#Improved solar panels and printed electronics on the horizon with new material discovery Published today in Nature Communications,
University of Melbourne researchers say their discovery of the highly sought-after'nematic liquid crystals'can now lead to vastly improved organic solar cell performance.
Lead author Dr David Jones of the University's School of Chemistry and Bio 21 Institute, said these cells will be easier to manufacture,
with the new crystals now able to work in cells that are double in thickness on the previous limit of 200 nanometers."
"We have improved the performance of this type of solar cell from around 8 per cent efficient to 9. 3 per cent,
"It means that consumers can look forward to more competitive pricing in the solar energy sector, and according to Dr Jones, the discovery is shot a-in-the-arm for the whole organic materials sector."
"The discovery is a step forward for the wider commercialization of printed organic solar cells. But more than this, could aid in the development of new materials with improved performance such as LCD screens."
"Uptake of the current generation of organic solar cells has lagged behind more widespread silicon-based models, due to their comparative lack of performance even with a simplified construction via large printers.
This is despite the organic models providing an unparalleled degree of versatility in how they are used;
as opposed to the traditional'grid'formation of silicon-based cells.""It had been theorized that a certain group of nematic liquid crystals would provide excellent electronic properties--as well as being printable
""We've seen recently at the annual Consumer electronics Show (CES) in Las vegas that printable electronics have an exciting future,
as parts of phones and even cars. This discovery could help improve the performance of these solar cells,
and lead to even more innovation in the coming years,"concluded Dr Jones s
#Huge 3-D displays without 3-D glasses Public screenings have become an important part of major sports events.
In the future we will be able to enjoy them in 3d thanks to a new invention from Austrian scientists.
The highly interdisciplinary project was carried out together with the Vienna University of Technology. Together Trilite and TU Vienna have created the first prototype.
Currently it only has a modest resolution of five pixels by three but it clearly shows that the system works.
We are creating a second prototype which will display colour pictures with a higher resolution.
But the crucial point is that the individual laser pixels work. Scaling it up to a display with many pixels is not a problem says Jrg Reitterer (Trilite Technologies and Phd-student in the team of Professor Ulrich Schmid at the Vienna University of Technology.
Every single 3d-Pixel (also called Trixel) consists of lasers and a moveable mirror. The mirror directs the laser beams across the field of vision from left to right.
During that movement the laser intensity is modulated so that different laser flashes are sent into different directions says Ulrich Schmid.
To experience the 3d effect the viewer must be positioned in a certain distance range from the screen.
If the distance is too large both eyes receive the same image and only a normal 2d picture can be seen.
The newly developed display however can present hundreds of pictures. Walking by the display one can get a view of the displayed object from different sides just like passing a real object.
For this however a new video format is required which has already been developed by the researchers.
but we expect that new footage will be created especially for our displays--perhaps with a much larger number of cameras says Franz Fiedler CTO of Trilite Technologies.
Compared to a movie screen the display is very vivid. Therefore it can be used outdoors even in bright sunlight.
Maybe someone wants to appeal specifically to the customers leaving the shop across the street
#Alzheimer's plaques reduced by targeting sugar attachment to the BACE1 enzyme A major factor contributing to Alzheimer's disease is the formation of pathogenic A?
and Naoyuki Taniguchi at RIKEN in collaboration with Tamao Endo and Shigeo Murayama at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology showed that much of the BACE1 found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients is modified by the attachment of a particular sugar with the help of the enzyme
and can act to reduce Alzheimer's pathology with potentially few side effects. This research highlights the importance of glycosylation--the modification of proteins by sugars.
although a sugar change is considered often just a marker for disease or a specific cell type our team has demonstrated clearly the functional role of a glycan during AD development.
He added that this work offers a good opportunity for many AD researchers to reconsider the importance of glycosylation.
#Carbon nanotube finding could lead to flexible electronics with longer battery life Led by materials science Associate professor Michael Arnold
and Professor Padma Gopalan the team has reported the highest-performing carbon nanotube transistors ever demonstrated. In addition to paving the way for improved consumer electronics this technology could also have specific uses in industrial and military applications.
In a paper published recently in the journal ACS Nano Arnold Gopalan and their students reported transistors with an on-off ratio that's 1000 times better and a conductance that's 100 times better than previous state-of-the-art carbon nanotube transistors.
Carbon nanotubes are very strong and very flexible so they could also be used to make flexible displays
and electronics that can stretch and bend allowing you to integrate electronics into new places like clothing says Arnold.
The advance enables new types of electronics that aren't possible with the more brittle materials manufacturers are currently using.
Carbon nanotubes are single atomic sheets of carbon rolled up into a tube. As some of the best electrical conductors ever discovered carbon nanotubes have long been recognized as a promising material for next-generation transistors
which are semiconductor devices that can act like an on-off switch for current or amplify current. This forms the foundation of an electronic device.
However researchers have struggled to isolate purely semiconducting carbon nanotubes which are crucial because metallic nanotube impurities act like copper wires and short the device.
Researchers have struggled also to control the placement and alignment of nanotubes. Until now these two challenges have limited the development of high-performance carbon nanotube transistors.
Building on more than two decades of carbon nanotube research in the field the UW-Madison team drew on cutting-edge technologies that use polymers to selectively sort out the semiconducting nanotubes achieving a solution of ultra-high-purity semiconducting carbon nanotubes.
Previous techniques to align the nanotubes resulted in less than-desirable packing density or how close the nanotubes are to one another
when they are assembled in a film. However the UW-Madison researchers pioneered a new technique called floating evaporative self-assembly or FESA
which they described earlier in 2014 in the ACS journal Langmuir. In that technique researchers exploited a self-assembly phenomenon triggered by rapidly evaporating a carbon nanotube solution.
The team's most recent advance also brings the field closer to realizing carbon nanotube transistors as a feasible replacement for silicon transistors in computer chips
and in high-frequency communication devices which are rapidly approaching their physical scaling and performance limits.
This is not an incremental improvement in performance Arnold says. With these results we've really made a leap in carbon nanotube transistors.
Our carbon nanotube transistors are an order of magnitude better in conductance than the best thin film transistor technologies currently being used commercially
while still switching on and off like a transistor is supposed to function. The researchers have patented their technology through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
and have begun working with companies to accelerate the technology transfer to industry. The work was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation as well as grants from the UW-Madison Center of Excellence for Materials Research and Innovation the U s army Research Office the National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship Program and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Additional authors on the ACS Nano paper include UW-Madison materials science and engineering graduate students Gerald Brady Yongho Joo and Matthew Shea and electrical and computer engineering graduate student Meng-Yin
Wu u
#Laser-induced graphene'super'for electronics: Flexible 3-D supercapacitors tested Rice university scientists advanced their recent development of laser-induced graphene (LIG) by producing
and testing stacked, three-dimensional supercapacitors, energy storage devices that are important for portable, flexible electronics. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour discovered last year that firing a laser at an inexpensive polymer burned off other elements and left a film of porous graphene, the much-studied atom-thick
lattice of carbon. The researchers viewed the porous, conductive material as a perfect electrode for supercapacitors or electronic circuits.
An electron microscope image shows the cross section of laser-induced graphene burned into both sides of a polyimide substrate.
The flexible material created at Rice university has the potential for use in electronics or for energy storage.
Click on the image for a larger version. Courtesy of the Tour Group To prove it,
members of the Tour group have extended since their work to make vertically aligned supercapacitors with laser-induced graphene on both sides of a polymer sheet.
The sections are stacked then with solid electrolytes in between for a multilayer sandwich with multiple microsupercapacitors.
The flexible stacks show excellent energy storage capacity and power potential and can be scaled up for commercial applications.
LIG can be made in air at ambient temperature, perhaps in industrial quantities through roll-to-roll processes
Tour said. The research was reported this week in Applied materials and Interfaces. Capacitors use an electrostatic charge to store energy they can release quickly, to a camera's flash, for example.
Unlike chemical-based rechargeable batteries, capacitors charge fast and release all their energy at once when triggered.
But chemical batteries hold far more energy. Supercapacitors combine useful qualities of both--the fast charge/discharge of capacitors and high-energy capacity of batteries--into one package.
LIG supercapacitors appear able to do all that with the added benefits of flexibility and scalability.
The flexibility ensures they can easily conform to varied packages--they can be rolled within a cylinder
for instance--without giving up any of the device's performance.""What we've made are comparable to microsupercapacitors being commercialized now,
but our ability to put devices into a 3-D configuration allows us to pack a lot of them into a very small area,
"Tour said.""We simply stack them up.""The other key is that we're doing this very simply.
Nothing about the process requires a clean room. It's done on a commercial laser system, as found in routine machine shops, in the open air."
"Ripples, wrinkles and sub-10-nanometer pores in the surface and atomic-level imperfections give LIG its ability to store a lot of energy.
But the graphene retains its ability to move electrons quickly and gives it the quick charge
-and-release characteristics of a supercapacitor. In testing, the researchers charged and discharged the devices for thousands of cycles with almost no loss of capacitance.
To show how well their supercapacitors scale up for applications, the researchers wired pairs of each variety of device in serial and parallel.
As expected, they found the serial devices delivered double the working voltage while the parallels doubled the discharge time at the same current density.
The vertical supercapacitors showed almost no change in electrical performance when flexed, even after 8, 000 bending cycles.
while thin-film lithium ion batteries are able to store more energy, LIG supercapacitors of the same size offer three times the performance in power (the speed at which energy flows).
And the LIG devices can easily scale up for increased capacity.""We've demonstrated that these are going to be excellent components of the flexible electronics that will soon be embedded in clothing and consumer goods,
"he said d
#Two-dimensional metamaterial surface manipulates light A single layer of metallic nanostructures has been designed, fabricated and tested by a team of Penn State electrical engineers that can provide exceptional capabilities for manipulating light.
This engineered surface, which consists of a periodic array of strongly coupled nanorod resonators, could improve systems that perform optical characterization in scientific devices, such as ellipsometers;
sensing, such as biosensing of proteins; or satellite communications.""We have designed and fabricated a waveplate that can transform the polarization state of light,
"said Zhi Hao Jiang, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering and lead author of a recent paper in Scientific Reports explaining their invention."
"Polarization is one of the most fundamental properties of light. For instance, if we transform linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light,
Conventional waveplates, made from multilayer stacks of materials such as quartz, have difficulty achieving both broadband and wide-angle conversion.
The team's nanofabricated waveplates achieved measured polarization conversion rates higher than 92 percent over more than an octave bandwidth with a wide filed-of-view of around 40 degrees."
It was fabricated in the Penn State Nanofabrication Laboratory by doctoral student Lan Lin and characterized by doctoral student Ding Ma.
Co-authors include Seokho Yun, a former postdoctoral scholar in the Penn State Electrical engineering Department, Douglas H. Werner, John L. and Genevieve H. Mccain Chair Professor of Electrical engineering
, Zhiwen Liu, associate professor of electrical engineering, and Theresa Mayer, Distinguished Professor of Electrical engineering. The paper is titled"Broadband and Wide field-of-view Plasmonic Metasurface-enabled Waveplates."
"This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through Penn State's Center for Nanoscale Science e
#Tattoo-like sensor can detect glucose levels without painful finger prick Scientists have developed the first ultra-thin,
flexible device that sticks to skin like a rub-on tattoo and can detect a person's glucose levels.
The sensor, reported in a proof-of-concept study in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, has the potential to eliminate finger-pricking for many people with diabetes.
Joseph Wang and colleagues in San diego note that diabetes affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Many of these patients are instructed to monitor closely their blood glucose levels to manage the disease.
But the standard way of checking glucose requires a prick to the finger to draw blood for testing.
The researchers conclude that the device could potentially be used for diabetes management and for other conditions such as kidney disease e
By using an electrical pulse to create a temporary nanopore in a cell membrane, researchers can deliver chemicals, drugs,
But existing electroporation methods require high electric field strengths and for cells to be suspended in solution,
and creates a harsh environment for sensitive primary cells. This makes it nearly impossible for researchers to study the cells naturally,
A Northwestern University collaboration has developed a novel microfluidic device that allows for electroporation of stem cells during differentiation
This provides the conditions needed to study primary cells, such as neurons, opening doors for exploration of the pathogenic mechanisms of neural diseases and potentially leading to new gene therapies.
Developed by Horacio Espinosa, the James and Nancy Farley Professor of Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship at the Mccormick School of engineering,
and John Kessler, the Ken and Ruth Davee Professor of Stem Cell biology at the Feinberg School of medicine, the localized electroporation device (LEPD) can be applied to adherent cells,
"The ability to deliver molecules into adherent cells without disrupting differentiation is needed for biotechnology researchers to advance both fundamental knowledge and the state-of-the-art in stem cell research,
"Non-destructive manipulation of cells over time and in the correct environment is a key enabling technology highly needed within the biology and medical research communities,
#Novel method to predict postoperative liver cancer recurrence in transplant patients UCLA transplantation researchers have developed a novel method that more accurately calculates the risk of disease recurrence in liver cancer patients who have undergone a liver transplant,
Chair in Surgery and director of the Pfleger Liver Institute and Dumont-UCLA Transplant and Liver Cancer Centers presented the study during the annual meeting of the Southern Surgical Association.
The study appears in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
The predictive calculator also known as a nomogram was developed after the research team analyzed data from UCLA's 30 years of experience with liver transplantation for liver cancer.
The retrospective study included 865 liver cancer patients who had transplants between 1984 and 2013 said study first author Dr. Vatche G. Agopian an assistant professor of surgery in the division
which liver cancer patients might be good candidates for transplant and patients with all sizes and numbers of tumors underwent transplantation often times with early recurrence of disease.
In 1996 radiologic criteria popularized as the Milan criteria were introduced and recommended transplantation be limited to patients with a single tumor of five centimeters or less or up to three tumors with not any single tumor larger than three centimeters.
However the criteria didn't take into account the aggressiveness of the tumor or other blood biomarkers that can help predict recurrence Agopian said.
UCLA's nomogram used three groups of factors to predict recurrence and was more accurate than the Milan criteria
and the existing American Joint Committee on Cancer pathologic TNM staging system giving transplant physicians and oncologists more information to work with in deciding how often to monitor for recurrence and whether or not adjuvant treatment
is necessary. This novel nomogram includes three important groups of information that proved to be very accurate in predicting recurrence in liver cancer patients better than any other system out there Agopian said.
Physicians can use our nomogram and have a meaningful discussion with transplant recipients regarding their post-transplant risk of cancer recurrence.
It can help them decide how closely to follow their patient--a patient with a low risk of recurrence may not need screening as often
--or whether a patient with a high risk of recurrence might need treatment following the transplant.
The three groups of factors that comprise the UCLA nomogram include pre-transplant radiologic information
or the number and size of tumors on MRI and CT SCANS three pre-transplant blood biomarkers thought to be predictive for cancer recurrence
and pathological characteristics of the explanted liver. The diseased liver is studied to determine the grade
or aggressiveness of the tumor and whether the cancer has invaded the liver's blood vessels factors that can't be determined before transplant.
For example a patient with a 5 centimeter tumor who would have qualified for liver transplant under the Milan criteria might in fact have a very aggressive tumor that is likely to recur after transplant
while a patient with a larger tumor might have a very low grade cancer and be at lower risk for recurrence.
and get individualized predicted risks of cancer recurrence Agopian said. The Milan criteria presented a major step in improving the outcomes of liver cancer patients undergoing transplant Agopian said.
However there is now a growing consensus and body of evidence that these criteria are too conservative
and that incorporation of other factors may improve the ability to select for patients with favorable tumor biology regardless of size who stand to benefit from liver transplantation.
About 32000 Americans will be diagnosed with liver cancer this year. Of those 23000 will die of their disease.
Liver cancer is the sixth most common cause of cancer worldwide and the third most common cause of cancer-related death.
In the United states the incidence of liver cancer has doubled nearly over the last two decades.
For most patients who are diagnosed with liver cancer it generally is advanced too to treat with surgery.
For patients with underlying liver dysfunction who are unable to undergo surgery to remove the tumor liver transplantation is the best way to treat the patient.
In the largest single-institution experience with liver transplant for liver cancer excellent long-term survival was achieved.
Incorporation of routine pre-transplant biomarkers to existing radiographic size criteria significantly improves the ability to predict post-transplant recurrence
and should be considered in recipient selection the study states. A novel clinicopathologic prognostic nomogram accurately predicts liver cancer recurrence after liver transplant
and may guide frequency of post-transplant surveillance and adjuvant therapy y
#Rate of investment in medical research has declined in U s. increased globally From 2004 to 2012,
the rate of investment in medical research in the U s. declined, while there has been an increase in research investment globally, particularly in Asia, according to a study in the January 13 issue of JAMA.
For the last century medical research including public health advances has been the primary source of and an essential contributor to improvement in the health and longevity of individuals and populations in developed countries.
The United states has historically been where research has found the greatest support and has generated more than half the world's funding for many decades.
Few previous analyses have compared medical research in the United states with other developed countries according to background information in the article.
Hamilton Moses III M d. of the Alerion Institute and Alerion Advisors LLC North Garden Va. and Johns Hopkins School of medicine Baltimore and colleagues examined developments over the past two decades
in the pattern of who conducts and who supports medical research as well as resulting patents publications and new drug and device approvals.
Publicly available data from 1994 to 2012 were compiled showing trends in U s . and international research funding productivity
and disease burden by source and industry type. Patents and publications (1981-2011) were evaluated using citation rates and impact factors.
Reduced science investment The largest increase in biomedical and health services research funding in the U s. occurred between 1994 and 2004
when funding grew at 6 percent per year. However from 2004 to 2012 the rate of investment growth declined to 0. 8 percent annually
and (in real terms) decreased in 3 of the last 5 years reaching $117 billion (4. 5 percent) of total health care expenditures.
From 1994 to 2004 the medical device biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries had annual growth rates greater than 6 percent per year with biotechnology demonstrating the largest increases.
The share of U s. medical research funding from industry accounted for 46 percent in 1994
and grew to 58 percent in 2012. Industry reduced early-stage research favoring medical devices bioengineered drugs and late-stage clinical trials particularly for cancer and rare diseases.
National institutes of health (NIH allocations did not correlate proportionately with disease burden. Cancer and HIV/AIDS were funded well above the predicted levels based on U s. disability alone with cancer accounting for 16 percent of total NIH funding and 25 percent of all
medicines currently in clinical trials. Underfunding of service innovation Health services research (which examines access to care the quality
and cost of care and the health and well-being of individuals communities and populations) accounted for between 0. 2 percent and 0. 3 percent of national health expenditures between 2003 and 2011 an approximately 20-fold difference
in comparison with total medical research funding. Private insurers ranked last (0. 04 percent of revenue) and health systems 19th (0. 1 percent of revenue) among 22 industries in their investment in innovation.
An increment of $8 billion to $15 billion yearly would occur if service firms were to reach median research and development funding.
Globalization U s. government research funding declined from 57 percent (2004) to 50 percent (2012) of the global total as did that of U s. companies (50 percent to 41 percent) with the total U s
. public plus private) share of global research funding declining from 57 percent to 44 percent.
Asia particularly China tripled investment from $2. 6 billion (2004) to $9. 7 billion (2012.
The U s. share of life science patents declined from 57 percent (1981) to 51 percent (2011) as did considered those most valuable from 73 percent (1981) to 59 percent (2011.
The analysis underscores the need for the United states to find new sources to support medical research
if the clinical value of its past science investment and opportunities to improve care are to be realized fully.
Substantial new private resources are feasible though public funding can play a greater role. Both will require nontraditional approaches
if they are to be politically and economically realistic. Given global trends the United states will relinquish its historical innovation lead in the next decade
unless such measures are undertaken the authors conclude. Editorial: Restore the U s. Lead in Biomedical Researchto achieve a new strategic vision for research the United states will need a roadmap that sets priorities describes needed structural and organizational changes
and creates an environment that enables innovation write Victor J. Dzau M d. of the Institute of Medicine Washington D c. and Harvey V. Fineberg M d. Ph d. of the University of California San francisco in an accompanying editorial.
The needed changes include better coordination across funders and research institutions development of new funding sources improved grant evaluation processes changes in education and training rationalization of capital
investments and improved operational efficiencies. By taking the necessary political and institutional steps to ensure commitment of adequate resources over time adopting a comprehensive research strategy
and attaining greater coordination and efficiency the United states can retain its leadership position in biomedical research h
#Glass for battery electrodes In this regard researchers are diligently looking for new materials that exhibit a greater energy density
and charging capacity but which are no heavier or larger than those used in today's lithium-ion batteries.
Today's batteries provide a reliable power supply for our smartphones electric cars and laptops but are unable to keep up with the growing demands placed on them.
Dr Semih Afyon a scientist at the Electrochemical Materials Institute sums up the fundamental idea that is driving battery research:
What we need is new chemistry and novel compounds to obtain safe better and longer-lasting batteries.
ETH researchers led by Afyon and Reinhard Nesper professor emeritus of chemistry have made now a discovery.
Over the course of their several years of research they discovered a material that may have the potential to double battery capacity:
vanadate-borate glass. Researchers are using the glass as a cathode material as recently reported in Scientific Reports a journal from the publishers of Nature.
The material is made of vanadium oxide (V2o5) and lithium-borate (Libo2) precursors and was coated with reduced graphite oxide (RGO) to enhance the electrode properties of the material.
The researchers used a vanadium-based compound because vanadium is a transition metal with various oxidation states
which can be exploited to reach higher capacities. In crystalline form vanadium pentoxide can take three positively charged lithium ions--three times more than materials presently used in cathodes such as lithium iron phosphate.
However crystalline vanadium pentoxide cannot release all of the inserted Li-ions and only allows a few stable charge/discharge cycles.
This is because once the lithium ions penetrate the crystalline lattice during the loading process the lattice expands.
As a result an electrode particle swells as a whole i e. it increases in volume only to shrink again once the charges leave the particle.
This process may lead to instabilities in the electrode material in terms of structural changes and contact losses.
Researchers therefore had to find a way to retain the structure of the initial material
while maximizing the capacity and also maintaining its ability to take the charges which is devised how they the idea of using vanadium as a glass rather than in its crystalline form.
To produce the cathode material Afyon and his colleagues blended powdered vanadium pentoxide with borate compounds.
To produce an efficient electrode the researcher coated the vanadate-borate powder with reduced graphite oxide (RGO.
This increases conductivity while at the same time protecting the electrode particles. However it does not impede electrons
and lithium ions as they are transported through the electrodes. Afyon used this vanadate-borate glass powder for the battery cathodes
which he then placed in prototypes for coin cell batteries to undergo numerous charge/discharge cycles.
During initial trials with vanadate-borate electrodes which were made not with material coated in RGO the discharge capacity dropped drastically after 30 charge/discharge cycles
when the current rate was increased to 400 milliamp per gram. In contrast when the RGO coating was used the capacity was quite stable at high rates
One battery with an RGO-coated vanadate-borate glass electrode exhibited an energy density of around 1000 watt-hours per kilogram.
This would be enough energy to power a mobile phone between 1. 5 and two times longer than today's lithium-ion batteries Afyon estimates.
This may also increase the range of electric cars by one and a half times the standard amount.
Afyon currently works as a project leader in a research consortium led by Jennifer Rupp professor of electrochemical materials focused on developing an innovative solid-state battery.
and testing the vanadate-borate electrode in this system and their next step is to optimise the system.
which could be achieved by improving battery and electrode designs as well as by using coatings other than reduced graphite oxide i
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