received by patients getting X-rayed, while improving the resolution of the resulting images
Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has rapidly attracted the attention of academic and commercial institutions, which are looking to develop new technologies from the material.
