Products that use silica-based nanoparticles for biomedical uses such as various chips drug or gene delivery and tracking imaging ultrasound therapy and diagnostics may also pose an increased cardiovascular
and using indium-doped tin oxide as electrode. However such substrate is not flexible and the relatively high resistance of ITO electrode will compromises the OPV device performance.
Comparatively an aluminum foil substrate has the advantages of excellent conductivity flexibility cost-effectiveness and roll-to-roll processibility.
#Stacking two-dimensional materials may lower cost of semiconductor devices A team of researchers led by North carolina State university has found that stacking materials that are only one atom thick can create semiconductor junctions that transfer charge efficiently regardless of
whether the crystalline structure of the materials is mismatched-lowering the manufacturing cost for a wide variety of semiconductor devices such as solar cells lasers and LEDS.
This work demonstrates that by stacking multiple two-dimensional (2-D) materials in random ways we can create semiconductor junctions that are as functional as those with perfect alignment says Dr. Linyou Cao senior author of a paper on the work
For most semiconductor electronic or photonic devices to work they need to have a junction
which is where two semiconductor materials are bound together. For example in photonic devices like solar cells lasers and LEDS the junction is where photons are converted into electrons or vice versa.
All semiconductor junctions rely on efficient charge transfer between materials to ensure that current flows smoothly
and that a minimum of energy is lost during the transfer. To do that in conventional semiconductor junctions the crystalline structures of both materials need to match.
However that limits the materials that can be used because you need to make sure the crystalline structures are compatible.
And that limited number of material matches restricts the complexity and range of possible functions for semiconductor junctions.
We used molybdenum sulfide and tungsten sulfide for this experiment but this is a fundamental discovery that we think applies to any 2-D semiconductor material.
or more semiconductor materials and you can stack them randomly but still get efficient charge transfer between the materials.
Currently creating semiconductor junctions means perfectly matching crystalline structures between materials -which requires expensive equipment sophisticated processing methods and user expertise.
and LEDS remain very expensive. But stacking 2-D materials doesn't require the crystalline structures to match.
Researchers capture microimages of micropillar P/N junctions on a semiconductor More information: Nano Letters pubs. acs. org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl503817 7
#New'electronic skin'for prosthetics robotics detects pressure from different directions Touch can be a subtle sense,
For the first time, scientists report the development of a stretchable"electronic skin"closely modeled after our own that can detect not just pressure,
Hyunhyub Ko and colleagues explain that electronic skins are flexible film-like devices designed to detect pressure,
Ko's team decided to work on an electronic skin based on the structure of our own so it could"feel"in three dimensions.
Abstract Stretchable electronic skins with multidirectional force-sensing capabilities are of great importance in robotics, prosthetics,
piezoresistive interlocked microdome arrays are employed for stress-direction-sensitive, stretchable electronic skins. Here we show that these arrays possess highly sensitive detection capability of various mechanical stimuli including normal,
In addition, we show that the electronic skins attached on human skin in the arm and wrist areas are able to distinguish various mechanical stimuli applied in different directions
and active electronics via 3-D printing (Phys. org) As part of a project demonstrating new 3-D printing techniques Princeton researchers have embedded tiny light-emitting diodes into a standard contact lens
Instead he said the team created the device to demonstrate the ability to 3-D print electronics into complex shapes and materials.
This shows that we can use 3-D printing to create complex electronics including semiconductors said Mcalpine an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
We were able to 3-D print an entire device in this case an LED. The hard contact lens is made of plastic.
The researchers used tiny crystals called quantum dots to create the LEDS that generated the colored light.
In the recent past a team of Princeton professors including Mcalpine created a bionic ear out of living cells with an embedded antenna that could receive radio signals.
The main focus of the bionic ear project was to demonstrate the merger of electronics
Kong the lead author of the Oct 31 article describing the current work in the journal Nano Letters said that the contact lens project on the other hand involved the printing of active electronics using diverse materials.
and also had to develop new methods to print electronics rather than use the techniques commonly used in the electronics industry.
Mcalpine said that one of 3-D printing's greatest strengths is its ability to create electronics in complex forms.
Unlike traditional electronics manufacturing which builds circuits in flat assemblies and then stacks them into three dimensions 3-D printers can create vertical structures as easily as horizontal ones.
In this case we had a cube of LEDS he said. Some of the wiring was vertical
Mcalpine said that he does not envision 3-D printing replacing traditional manufacturing in electronics any time soon;
Traditional manufacturing which uses lithography to create electronic components is a fast and efficient way to make multiple copies with a very high reliability.
In this case the researchers were able to custom 3-D print electronics on a contact lens by first scanning the lens and feeding the geometric information back into the printer.
This allowed for conformal 3-D printing of an LED on the contact lens s
#Nanotechnology against malaria parasites Malaria parasites invade human red blood cells they then disrupt them and infect others. Researchers at the University of Basel and The swiss Tropical and Public health Institute have developed now so-called nanomimics of host cell membranes that trick the parasites.
The new technique could also be used to create nanoscale inkjet printers for printing electronics or biological cells or to create antennas or photonic components.
For this work we focused on creating nanostructures using photosensitive polymers which are used commonly in lithography Zhang says.
The geometry of a nanoparticle is often as influential as its chemical makeup in determining how it behaves from its catalytic properties to its potential as a semiconductor component.
They have demonstrated for the first time the on-demand emission of electron pairs from a semiconductor quantum dot and verified their subsequent splitting into two separate conductors.
As an electron source the physicists from Leibniz University Hannover and from PTB used so-called semiconductor single-electron pumps.
This is an important step towards the envisioned generation and separation of entangled electron pairs in semiconductor components s
#Nanoparticle network could bring fast-charging batteries (Phys. org) A new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.
Batteries have called two electrodes an anode and a cathode. The anodes in most of today's lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite.
The researchers took a page from the paper industry using one of its processes to make a flat mesh out of light-absorbing semiconductor nanowires that
they are suitable for building sensors to measure hydrogen peroxide. This chemical damages nerve cells and apparently plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
"A subcutaneous sensor could save diabetes patients from having to constantly prick their fingers"thinks Ensinger.
transistors for flexible electronics high-efficiency light-emitting diodes resonator-based mass sensors and integrated near-field optoelectronic tips for advanced scanning tip microscopy.
That promise cannot be realized however unless the wires can be fabricated in large uniform arrays using methods compatible with high-volume manufacture.
Now NIST's PML's Optoelectronic Manufacturing Group has achieved a breakthrough: Reproducible synthesis of gallium nitride nanowires with controlled size and location on silicon substrates.
The result was achieved by improving selective wire-growth processes to produce one nanowire of controlled diameter per mask-grid opening over a range of diameters from 100 nm to 200 nm.
and near-surface properties of materials to optimize nanowire LEDS and to produce nanowires with controlled diameter for a collaborative project involving printable transistors for millimeter-wave reconfigurable antennae e
#Designing complex structures beyond the capabilities of conventional lithography Gold nanoparticles smaller than 10 nanometers spontaneously self-organize in entirely new ways
which are used commonly in consumer electronics. In a study published in the journal ACS Nano researchers showed how a coating that makes high capacity silicon electrodes more durable could lead to a replacement for lower-capacity graphite electrodes.
Understanding how the coating works gives us an indication of the direction we need to move in to overcome the problems with silicon electrodes said materials scientist Chongmin Wang of the Department of energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Thanks to its high electrical capacity potential silicon is one of the hottest things in lithium ion battery development these days Replacing the graphite electrode in rechargeable lithium batteries with silicon could increase the capacity tenfold making
When charging lithium infiltrates the silicon electrode. The lithium causes the silicon electrode to swell up to three times its original size.
Possibly as a result of the swelling or for other unknown reasons the silicon fractures and breaks down.
Researchers have been using electrodes made up of tiny silicon spheres about 150 nanometers wide#about a thousand times smaller than a human hair#to overcome some of the limitations of silicon as an electrode.
No one understood if the oxide layer interfered with electrode performance and if so how the rubbery coating improved it.
and is currently the only group that can create alucone-coated silicon particles#took high magnification images of the particles in an electron microscope.
However it will provide an environmentally friendly low-cost way to make nanoporous graphene for use in supercapacitors-devices that can store energy and release it rapidly.
Such devices are used in everything from heavy industry to consumer electronics. The findings were published just in Nano Energy by scientists from the OSU College of Science OSU College of Engineering Argonne National Laboratory the University of South Florida and the National Energy technology Laboratory in Albany Ore.
Because of that it has an electrical conductivity at least 10 times higher than the activated carbon now used to make commercial supercapacitors.
Most commercial carbon supercapacitors now use activated carbon as electrodes but their electrical conductivity is very low Ji said.
This solves a major problem in creating more powerful supercapacitors. A supercapacitor is a type of energy storage device
but it can be recharged much faster than a battery and has a great deal more power. They are used mostly in any type of device where rapid power storage
They are being used in consumer electronics and have applications in heavy industry with the ability to power anything from a crane to a forklift.
A supercapacitor can capture energy that might otherwise be wasted such as in braking operations. And their energy storage abilities may help smooth out the power flow from alternative energy systems such as wind energy.
The researchers combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless light-sensitive flexible film that could potentially replace a damaged retina.
and semiconductor nanorod film will serve as a compact replacement for damaged retinas. We are still far away from actually replacing the damaged retina said Dr. Bareket.
Flexibly bound molecules at the microscope tip can be utilized as tailor-made sensors and signal transducers that are able to make the atomic structure visible nevertheless.
In the last few years, such atomic sensors have also proven useful for work with atomic force microscopes.
Then, in May 2014, scientists from the University of California, Irvine, showed for the first time that these sensors can also be used to improve signals in a related imaging mode known as inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy.
it is the vibration of the sensor molecule against the microscope tip that reacts sensitively to the surface potential of the scanned sample."
They posses a high surface area for better electron transfer which can lead to the improved performance of an electrode in an electric double capacitor or battery.
Nanoporous metals offer an increased number of available sites for the adsorption of analytes a highly desirable feature for sensors.
#Breakthrough in flexible electronics enabled by inorganic-based laser lift off Flexible electronics have been touted as the next generation in electronics in various areas ranging from consumer electronics to bio-integrated medical devices.
and processing limitations in scalability have posed big challenges to developing all-in-one flexible electronics systems in
The high temperature processes essential for high performance electronic devices have restricted severely the development of flexible electronics because of the fundamental thermal instabilities of polymer materials.
A research team headed by Professor Keon Jae Lee of the Department of Materials science and engineering at KAIST provides an easier methodology to realize high performance flexible electronics by using the Inorganic-based Laser Lift off (ILLO.
and then fabricating ultrathin inorganic electronic devices e g. high density crossbar memristive memory on top of the exfoliation layer.
and then subsequently transferred onto any kind of receiver substrate such as plastic paper and even fabric.
and substrate a nanoscale process at a high temperature of over 1000c can be utilized for high performance flexible electronics.
The ILLO process can be applied to diverse flexible electronics such as driving circuits for displays and inorganic-based energy devices such as battery solar cell and self-powered devices that require high temperature processes s
Making the solid-state device is just like making a sandwich just with ultra high-tech semiconductor tools used to slice
First they made a sandwich composed of two metal electrodes separated by a two-nanometer thick insulating layer (a single nanometer is 10000 times smaller than a human hair) made by using a semiconductor technology called atomic layer deposition.
The technology we've developed might just be the first big step in building a single-molecule sequencing device based on ordinary computer chip technology said Lindsay.
Previous attempts to make tunnel junctions for reading DNA had one electrode facing another across a small gap between the electrodes
Our approach of defining the gap using a thin layer of dielectric (insulating material between the electrodes
and gives DNA molecules room to pass the electrodes. Specifically when a current is passed through the nanopore as the DNA passes through it causes a spike in the current unique to each chemical base (A c T or G) within the DNA molecule.
to Agilent technologies in 2005. The research was funded by the National institutes of health's National Human genome Research Institute Roche and published in the journal ACS Nano.
Engineers develop innovative process to print flexible electronic circuits More information: Inorganic#Organic Hybrid Nanoprobe for NIR-Excited Imaging of Hydrogen sulfide in Cell Cultures and Inflammation in a Mouse Model.
#Paper electronics could make health care more accessible Flexible electronic sensors based on paper an inexpensive material have the potential to some day cut the price of a wide range of medical tools from helpful robots
Scientists have developed now a fast low-cost way of making these sensors by directly printing conductive ink on paper.
because paper is available worldwide at low cost it makes an excellent surface for lightweight foldable electronics that could be made
Scientists have fabricated already paper-based point-of-care diagnostic tests and portable DNA detectors. But these require complicated and expensive manufacturing techniques.
Hu's team wanted to develop a way to print it directly on paper to make a sensor that could respond to touch or specific molecules such as glucose.
The team concluded their durable lightweight sensor could serve as the basis for many useful applications.
Touch pad sensors on a variety of paper substrates can be achieved with optimized silver nanowire tracks.
It turns out that previous tests indicating that some nanoparticles can damage our DNA may have been skewed by inadvertent light exposure in the lab. Nanoparticles made of titanium dioxide are a common ingredient in paint
However, some recent studies using cells suggest that titanium dioxide can damage DNA even in darkness disturbing possibility.
"The NIST team exposed samples of DNA to titanium dioxide nanoparticles under three different conditions: Some samples were exposed in the presence of visible
"The results suggest that titanium dioxide nanoparticles do not damage DNA when kept in the dark,
#Quantum dot technology makes LCD TVS more colorful energy-efficient If LCD TVS start getting much more colorful and energy-efficient in the next few years,
it will probably be thanks to MIT spinout QD Vision, a pioneer of quantum dot television displays.
Quantum dots are light-emitting semiconductor nanocrystals that can be tuned by changing their size, nanometer by nanometer to emit all colors across the visible spectrum.
QD Vision has developed an optical component that can boost the color gamut for LCD televisions by roughly 50 percent,
Last June, Sony used QD Vision product, called Color IQ, in millions of its Bravia riluminostelevisions, marking the first-ever commercial quantum dot display.
In September, Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL began implementing Color IQ into certain models. These are currently only available in China,
Replacing the bulb In conventional LCD TVS pixels are illuminated by a white LED backlight that passes through blue, red,
and green filters to produce the colors on the screen. But this actually requires phosphors to convert a blue light to white;
Manufacturers can potentially boost color by incorporating more LEDS, but this costs more and requires more energy to run.
Manufacturers use a blue LED in the backlight, but without the need for conversion phosphors.
LCD TVS equipped with Color IQ produce 100 percent of the color gamut, with greater power efficiency than any other technology. he value proposition is that you are not changing the display,
Other technologies, called organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, use an organic compound to reach upward of 100 percent of the color gamut
LCD TVS made with Color IQ are just as colorful but are made for a few hundred dollars less
on implementing quantum dots into electronic devices. In a study funded by MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, Coe-Sullivan, QD Vision cofounder Jonathan Steckel Phd 6,
and others developed a pioneering technique for producing quantum dot LEDS (QLEDS). To do so, they sandwiched a layer of quantum dots, a few nanometers thick, between two organic thin films.
Coe-Sullivan enrolled in 15.390 (New Ventures) to further develop a business model. hat led to the more rigorous formation of a sales and marketing plans,
the company eventually caught the eye of Sony, and last year became the first to market with a quantum dot display.
Along with Color IQ-powered LCD TVS, Amazon released a quantum dot Kindle last year, and Asus has a quantum dot notebook. nd there nothing in between that quantum dots can address,
When associate professor Qi Hua Fan of the electrical engineering and computer science department set out to make a less expensive supercapacitor for storing renewable energy he developed a new plasma technology that will streamline the production of display screens.
if biochar a byproduct of the a process that converts plants materials into biofuel could be used in place of expensive activated carbon to make electrodes for supercapacitors.
The amount of charge stored in a capacitor depends on the surface area Fan explained and the biochar nanoparticles can create an extremely large surface area
The technique that treats biochar electrodes for supercapacitors can also be used in making displays explained Fan who was a research scientist at Wintek more than 10 years ago.
Plasma processing is a very critical technology in modern optoelectronic materials and devices Fan explained.
The high-energy plasma can deposit highly transparent and conductive thin films create high quality semiconductors and pattern micro-or nanoscale devices thus making the display images brighter and clearer.
this allows us to move into the automotive construction aerospace textile and electronics sectors which are demanding
The Rice lab of materials scientist Jun Lou created the new cathode, one of the two electrodes in batteries,
which cover conductive titanium dioxide particles. The dyes absorb photons and produce electrons that flow out of the cell for use;
First, the graphene and nanotubes are grown directly onto the nickel substrate that serves as an electrode,
eliminating adhesion issues that plagued the transfer of platinum catalysts to common electrodes like transparent conducting oxide.
which determines how well electrons cross from the electrode to the electrolyte, was found to be 20 times smaller than for platinum-based cathodes,
titanium dioxide and light-capturing organic dye particles, the largest cells were only 350 microns thickhe equivalent of about two sheets of papernd could be flexed easily and repeatedly.
#New way to move atomically thin semiconductors for use in flexible devices Researchers from North carolina State university have developed a new way to transfer thin semiconductor films
Mos2 is an inexpensive semiconductor material with electronic and optical properties similar to materials already used in the semiconductor industry.
such as transistors, operate on these electric signals, producing outputs that are dependent on their inputs.""Mixing two input signals to get a new output is the basis of computation,
"A nonlinear material, such a cadmium sulfide, can change the frequency, and thus the color, of light that passes through it,
That doesn't work for a computer chip.""To reduce the volume of the material and the power of the light needed to do useful signal mixing,
the researchers needed a way to amplify the intensity of a light wave as it passed through a cadmium sulfide nanowire.
so that light is contained mostly within the cadmium sulfide rather than at the interface between it and the silver shell,
"The frequency-changing efficiency of cadmium sulfide is intrinsic to the material, but it depends on the volume of the material the wave passes through,
Even in its present form the techniques demonstrated here can revolutionize nanoscale imaging in realms far beyond materials science including electronics and biology.
and radiofrequency shielding in technology from portable electronics to coaxial cables. Finding or making a thin material that is useful for holding
Take the electrode of the small lithium-ion battery that powers your watch for example ideally the conductive material in that electrode would be very small
Zheng Ling a doctoral student from Dalian spent a year at Drexel spearheading the research that led to the first MXENE-polymer composites.
We have shown that the volumetric capacitance of an MXENE-polymer nanocomposite can be compared much higher to conventional carbon-based electrodes
because it slightly enlarges the interlayer space between MXENE flakes allowing ions to penetrate deep into the electrode;
With these conductive electrodes and no liquid electrolyte we can eventually eliminate metal current collectors and make lighter and thinner supercapacitors.
The testing also revealed hydrophilic properties of the nanocomposite which means that it could have uses in water treatment systems such as membrane for water purification
made with a technique pioneered in Li's lab for electronics applications such as 3-D inductors.
For Li's group, the next step is to put electrodes in the microtubes so researchers can measure the electrical signals that the nerves conduct."
"If we place electrodes inside the tube, since they are directly in contact with the axon,
And more immediately they're already used in medical detectors for example the pregnancy tests you buy over-the-counter work use gold nanoparticles attached to antibodies.
I did research on conducting plastics for electronic devices. When I moved into the cancer treatments with nanotechnology that's when my mum became really excited about my work.
a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end.
The nanowires which are grown on patterned nanoelectrodes are visible only through an electron microscope. Nath creates the nanowire arrays through a process that she calls confined electrodeposition on lithographically patterned nanoelectrodes.
To increase the nanowires'surface area Nath can make them hollow in the middle much like carbon nanotubes found in optics and electronics.
#Researchers create unique graphene nanopores with optical antennas for DNA sequencing High-speed reading of the genetic code should get a boost with the creation of the world's first graphene nanopores pores measuring approximately 2 nanometers in diameter that feature a"built-in
"optical antenna. Researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have invented a simple,
"With our integrated graphene nanopore with plasmonic optical antenna, we can obtain direct optical DNA sequence detection,
which a hot spot on a graphene membrane formed a nanopore with a self-integrated optical antenna.
and its optical antenna,"says Lee.""Simultaneously correlating this optical signal with the electrical signal from conventional nanopore sequencing provides an added dimension that would be an enormous advantage for high-throughput DNA readout."
"A key to the success of this effort is the single-step photothermal mechanism that enables the creation of graphene nanopores with self-aligned plasmonic optical antennas.
The dimensions of the nanopores and the optical characteristics of the plasmonic antenna are tunable, with the antenna functioning as both optical signal transducer and enhancer.
so that each base-pair fluoresces at a signature intensity as it passes through the junction of the nanopore and its optical antenna."
"In addition, either the gold nanoplasmonic optical antenna or the graphene can be functionalized to be responsive to different base-pair combinations,
"The gold plasmonic optical antenna can also be functionalized to enable the direct optical detection of RNA, proteins, protein-protein interactions, DNA-protein interactions,
"The results of this study were reported in Nano Letters in a paper titled"Graphene nanopore with a Self-Integrated Optical Antenna. e
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