but a new way of working with copper nanowires and a PVA"nano glue"could be a game-changer.
Previous success in the field of ultra-lightweight"aerogel monoliths"has relied largely on the use of precious gold and silver nanowires.
By turning instead to copper, both abundant and cheap, researchers at Monash University and the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication have developed a way of making flexible conductors cost-effective enough for commercial application."
but ours are made of ultra fine copper nanowires, using a fabrication process called freeze drying,
"Despite its conductivity, copper's tendency to oxidation and the poor mechanical stability of copper nanowire aerogel monoliths mean its potential has been unexplored largely.
"The conductivity can be tuned simply by adjusting the loading of copper nanowires, "he said.""A low loading of nano wires would be appropriate for a pressure sensor
the researchers noted that devices using their copper-based aerogels were not quite as sensitive as those using gold nanowires,
#Color hologram uses plasmonic nanoparticles to store large amounts of information In the 4th century, the Romans built a special glass cup,
Similar to the Lycurgus cup, the new holograms can change colors due to light scattering off silver nanoparticles of specific sizes and shapes.
The new holograms consist of precisely engineered silver nanoparticles patterned over a substrate. A key difference in the new holograms is the smaller size of the diffraction fringes,
the fringes here are replaced with nanoparticles smaller than half the wavelength of light. The researchers showed that the narrower band diffraction,
is produced by plasmonic-enhanced optical scattering of the nanostructures. The subwavelength distance offers certain advantages.
For instance, two different types of plasmonic nanoparticles can be multiplexed, or combined but not coupled, at subwavelength distances.
By using nanoparticles of silver with different shapes and sizes, the researchers could control the colors.
In addition to providing multiple colors, multiplexing two nanoparticles has the advantage of increasing the bandwidth information limits.
The researchers showed that each nanoparticle carries independent information such as polarization and wavelength, which can be controlled simultaneously.
With twice the number of nanoparticles, the total amount of binary information stored can exceed the traditional limits of diffraction."
"It has been shown that nanoparticles with resonant properties can be uncoupled over subwavelength distances so their electromagnetic fields have minimal interaction,
"The device presented demonstrates that these nanoparticles can store and transfer independent information beyond the diffraction limits,
We believe that it will also prompt new experiments focusing on the dynamical properties of the atoms at nanostructures,
#Bacterial nanowires: Not what we thought they were For the past 10 years scientists have been fascinated by a type of electric bacteria that shoots out long tendrils like electric wires using them to power themselves
Today a team led by scientists at USC has turned the study of these bacterial nanowires on its head discovering that the key features in question are not pili as previously believed
Scientists had suspected long that bacterial nanowires were pili Latin for hair which are hairlike features common on other bacteria allowing them to adhere to surfaces
Given the similarity of shape it was easy to believe that nanowires were pili. But Moh El-Naggar assistant professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters Arts and Sciences says he was always careful to avoid saying that he knew for sure that's what they were.
with bacterial nanowires. This latest study will be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 18.
During the formation of nanowires scientists noted an increase in the expression of electron transport genes but no corresponding increase in the expression of pilin genes.
what nanowires weren't the team next needed to figure out what they actually were. El-Naggar credits Sahand Pirbadian USC graduate student with devising an ingenious yet simple strategy to make the discovery.
By depriving the bacteria of oxygen the researchers were able to force the bacteria to stretch out their nanowires on command allowing the process to be observed in real time.
and specific proteins researchers were able to take video of the nanowires reaching out confirming that they were based on membrane and not pili at all.
Generating videos of the nanowires stretching out required new methods to simultaneously label multiple features keep a camera focused on the wriggling bacteria and combine the optical techniques with atomic force microscopy to gain higher resolution.
and figure out the right conditions for the bacteria to produce nanowires Pirbadian said. We had to go back
Once we were able to induce nanowire growth we started analyzing their composition and structure
Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 nanowires are outer membrane and periplasmic extensions of the extracellular electron transport components PNAS www. pnas. org/cgi/doi/10.1073
#Eco-friendly'prefab nanoparticles'could revolutionize nano manufacturing A team of materials chemists polymer scientists device physicists
and others at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today report a breakthrough technique for controlling molecular assembly of nanoparticles over multiple length scales that should allow faster cheaper more ecologically friendly manufacture of organic photovoltaics and other electronic devices.
It was Bag who put similar sized and charged nanoparticles together to form a building block then used an artist's airbrush to spray layers of electrical circuits atop each other to create a solar-powered device.
He says Here we preformed structures at nanoscale so they will form a known structure assembled at the meso scale from
#Magnetic nanoparticles break the capacity barrier for antibody purification Monoclonal antibodies represent the largest and fastest-growing segment of international biopharma.
Now A*STAR researchers have developed a high-capacity method to purify monoclonal antibodies that uses magnetic nanoparticles and also introduces new operating conditions.
which causes the antibodies to be deposited on the surface of starch-coated magnetic nanoparticles (see image).
The high capacity of our nanoparticle method makes it much faster than column chromatography explains Gagnon.
In addition to solving the longstanding problem of productivity for monoclonal antibodies the nanoparticle approach can be applied to many other therapeutic proteins and also to viral vaccines.
Gagnon P. Toh P. & Lee J. High productivity purification of Immunoglobulin g monoclonal antibodies on starch-coated magnetic nanoparticles by steric exclusion of polyethylene glycol.
#Pentagonal nanorods show catalytic promise Pentagonal nanorods have a unique morphology that confers interesting compositional
and high catalytic activity that make them excellent candidates for industrial catalysts. Now, researchers in Singapore have developed a simple chemical process to grow uniform pentagonal nanorods composed of gold and copper.
These new materials readily catalyze the direct alkylation of an amine with an alcohol, rendering them useful in the fields of materials chemistry and nanotechnology."
"We successfully synthesized goldopper pentagonal nanorods with controlled size and composition by a seed-mediated growth route,"explains lead researcher Jackie Ying from the A*STAR Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
The'seeds'are multiple crystals of elongated gold decahedrons, joined together by shared facesn arrangement known as multiply-twinning.
To create the nanorods, the team placed the gold seeds in a solution containing a copper precursor and applied heat a process that produced nearly uniform pentagonal nanorods.
Ying's team showed that they could control the length of these nanorods by changing the amount of gold seeds added to the copper precursor.
Adding a 1: 1 ratio of gold to copper produced nanorods that grew approximately 15 nanometers in length while a 1: 2 ratio produced nanorods approximately 19 nanometers long,
and a 1: 3 ratio produced nanorods approximately 24 nanometers long. The diameter of the nanorods remained the same,
however, regardless of the ratio of metals used. The ability to control the size and composition of the nanorods means it is easier to control the properties of the bimetallic goldopper nanoparticles compared to nanoparticles made of just one metal,
Yang explains. Next, the team evaluated the catalytic activity of these goldopper nanorods in a carbonitrogen-bond-forming reactionhe direct alkylation of an amine using an alcohol."
"This hydrogen-borrowing strategy is an attractive synthetic method for the C bond formation as it is an environmentally friendly process
which produces only water as a byproduct, "says Ying. The nanorods were examined as catalysts for this reaction using the model substrates p-toluene sulphonamide and benzyl alcohol."
"Our heterogeneous catalyst showed higher catalytic activity toward the C coupling reaction and better recyclability compared to commercially available catalysts,
"Ying says. Beyond catalysis, Ying predicts these new materials could be useful in electronics, chemical sensing and even biomedicine.
Her team now plans to use the nanorods as seeds themselves to synthesize nanoparticles comprised of a goldopper core surrounded by a shell of another material, such as platinum, for energy applications
#Watching molecules'dance'in real time (Phys. org) A new technique which traps light at the nanoscale to enable real-time monitoring of individual molecules bending
and flexing may aid in our understanding of how changes within a cell can lead to diseases such as cancer.
This critical front line of cellular defence is made up of a layer of fatty lipids just a few nanometres thick.
In order to view the behaviour of the cell membrane at the level of individual molecules the Cambridge team working with researchers from the University of Leeds squeezed them into a tiny gap between the mirrored gold facets of a nanoparticle sitting just above a flat gold surface.
Through highly precise control of the geometry of the nanostructures and using Raman spectroscopy an ultra-sensitive molecular identification technique the light can be trapped between the mirrors allowing the researchers to'fingerprint'individual molecules.
#Mobile phones come alive with the sound of music thanks to nanogenerators Charging mobile phones with sound, like chants from at football ground, could become a reality, according to a new collaboration between scientists from Queen Mary University of London and Nokia.
Nokia worked with the QMUL team to create an energy harvesting prototype (a nanogenerator) that could be used to charge a mobile phone using everyday background noise such as traffic,
or stretched creates a voltage by converting energy from motion into electrical energy, in the form of nanorods.
The nanorods can be coated onto various surfaces in different locations making the energy harvesting quite versatile.
the nanorods then generate a high voltage. The nanorods respond to vibration and movement created by everyday sound,
such as our voices. Electrical contacts on both sides of the rods are used then to harvest the voltage to charge a Phone in order to make it possible to produce these nanogenerators at scale
the scientists found innovative ways to cut costs in the production process. Firstly, they developed a process
whereby they could spray on the nanorod chemicals almost like nanorod graffiti to cover a plastic sheet in a layer of zinc oxide.
the nanorods grew all over the surface of the sheet. Secondly, gold is used traditionally as an electrical contact
Researchers from the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia's (ICN2 Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology) Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group led by the ICREA Research Prof Arben Merkoçi work
#New graphene framework bridges gap between traditional capacitors batteries Researchers at the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA have set the stage for a watershed in mobile energy storage by using a special graphene material
"By focusing on the nanoelectronic connections between cells, we can do things no one has done before,
By using nanoelectronics, it could become possible for scientists to peer for the first time inside cells, see what's going wrong in real time
His team has made ultrathin nanowires that can monitor and influence what goes on inside cells.
Presenting their findings today 5 august 2014 in the journal Nanotechnology the researchers have demonstrated the material's superior performance compared to commercially available carbon graphene and carbon nanotubes.
Preparation of energy storage material derived from a used cigarette filter for a supercapacitor electrode Nanotechnology iopscience. iop. org/0957-4484/25/34/345601 5
#Nanoscale biodegradable drug-delivery method could provide a year or more of steady doses About one in four older adults suffers from chronic pain.
The method uses biodegradable nanoscale thin films laden with drug molecules that are absorbed into the body in an incremental process.
The film can be applied onto degradable nanoparticles for injection into local sites or used to coat permanent devices such as orthopedic implants.
#Nanoscale details of electrochemical reactions in electric vehicle battery materials Using a new method to track the electrochemical reactions in a common electric vehicle battery material under operating conditions,
"Our work was focused on developing a method to track structural and electrochemical changes at the nanoscale as the battery material was charging,
These methods lack the spatial resolution needed for chemical mapping or nanoscale imaging, and are likely to overlook possible small-scale effects and local differences within the sample,
the Brookhaven team used a combination of full-field, nanoscale-resolution transmission x-ray microscopy (TXM) and x-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) at the National Synchrotron Light source (NSLS),
The scientists used these methods to analyze samples made up of multiple nanoscale particles in a real battery electrode under operating conditions (in operando.
"In addition, this work demonstrates the unique capability of applying nanoscale imaging and spectroscopic techniques in understanding battery materials with a complex mechanism in real battery operational conditions."
The team is comprised of researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of technology's Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems,
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.""If you compare the diameter of the nanopropellers with a human blood cell,
But the openings are large enough for nanometer-sized objects to pass through. The scientists were able to control the motion of the propellers using a relatively weak rotating magnetic field.
#Existence of two-dimensional nanomaterial silicene questioned Sometimes scientific findings can shake the foundations of what was held once to be true causing us to step back
A recent study at the U s. Department of energy's Argonne National Laboratory has called into question the existence of silicene thought to be one of the world's newest and hottest two-dimensional nanomaterials.
Some of the bulk silicon platelets were more than one layer thick said Argonne scientist Nathan Guisinger of Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials.
Housed within the Center for Nanoscale Materials a DOE Office of Science User Facility the spectroscope allows researchers to use light to shift the position of one atom in a crystal lattice
Yung-Eun Sung is both a group leader at the Center for Nanoparticle Research at Institute for Basic Science*(IBS) and a professor at the Seoul National University.
Group leader Yung-Eun Sung of the Center for Nanoparticle Research at IBS, says,"We expect that our synthetic approach will be developed to produce doped carbon materials based on other elements (e g.,
into a silicon nanowire. With this new method of producing hybrid nanowires, very fast and multifunctional processing units can be accommodated on a single chip in the future.
The research results will be published in the journal Nano Research. Nano-optoelectronics are considered the cornerstone of future chip technology,
they integrated compound semiconductor crystals made of indium arsenide (Inas) into silicon nanowires, which are suited ideally for constructing increasingly compact chips.
This integration of crystals was the greatest obstacle for such"hetero-nanowires"until now: beyond the nanometer range, crystal lattice mismatch always led to numerous defects.
The researchers have managed now a near-perfect production and embedding of the Inas crystals into the nanowires for the first time.
Implanted atoms form crystals in the liquid-Phase in order to carry out this process, ion beam synthesis and heat treatment with xenon flash-lamps were used, two technologies in
"A silicon oxide shell, measuring merely fifteen-nanometers-thick, maintains the form of the liquid nanowire,
"explains HZDR scientist Dr. Slawomir Prucnal, "while the implanted atoms form the indium arsenide crystals.""Dr. Wolfgang Skorupa, the head of the research group adds:"
"In the next step, the scientists want to implement different compound semiconductors into Silicon nanowires and also optimize the size and distribution of the crystals a
Their findings are to be published Sunday, July 20, in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
who is also director of the Materials science Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and director of the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at UC Berkeley."
Unstable and hungry for electrons The nanoscale plasmon sensor used in the lab experiments is much smaller than other explosive detectors on the market.
Monolayer materials may make it possible. These atom-thin sheets including the famed super material graphene feature exceptional and untapped mechanical and electronic properties.
Fortunately researchers have pinpointed now the breaking mechanism of several monolayer materials hundreds of times stronger than steel with exotic properties that could revolutionize everything from armor to electronics.
Surprisingly the phenomenon persisted across several different materials with disparate electronic properties suggesting that monolayers may have intrinsic instabilities to be either overcome or exploited.
The results were published in the journal Physical Review B. Our calculations exposed these monolayer materials'fundamental shifts in structure
The team virtually examined this exotic phase transition in graphene boron nitride molybdenum disulfide and graphane all promising monolayer materials.
Monolayer materials experience strain on atomic scales demanding different investigative expertise than that of the average demolition crew.
Without the highly parallel supercomputing resources and expertise at Brookhaven it would have been nearly impossible to pinpoint this transition in strained monolayers.
Monolayer materials it turns out play by very different rules. Within the honeycomb-like lattices of monolayers like graphene boron nitride and graphane the atoms rapidly vibrate in place.
Different vibrational states which dictate many of the mechanical properties of the material are called modes.
As the perfect hexagonal structures of such monolayers are strained they enter a subtle soft mode the vibrating atoms slip free of their original configurations
The researchers found that this vibrational soft mode caused lingering unstable distortions in most of the known monolayer materials.
As the monolayers were strained the energetic cost of changing the bond lengths became significantly weaker in other words under enough stress the emergent soft mode encourages the atoms to rearrange themselves into unstable configurations.
This in turn dictates how one might control that strain and tune monolayer performance. Our work demonstrates that the soft mode failure mechanism is not unique to graphene
and suggests it might be an intrinsic feature of monolayer materials Isaacs said. Armed with this knowledge researchers may now be able to figure out how to delay the onset of the newly characterized instabilities
and improve the strength of existing monolayers. Beyond that scientists may even be able to engineer new ultra-strong materials that anticipate
For example we've been working with Columbia experimentalists who use a technique called'nanoindentation'to experimentally measure some of
Ideal strength and phonon instability of strained monolayer materials. Phys. Rev. B 89 184111#Published 28 may 2014. journals. aps. org/prb/abstract/3/Physrevb. 89.18411 1
One of the most promising developments involves layering anti-reflective nanostructures on top of an anti-glare surface.
#Self-assembling nanoparticle could improve MRI scanning for cancer diagnosis Scientists have designed a new self-assembling nanoparticle that targets tumours,
The new nanoparticle, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, boosts the effectiveness of Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning by specifically seeking out receptors that are found in cancerous cells.
The nanoparticle is coated with a special protein, which looks for specific signals given off by tumours,
causing the nanoparticle to self-assemble into a much larger particle so that it is more visible on the scan.
used cancer cells and mouse models to compare the effects of the self-assembling nanoparticle in MRI scanning against commonly used imaging agents
and found that the nanoparticle produced a more powerful signal and created a clearer MRI image of the tumour.
The scientists say the nanoparticle increases the sensitivity of MRI scanning and will ultimately improve doctor's ability to detect cancerous cells at much earlier stages of development.
The newly designed nanoparticle provides a tool to improve the sensitivity of MRI scanning, and the scientists are now working to enhance its effectiveness.
so that the nanoparticle would light up with a luminescent probe once it had found its target,
"Before testing and injecting the nontoxic nanoparticle into mice, the scientists had to make sure that it would not become so big
They injected the nanoparticle into a saline solution inside a petri dish and monitored its growth over a four hour period.
The nanoparticle grew from 100 to 800 nanometres still small enough to not cause any harm.
The scientists are now improving the nanoparticle and hope to test their design in a human trial within the next three to five years.
"We're now looking at fine tuning the size of the final nanoparticle so that it is even smaller
By using CARS in conjunction with a light amplifier made of four tiny gold nanodiscs,
The gap in the center of the four discs is about 15 nanometers wide. Owing to an optical effect called a"Fano resonance,
"A 15-nanometer gap may sound small, but the gap in most competing devices is on the order of 1 nanometer,
"Zhang said.""Our design is much more robust because even the smallest defect in a one-nanometer device can have significant effects.
Moreover, the larger gap also results in a larger target area, the area where measurements take place.
The target area in our device is hundreds of times larger than the target area in a one-nanometer device,
#Surrey Nanosystems has super black material (Phys. org) A British company says it has scored a breakthrough in the world's darkest material.
Surrey Nanosystems describes its development as not just a black material but super-black. They are calling it Vantablack
The manufacture of`super-black`carbon nanotube-based materials has required traditionally high temperatures preventing their direct application to sensitive electronics or materials with relatively low melting points.
which period Surrey Nanosystems successfully transferred its low-temperature manufacturing process from silicon to aluminum structures and pyroelectric sensors.
Vantablack is a major breakthrough by UK industry in the application of nanotechnology to optical instrumentation.
#Researchers demonstrate novel tunable nanoantennas A research team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a novel,
tunable nanoantenna that paves the way for new kinds of plasmonic-based optomechanical systems, whereby plasmonic field enhancement can actuate mechanical motion.
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in fabricating metal-based nanotextured surfaces that are preprogrammed to alter the properties of light in a specific way after incoming light interacts with it,
how they want their nanostructure to modify light.""The researchers developed a novel, metal, pillar-bowtie nanoantenna (p-BNA) array template on 500-nanometer tall glass pillars (or posts.
In doing so, they demonstrated that the gap size for either individual or multiple p-BNAS can be tuned down to approx. 5 nm (approx. 4x smaller than
"On a fundamental level, our work demonstrates electron-beam based manipulation of nanoparticles an order of magnitude larger than previously possible,
"The dramatic deformation of the nanoantennas we observe is facilitated by strong in-gap plasmonic modes excited by the passing electrons,
which give rise to nanonewton-magnitude gradient forces on the constituent metal particles.""The interdisiciplinary research teamhat included Abdul Bhuiya (MS student in ECE student), Xin Yu (ECE post-grad),
and Nanotechnology Laboratory) lso demonstrated that the gap size for either individual or multiple p-BNAS can be tuned down to approximately 5 nm (roughly 4x smaller than
or groups of p-BNAS within a sub-array with velocities as large as 60 nanometers per second.
It enables tuning of the optical (plasmonic) response of the nanoantennas, down to the level of a single nanoantenna (approximately 250 nanometers across;
and thermal phenomena in a nanoscale system. The team believes that the relatively high aspect ratio (pillar height-to-thickness) of 4. 2 for the p-BNAS,
Based on the observed experiments, the gradient force is estimated to be on the order of nanonewtons.""Our fabrication process shows for the first time an innovative way of fabricating plasmonic nanoantenna structures under the SEM,
which avoids complications such as proximity effects from conventional lithography techniques, "Bhuiya said.""This process also reduces the gap of the nanoantennas down to 5 nm under SEM with a controlled reduction rate.
With this new fabrication technique, it opens an avenue to study different phenomena which leads to new exciting research fields. e
Researchers are focused now on using silicon at the nanoscale, or billionths of a meter, level as a replacement for graphite.
The problem with nanoscale silicon is that it degrades quickly and is hard to produce in large quantities.
and milled it down to the nanometer scale, followed by a series of purification steps changing its color from brown to bright white, similar in color and texture to powdered sugar.
"said Wolkow, the icore Chair in Nanoscale Information and Communications technology in the Faculty of science.""We are approaching some fundamental limits that will stop the 30-yearlong drive to make things faster, cheaper, better and smaller;
"Wolkow and his team in the U of A's physics department and the National Institute for Nanotechnology are working to engineer atomically precise technologies that have practical, real-world applications.
when they created the smallest-ever quantum dots single atom of silicon measuring less than one nanometre widesing a technique that will be awarded a U s. patent later this month.
and being able to record the magnitude of resistance paves the way to design superior nanoelectronic devices,
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