#Printing 3-D graphene structures for tissue engineering Ever since single-layer graphene burst onto the science scene in 2004,
An expert in biomaterials, Shah said 3-D printed graphene scaffolds could play a role in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as well as in electronic devices.
so it could be used for biodegradable sensors and medical implants. Shah said the biocompatible elastomer
about 20 nanometers in size the same size range as the smallest features that can now be produced in microchips.
This could lead to chips that combine optical and electronic components in a single device, with far lower losses than when such devices are made separately and then interconnected,
wearable sensors that can do the same thing. Their technology, reported in the journal ACS Nano("Stretchable, Transparent, Ultrasensitive,
and Patchable Strain Sensor for Humanmachine Interfaces Comprising a Nanohybrid of Carbon nanotubes and Conductive Elastomers"),could help robot developers make their machines more human.
Most current efforts toward this goal analyze a person's feelings using visual sensors that can tell a smile from a frown, for example.
low-cost sensors to detect facial movements, including slight changes in gaze. The researchers created a stretchable and transparent sensor by layering a carbon nanotube film on two different kinds of electrically conductive elastomers.
They found it could tell whether subjects were laughing or crying and where they were looking.
the sensors could be used to monitor heartbeats, breathing, dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) and other health-related cues s
and well-controlled fabrication of nanotubular electrodes to accommodate ion motion in and out and close contact between the thin nested tubes to ensure fast transport for both ions and electrons.
using atomic layer deposition to carefully control thickness and length of multilayer concentric nanotubes as electrodes at each end.
they can be used to create a new generation of sensors and actuators with vanishingly small heat signatures,
the researchers pass a suspension of B cells and target antigen through tiny, parallel channels etched on a chip.
society's thirst for powerful sensors is growing. Given that, few sensing techniques can match the buzz created by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS.
"Three-dimensional, porous materials have been regarded as an obstacle to building electrodes. But we have proven that this is not a problem.
and logic gates"),is the first step in the use of programmable cells for medical diagnosis. Bacteria have a bad reputation,
It acts both as a switch and as a signal amplifier. In informatics, by combining several transistors, it is possible to construct"logic gates,
"i e. systems that respond to different signal combinations according to a predetermined logic. For example, a dual input"AND"logic gate will produce a signal
only if two input signals are present. All calculations completed by the electronic instruments we use every day, such as smartphones, rely on the use of transistors and logic gates.
During his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford university in the United states Jérôme Bonnet invented a genetic transistor, the transcriptor.
The insertion of one or more transcriptors into bacteria transforms them into microscopic calculators. The electrical signals used in electronics are replaced by molecular signals that control gene expression.
Low-cost pollution detectors to tackle air quality (w/video) Rush hour can be maddening. Roads congested with traffic,
With this in mind, Jonesteam, together with industrial partners and other universities, has been developing low-cost pollution detectors that are small enough to fit in your pocket,
stable enough to be installed as long-term static detectors around a city, and sensitive enough to detect small changes in air quality on a street-by-street basis. Their findings are now informing research projects aimed at improving air quality in major cities across Europe and North america.
The detectors are based on electrochemical sensors developed by project partner Alphasense for industrial safety where detection of toxic gases is needed at the parts-per-million level.
I had the confidence to believe that we could push our sensors to lower concentration levels,
and yet keep sensor costs low, says Dr John Saffell, Technical Director at Alphasense. The electrochemical devices the team developed can measure a wide range of pollutants,
They also discovered that sensor performance can create new opportunities. Jones and colleagues had to develop new smart software methods capable of separating local pollution events from background signals (pollution transported from long range)
and then to calibrate sensors across networks. Plus, they needed to move from being able to process the data after it has been collected to doing so in real-time.
For instance, sensors can be used to ask whether pollution along bus routes is improved by upgrading the exhaust processing on a bus fleet;
AQMESH uses Alphasense sensors to sample every 10 seconds, and data processing is carried out in real-time using cloud computing software similar to that developed by the Cambridge team. hen the project started in 2006 there were lone voices calling for a different approach to air quality monitoring,
and Alphasense helped us to understand the sensor full potential, and now we have a product that can be placed exactly where it needed
aims to deploy large numbers of air quality sensors across the whole of Greater london. Alphasense is providing the sensors and supporting the engineering;
and Cambridge is helping with data interpretation in a project whose ethos is ou can manage
One potential solution is to leverage surface electromyography using small electrical sensors in a cuff worn around the patient's forearm.
The electromyography sensors-which could be used to directly control the glove work by detecting the residual muscle signals fired by motor neurons
#A universal transition Understanding what causes materials to change from electrical insulators to metallic conductors is relevant not only to the development of practical electronic devices,
#Injectable nanoelectronics for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases It's a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel-electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain,
Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons.
The process is used similar to that to etch microchips, and begins with a dissolvable layer deposited on a substrate.
, amplifiers--to transport optical signals.""A major trend in optics,"the researchers write, "has been a drive toward...
According to Dhinojwala, One could think about applications as sensors, photo-protectors, and even perhaps an approach to create a wide range of colors without using any pigments,
Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, have developed an ultracompact highly sensitive nanomechanical sensor for analyzing the chemical composition of substances and detecting biological objects,
The sensor will enable doctors to identify tumor markers, whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumors.
according to its developers, the sensor can track changes of just a few kilodaltons in the mass of a cantilever in real time.
So the new optical sensor will allow for diagnosing diseases long before they can be detected by any other method,
The device, described in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports("All-nanophotonic NEMS biosensor on a chip"
is an optical or, more precisely, optomechanical chip.""We've been following the progress made in the development of micro
So our goal was not only to achieve the high sensitivity of the sensor and make it compact,
Unlike similar devices, the new sensor has no complex junctions and can be produced through a standard CMOS process technology used in microelectronics.
The sensor doesn't have a single circuit and its design is very simple. It consists of two parts:
1 micrometer wide and 90 nanometers thick), connected tightly to a chip. To get an idea how it works,
Without the nanoscale waveguide and the cantilever, the chip simply wouldn't work. Abig cantilever cannot be made to oscillate by freely propagating light,
Cantilever oscillations make it possible to determine the chemical composition of the environment in which the chip is placed.
Calculations done by the researchers showed that the new sensor will combine high sensitivity with a comparative ease of production and miniature dimensions
One chip, several millimeters in size, will be able to accommodate several thousand such sensors, configured to detect different particles or molecules.
The price, thanks to the simplicity of the design, will most likely depend on the number of sensors,
For fuel cells, nanoparticles often are mixed with solvents to bind them to an electrode. To learn how such formulas affect particle properties,
#Stretchy sensors can detect deadly gases and UV radiation (Nanowerk News) RMIT University researchers have created wearable sensor patches that detect harmful UV radiation and dangerous, toxic gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen dioxide (Small,"Stretchable
and Tunable Microtectonic Zno-Based Sensors and Photonics")."These transparent, flexible electronics which can be worn as skin patches
or incorporated into clothing-are bringing science fiction gadgets closer to real life. Dr Madhu Bhaskaran, project leader
and co-leader of the RMIT Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, said the sensors can be placed on work
stretchy electronic sensors are also capable of detecting harmful levels of UV radiation known to trigger melanoma.
In future, they will be able to link to electronic devices to continuously monitor UV-levels and alert the user when radiation hits harmful levels.
Dr Bhaskaran said the sensors are cheap and durable attributes which will see flexible electronics
and sensors become an integral part of everyday life e
#Mimicking the body on a chip for new drug testing Scientists in an EU-supported project have developed a microfluidic chip that simultaneously analyses the reactions of several human organ tissues
when they come into contact with candidates for new drugs. The ground-breaking device could save millions of euros in drug development costs.
called Body-on-a-Chip (BOC), replacing the 2d cell culture conventionally used for drugs testing with a multi-tissue device that better mimics real-life conditions in the body, by combining several organ
-specific 3d cultures into a single chip. Researchers then created a prototype BOC to assess the toxicological risk of new candidate compounds
Developing the 3d micro-tissues off the chip, instead of culturing them in situ, means they can last a remarkable 60 days,
The partners also experimented with four tissues on the same chip, representing a liver, tumour, heart muscle and neurological system,
Body-on-a-Chip involved five partners in four countries and received EU investment of EUR 1. 4 million n
such as small cooling elements or connections between stacked chips in smartphones. However, metals melt at a high temperature.
They also printed vertical electrodes in a cavity as well as lines of copper. In effect, virtually any shape can be printed by smartly choosing the location of the drop impact.
These scatterings are captured as images by photon detectors inside the machine. From the dizzying cascade of lines
all of them creating those frantic lines etched on the detectors. To read between the lines, quite literally, Young
"In addition, he wrote a review paper regarding the nanotechnology-based electronic devices in the June online issue of Advanced Materials entitled"Performance Enhancement of Electronic and Energy Devices via Block copolymer Self-Assembly
such as flexible electronics, stretchable displays or wearable sensors. The dimensions of each ridge directly affect the transparent conductors stretchability.
the volume of the electrode expands dramatically. It can break down and reduce battery life and storage capacity.
#Toward tiny, solar-powered sensors The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards he Internet of thingsthe idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment,
and even livestock would have embedded their own sensors that report information directly to networked servers,
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better,
this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
To control the current flow across their chip, El-Damak and her advisor, Anantha Chandrakasan,
whose regulation is the very purpose of the chip. Since that voltage is fixed, the variation in timing has to come from variation in capacitance.
El-Damak and Chandrakasan thus equip their chip with a bank of capacitors of different sizes.
who leads a power conversion development project as a fellow at the chip manufacturer Maxim Integrated. f youe only coming in with a small amount,
he adds. t really kind of a full system-on-a chip for power management. And that makes it a little more complicated
toward making chips smaller and more powerful at lower power density. The technique developed can be used to combine III-V materials,
with silicon germanium technology to create CMOS chips. It is fully compatible with current high volume chip fabrication technology,
making it economically viable for chip manufacturers. The first paper was published last week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Template-assisted selective epitaxy of III nanoscale devices for coplanar heterogeneous integration with Si")by lead
author Heinz Schmid who describes the crystal growth starting from a small area and evolving into a much larger,
IBM is betting that future chips made of these materials will create more energy efficient and powerful cloud data centers and consumer devices d
which could greatly reduce the amount of power used in multiple consumer electronics products, is the latest version of an established commercial product known as Qualcomm Mirasol.
lithography and etching processes that are used to create liquid crystal displays.""Our goal is to improve the technology
Unlike conventional water splitters, the Stanford device uses a single low-cost catalyst to generate hydrogen bubbles on one electrode
A conventional water-splitting device consists of two electrodes submerged in a water-based electrolyte.
A low-voltage current applied to the electrodes drives a catalytic reaction that separates molecules of H2o, releasing bubbles of hydrogen on one electrode and oxygen on the other.
Each electrode is embedded with a different catalyst typically platinum and iridium, two rare and costly metals.
for both electrodes,'said graduate student Haotian Wang, lead author of the study.''This bifunctional catalyst can split water continuously for more than a week with a steady input of just 1. 5 volts of electricity.
'Marriage of batteries and catalysis To find catalytic material suitable for both electrodes, the Stanford team borrowed a technique used in battery research called lithium-induced electrochemical tuning.
while charging, different processes are at work in the two identical pieces of carbon pongewhich function as the electrodes in these devices, in contrast to earlier computer simulations.
At its most basic level, a battery is made of two metal electrodes (an anode and a cathode) with some sort of solution between them (electrolyte.
instead, positive and negative electrolyte ions simply tickto the surfaces of the electrodes when the supercapacitor is being charged.
we fill the carbon electrode with tiny holes, like a carbon sponge, said Griffin. ut it hard to know what the ions are doing inside the holes within the electrode we don know exactly what happens
when they interact with the surface. In the new study, the researchers used NMR to look inside functioning supercapacitor devices to see how they charge and store energy.
the two electrodes are different materials, so different processes are said at work Griffin. n a supercapacitor,
the two electrodes are made of the same porous carbon sponge, so you think the same process would take place at both
What the experiments showed is that the two electrodes behave differently. In the negative electrode, there is the expected tickingprocess
and the positive ions are attracted to the surface as the supercapacitor charges. But in the positive electrode, an ion xchangehappens,
as negative ions are attracted to the surface, while at the same time, positive ions are repelled away from the surface.
Additionally, the EQCM was used to detect tiny changes in the weight of the electrode as ions enter and leave.
This enabled the researchers to show that solvent molecules also accompany the ions into the electrode as it charges. e can now accurately count the number of ions involved in the charge storage process
said Griffin. n the future we can look at how changing the size of the holes in the electrode
However, these approaches involve mechanical sensors and pumps, with needle-tipped catheters that have to be stuck under the skin
#Sensors and drones: hi-tech sentinels for crops (Nanowerk News) Sensors and drones can be among the farmers'best friends,
helping them to use less fertilizers and water, and to control the general condition of their crops.
in charge of the DSS research at CSP, installing in the vineyard five sensors that control the temperature and the humidity of air and soil,
and sensors are channelled into the same database, says Molino, and it allows facts about different years to be compared.
These sensors give us several indexes, explains Sgrelli, such as the normalized difference vegetation index, also known as NDVI,
Connecting these results with those gathered by agronomists and sensors on the ground, the farmer can have a complete overview of
CSP, together with the Association Piattella Canavesana di Cortereggio"and the municipality of San Giorgio Canavese, started monitoring via sensors that control temperature and humidity at 10 and 40 centimetres underground,
which involves shuttling tiny drops of water around on a series of small electrodes that looks like a miniature checkerboard.
flexible, color-changing displays that don need a light source their skin. ll manmade displays LCD, LED,
Light polarizes silicon nuclear spins within a silicon carbide chip. This image portrays the nuclear spin of one of the atoms shown in the full crystal lattice below.
had tried the group to achieve the same degree of spin alignment without optical cooling they would have had to chill the Sic chip physically to just five millionths of a degree above absolute zero(-459.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
#University spinout signs deal to commercialize microchips that release therapeutics inside the body (Nanowerk News) An implantable,
microchip-based device may soon replace the injections and pills now needed to treat chronic diseases:
Earlier this month, MIT spinout Microchips Biotech partnered with a pharmaceutical giant to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable,
microchip-based devices that store and release drugs inside the body over many years. Invented by Microchips Biotech cofounders Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering,
and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, the microchips consist of hundreds of pinhead-sized reservoirs,
each capped with a metal membrane, that store tiny doses of therapeutics or chemicals. An electric current delivered by the device removes the membrane,
and osteoporosis. Michael Cima (left) and Robert Langer Now Microchips Biotech will begin co-developing microchips with Teva Pharmaceutical, the worlds largest producer of generic drugs,
Apart from providing convenience, Microchips Biotech says these microchips could also improve medication-prescription adherence a surprisingly costly issue in the United states. A 2012 report published in the Annals of Internal medicine estimated that Americans who dont stick to prescriptions rack up $100 billion
Microchips Biotech will continue work on its flagship product, a birth-control microchip, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Cima, who now serves on the Microchips Biotech board of directors with Langer sees this hormone-releasing microchip as one of the first implantable artificial organs because it acts as a gland.
A lot of the therapies are trying to chemically trick the endocrine systems, Cima says. We are doing that with this artificial organ we created.
A version of Microchip Biotech's implantable, wirelessly controlled microchip. When an electrical current is delivered to one of the chip's tiny reservoirs,
a single dose of therapeutics is released into the body. Wild ideas Inspiration for the microchips came in the late 1990s,
when Langer watched a documentary on mass-producing microchips. I thought to myself Wouldnt this be a great way to make a drug-delivery system?
Langer says. He brought this idea to Cima, a chip-making expert who was taken aback by its novelty.
But being out-of-this-world is not something that needs to stop anybody at MIT,
and then-graduate student John Santini Phd 99 co-founded Microchips, and invented a prototype for their microchip that was described in a paper published that year in Nature.
This entrepreneurial collaboration was the first of many for Cima and Langer over the next decade.
For years, the technology underwent rigorous research and development at Microchips Biotech. But in 2011, Langer and Cima,
and researchers from Microchips, conducted the microchips first human trials to treat osteoporosis this time with wireless capabilities.
In that study, published in a 2012 issue of Science Translational Medicine, microchips were implanted into seven elderly women,
Results indicated that the chips delivered doses comparable to injections and did so more consistently with no adverse side effects.
That study, combined with ongoing efforts in contraceptive-delivery microchips, led Cima to believe the microchips could someday,
essentially, be considered the first artificial glands that could regulate potent hormones inside the body. This may sound like a wild idea but Cima doesnt think so.
The chip sends an endocrine or chemical signal instead of an electrical signal. MEMS innovations Microchips Biotech made several innovations in the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing process to ensure the microchips could be commercialized.
A major innovation was enabling final assembly of the microchips at room temperature with hermetic seals. Any intense heat during final assembly, with hermetic sealing, could destroy the drugs already loaded into the reservoirs
which meant common methods of welding and soldering were off-limits. To do so, Microchips Biotech modified a cold-welding tongue
and groove process. This meant depositing a soft, gold alloy in patterns on the top of the chip to create tongues,
and grooves on the base. By pressing the top and base pieces together, the tongues fit into the grooves,
The company has also found ways to integrate electronics into the microchips to shrink down the device.
the company could refine the microchips to be even smaller, yet carry the same volume of drugs.
and manufacture of superconductors or high-efficiency solar cells and light sensors, said leader of the research,
which is the first of its kind, in a paper published May 6, 2015, in the journal Nano Energy("Single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator for scavenging friction energy from rolling tires").
"The nanogenerator relies on an electrode integrated into a segment of the tire. When this part of the tire surface comes into contact with the ground,
They attached an electrode to the wheels of the car, and as it rolled across the ground,
Thanks to their low weight, high energy density and slower loss of charge when not in use, LIBS have become the preferred choice for consumer electronics.
or explosion risk from LIBS used in consumer electronic devices. These types of batteries, in all of their different lithium-anode combinations, continue to be an essential part of modern consumer electronics
despite their poor track record at high temperatures. The Korean team tried a totally new approach in making the batteries.
but due to ever increasing demands from electronic devices to be lighter and more powerful, investigation of novel electrolytes is necessary in order.
a multipurpose sensor Glass fibres can do more than transport data. A special type of glass fibre can also be used as a high-precision multipurpose sensor,
as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen have demonstrated now("Flying particle sensors in hollow-core photonic crystal fibre").
"The MPL researchers sent a tiny glass bead which can literally sense different physical quantities such as electric field, temperature or vibrations through the inside of this hollow-core photonic crystal fibre.
and size of electrodes, represented by copper-coloured plates above and below the fibre, when they are only 200 micrometres wide.
In the beginning, the idea was to develop a radioactivity sensor for inside a nuclear power station says Tijmen Euser from the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen.
Similar tasks are undertaken often using glass fibres with embedded fibre-optic sensors. What is measured is how the light sent through the fibre is affected by an external factor.
Such a fibre-optic sensor can also be used to measure a physical quantity remotely. By wrapping the fibre around the reactor,
fibre-optic sensors could probe the entire surface of a reactor. It turns out, however, that radioactive radiation darkens the interior of conventional glass fibres
the researchers see PCFS as an interesting alternative to conventional fibre-optic sensors in order to ultimately measure radioactivity as well.
whether hollow-core photonic crystal fibres are suitable as sensors by initially using the fibres to measure electric fields, vibrations and temperatures.
the researchers passed the glass fibre close to very fine electrodes, the thinnest measuring a mere 200 micrometers (one micrometre corresponds to one thousandth of a millimetre.
The researchers actually succeeded in accurately reproducing the fine structure of the electrodes with their fibre-optic measuring instrument.
Fluorescent beads as a sensor for radioactivity In their experiment the researchers used an oven to heat part of the fibre to temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius.
Next, we want to realize the radioactivity sensor, says Bykov. To do this, the researchers want to use fluorescent beads
i e. on the scale of viruses. The maximum length of the sensor fibre is currently around 400 metres,
These could be used to increase the range of the fibre sensors to several tens of kilometres.
The sensors could also be useful along high voltage lines or in transformer substations. Electric fields
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