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.