Helping carbon nanotubes get into shape

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method of compacting carbon nanotubes into dense bundles. These tightly packed bundles are efficient conductors and could one day replace copper as the primary interconnects used on computer chips and even hasten the transition to next-generation 3-D stacked chips.

3-D Nano Images

Understanding the functions of proteins often requires knowing their 3-D structures. But deciphering a protein’s structure is a time-consuming and difficult task, typically requiring crystallizing the proteins and bombarding them with x-rays. What’s more, scientists have not been able to crystallize thousands of proteins, so their structures remain unknown.

A far better option would be an analytic method that allowed biologists to directly determine protein structures. Conventional MRI can make out features down to three micrometers. Now IBM researchers demonstrate a resolution of 90 nanometers, a milestone toward their eventual goal of imaging individual protein molecules, which are roughly three to ten nanometers in size.

Read the article at Technology Review site.

Nanotech Assembler animation

Imagine being able to fabricate at home anything you like, eg laptop computer, hdtv or anything else you please. Well, in the not too distant future this may very well be possible.
This is a highly futuristic animation of a nanotech assembler.

Nanotube textile could make super-light armour

A lightweight material made from carbon nanotubes that is stronger than steel, and conducts almost as well as aluminium, has been unveiled by a start-up company in the US. The material could lead to lighter bulletproof clothing, wiring for aircraft and more efficient power-transmission lines, the company claims.

Researchers have long known that carbon nanotubes have extraordinary strength, transmit heat well and can act as semiconductors, depending on the method of construction. But these properties are of limited value in individual tubes and making bulk material with the same properties has not proved easy. Now Nanocomp, a start-up based in New Hampshire, US, has figured out a way round the problem.

Read the article at New Scientist site.

Practical Nanowire Devices

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Hawaii have developed an easy way to align nanowires and carbon nanotubes over areas 100 times larger than is possible using existing methods. The researchers are also able to fabricate the nanowires on a number of different surfaces. The advance potentially paves the way to mass production of electronics devices based on these promising nanostructures.

The technique, based on high-volume manufacturing methods used to produce plastic bags, could make it practical to employ nanowires and carbon nanotubes for controlling pixels on large, flexible displays and for accurately detecting multiple chemicals, viruses, and biomarkers for diseases. The results were published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Read rest of the story at Technology Review site.

Nanomachine of the future captures great scientist’s bold vision

An idea conceived by one of the world’s greatest scientists nearly 150 years ago has finally been realised with a tiny machine that could eventually lead to lasers moving objects remotely.

James Clerk Maxwell, who is ranked along Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for his contributions to science, imagined an atom-sized device — known as Maxwell’s Demon — that could trap molecules as they move in a specific direction.

Now scientists at the University of Edinburgh, inspired by Maxwell’s thought experiment in 1867, have been able to create such a “nanomachine” for the first time with their own “demon” inside it to ensnare the molecules as they move.

Controlling the movement of water through nanotube membranes

By fusing wet and dry nanotechnologies, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found a way to control the flow of water through carbon nanotube membranes with an unprecedented level of precision. The research, which will be described in the March 14, 2007 issue of the journal Nano Letters, could inspire technologies designed to transform salt water into pure drinking water almost instantly, or to immediately separate a specific strand of DNA from the biological jumble.

Nanotube, heal thyself

Pound for pound, carbon nanotubes are stronger and lighter than steel, but unlike other materials, the miniscule cylinders of carbon – which are no wider than a strand of DNA – remain remarkably robust even when chunks of their bodies are blasted away with heat or radiation. A new study by Rice University scientists offers the first explanation: tiny blemishes crawl over the skin of the damaged tubes, sewing up larger holes as they go.

Scientists track remarkable ‘breathing’ in nanoporous materials

Scientists all over the world are participating in the quest of new materials with properties suitable for the environmentally friendly and economically feasible separation, recovery, and reuse of vapours and greenhouse gases. A team of scientists from France, UK and the ESRF have recently discovered an unprecedented giant and reversible swelling of nanoporous materials with exceptional properties: huge flexibility and profound selectivity. Their results were recently published in Science.

Quantum dot lasers — 1 dot makes all the difference

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Stanford and Northwestern Universities have built micrometer-sized solid-state lasers in which a single quantum dot can play a dominant role in the device’s performance. Correctly tuned, these microlasers switch on at energies in the sub-microwatt range. These highly efficient optical devices could one day produce the ultimate low-power laser for telecommunications, optical computing and optical standards.

Gold nanoparticles help detect a toxic metal mercury

With gold nanoparticles, DNA and some smart chemistry as their tools, scientists at Northwestern University have developed a simple “litmus test” for mercury that eventually could be used for on-the-spot environmental monitoring of bodies of water, such as rivers, streams, lakes and oceans, to evaluate their safety as food and drinking water sources.

Placing single nanowires: NIST makes the connection

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a system for manipulating and precisely positioning individual nanowires on semiconductor wafers. Their technique, described in a recent paper,* allows them to fabricate sophisticated test structures to explore the properties of nanowires, using only optical microscopy and conventional photolithographic processing in lieu of advanced (and expensive) tools such as focused ion or electron beams.

Ideologies and nanotechnology

Richard Jones of the Soft Machines blog ponders about the nanotech ideology:

“There are many debates about nanotechnology; what it is, what it will make possible, and what its dangers might be. On one level these may seem to be very technical in nature. So a question about whether a Drexler style assembler is technically feasible can rapidly descend into details of surface chemistry, while issues about the possible toxicity of carbon nanotubes turn on the procedures for reliable toxicological screening. But it’s at least arguable that the focus on the technical obscures the real causes of the arguments, which are actually based on clashes of ideology. We supposedly live in a non-ideological age, so what are the ideological divisions that underly debates about nanotechnology?”

Read his ideological positions on nanotech here

The longest carbon nanotubes you’ve ever seen

Using techniques that could revolutionize manufacturing for certain materials, researchers have grown carbon nanotubes that are the longest in the world. While still slightly less than 2 centimeters long, each nanotube is 900,000 times longer than its diameter.

The fibers–which have the potential to be longer, stronger and better conductors of electricity than copper and many other materials–could ultimately find use in smart fabrics, sensors and a host of other applications.

What Will the First Nanotechnology Products Be?

Michael Anissimov of the Accelerating future blog, provides some ideas to answer this question.

Read rest of this interesting article at Michael’s blog.

Inexpensive ‘nanoglue’ can bond nearly anything together

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method to bond materials that don’t normally stick together. The team’s adhesive, which is based on self-assembling nanoscale chains, could impact everything from next-generation computer chip manufacturing to energy production.

Less than a nanometer – or one billionth of a meter – thick, the nanoglue is inexpensive to make and can withstand temperatures far higher than what was previously envisioned. In fact, the adhesive’s molecular bonds strengthen when exposed to heat.

Nanoscale pasta: Toward nanoscale electronics

Pasta tastes like pasta – with or without a spiral. But when you jump to the nanoscale, everything changes: carbon nanotubes and nanofibers that look like nanoscale spiral pasta have completely different electronic properties than their non-spiraling cousins. Engineers at UC San Diego, and Clemson University are studying these differences in the hopes of creating new kinds of components for nanoscale electronics.

New fabrication technique yields nanoscale UV LEDs

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with scientists from the University of Maryland and Howard University, have developed a technique to create tiny, highly efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from nanowires. As described in a recent paper,* the fabricated LEDs emit ultraviolet light—a key wavelength range required for many light-based nanotechnologies, including data storage—and the assembly technique is well-suited for scaling to commercial production.

Researchers create new nanotechnology field

A University of Alberta research team has combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other areas.

Dr. Abdulhakem Elezzabi and his colleagues have applied plasmonics principles to spintronics technology and created a novel way to control the quantum state of an electron’s spin.

The new technology, which the researchers call spinplasmonics, may be used to create incredibly efficient electron spin-based photonic devices, which in turn may be used to build, for example, computers with extraordinary capacities.

Nanoscale imaging reveals unexpected behaviors in high-temperature superconductors

Recent discoveries regarding the physics of ceramic superconductors may help improve scientists’ understanding of resistance-free electrical power.

Tiny, isolated patches of superconductivity exist within these substances at higher temperatures than previously were known, according to a paper by Princeton scientists, who have developed new techniques to image superconducting behavior at the nanoscale.