#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.
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.
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
Though they are very good mass and force sensors, their quality factors have been somewhat modest.
thus enabling these systems to become appealing mass and force sensors, and exciting quantum systems.
This led the group to produce nanostructures that have historically been considered impossible to assemble. The widely used method of metamaterial synthesis is top-down fabrication such as electron beam
The films can also serve as supercapacitors which store energy quickly as static charge and release it in a burst.
The Rice lab built supercapacitors with the films; in tests they retained 90 percent of their capacity after 10000 charge-discharge cycles and 83 percent after 20000 cycles.
These could be fuel cells supercapacitors and batteries. And we've demonstrated two of those three are possible with this new material l
#Better bomb-sniffing technology with new detector material University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of carbon nanotube material for handheld sensors that will be quicker
plans to build a prototype handheld sensor by year's end and produce the first commercial scanners early next year, says cofounder Ling Zang, a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of a study of the technology published online Nov 4 in the journal
and then deposit a microscopic amount on electrodes in a prototype handheld scanner that can detect toxic gases such as sarin or chlorine,
When the sensor detects molecules from an explosive, deadly gas or drugs such as methamphetamine, they alter the electrical current through the nanotube materials,
"You can apply voltage between the electrodes and monitor the current through the nanotube,"says Zang, a professor with USTAR, the Utah Science Technology and Research economic development initiative."
The technology also can be applied to existing detectors or airport scanners used to sense explosives or chemical threats.
"Unlike the today's detectors, which analyze the spectra of ionized molecules of explosives and chemicals,
which will improve the future development of chemical sensors used in chemical and engineering industries.
In an international study University of Melbourne and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US found that pairs of closely spaced nano particles made of gold can act as optical antennas.
This geometry now determines the efficiency nanoparticle use as a chemical sensor in sensing minute quantities of chemicals in air and water.
Chief Investigator Ken Crozier a professor of Physics and Electronic engineering at the University of Melbourne said Up until now there were two competing theories surrounding
but not so good when used in electronics that generally need to convey heat away from a source.
or even inside electronic devices to help move heat away from heat generating chips. The team next plans to work on creating models that have more detail and
Researchers combine graphene and copper in hopes of shrinking electronics More information: Thermal conductivity of Graphene Laminate Nano Lett. 2014 14 (9) pp 5155-5161.
Yet while scientists made great strides in reducing of the size of individual computer components through microelectronics,
they have been less successful at reducing the distance between transistors, the main element of our computers.
These spaces between transistors have been much more challenging and extremely expensive to miniaturize an obstacle that limits the future development of computers.
Molecular electronics, which uses molecules as building blocks for the fabrication of electronic components, was seen as the ultimate solution to the miniaturization challenge.
#Team reveals molecular structure of water at gold electrodes When a solid material is immersed in a liquid the liquid immediately next to its surface differs from that of the bulk liquid at the molecular level.
When the solid surface is charged just like an electrode in a working battery it can drive further changes in the interfacial liquid.
At an electrode surface the build up of electrical charge driven by a potential difference (or voltage) produces a strong electric field that drives molecular rearrangements in the electrolyte next to the electrode.
Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a method not only to look at the molecules next to the electrode surface
but to determine their arrangement changes depending on the voltage. With gold as a chemically inert electrode and slightly-saline water as an electrolyte Salmeron and colleagues used a new twist on x-ray absorption spectroscopy XAS) to probe the interface
and show how the interfacial molecules are arranged. XAS itself is not new. In this process a material absorbs x-ray photons at a specific rate as a function of photon energy.
The electrons arriving at the gold electrode surface can be detected as an electrical current traveling through a wire attached to it.
when studying liquids in contact with working electrodes because they carry a steady current as in batteries and other electrochemical systems.
When measuring current off the electrode it is critical to determine which part is due to the x-rays and
That's the main thing we know about the gold electrode surface from the x-ray absorption spectra:
Water next to the electrode has a different molecular structure than it would in the absence of the electrode.
This study which is reported in Science in a paper titled The structure of interfacial water on gold electrodes studied by x-ray absorption spectroscopy marks the first time that the scientific community has shown such high sensitivity in an in-situ environment under working electrode conditions s
#NIST offers electronics industry two ways to snoop on self-organizing molecules A few short years ago,
It's old news that the semiconductor industry is starting to run up against physical limits to the decades-long trend of ever-denser integrated chips with smaller and smaller feature sizes,
Just recently, Intel Corp. announced that it had in production a new generation of chips with a 14-nanometer minimum feature size.
"The issue in semiconductor lithography is not really making small featuresou can do thatut you can't pack them close together,
and in theory, you have a near-perfect pattern for lines spaced 10 to 20 nanometers apart to become, perhaps, part of a transistor array.
That's a huge factor in the electronics industry. d
#Nanoparticle technology triples the production of biogas Researchers of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence,
and electronics Assistant professor Karton said. Ever since the discovery of graphene in 2004 scientists have been looking for potential applications in nanochemistry he said.
The global market for graphene is reported to have reached US$9 million this year with most sales concentrated in the semiconductor electronics battery energy and composites.
however because conventional metal electrode technologies are too thick(>500 nm) to be transparent to light making them incompatible with many optical approaches.
See-through sensors open new window into the brain More information: Graphene-based carbon-layered electrode array technology for neural imaging and optogenetic applications.
Nature Communications 5 Article number: 5258 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms625 5
#Materials for the next generation of electronics and photovoltaics One of the longstanding problems of working with nanomaterials substances at the molecular and atomic scale is controlling their size.
When their size changes their properties also change. This suggests that uniform control over size is critical
in order to use them reliably as components in electronics. Put another way if you don't control size you will have inhomogeneity in performance says Mark Hersam.
One property that distinguishes these materials from traditional semiconductors like silicon is that they are mechanically flexible.
That allows us to integrate electronics on flexible substrates like clothing shoes and wrist bands for real time monitoring of biomedical diagnostics and athletic performance.
These materials have the right combination of properties to realize wearable electronics. He and his colleagues also are working on energy technologies such as solar cells
and thus can be integrated with flexible electronics. They likely even will prove waterproof. It turns out that carbon nanomaterials are hydrophobic so water will roll right off of them he says.
#See-through one-atom-thick carbon electrodes powerful tool to study brain disorders Researchers from the Perelman School of medicine and School of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have used graphene
While previous efforts have been made to construct transparent electrodes using indium tin oxide they are expensive and highly brittle making that substance ill-suited for microelectrode arrays.
so we can make very thin flexible electrodes that can hug the neural tissue Kuzum notes.
The team also notes that the single-electrode techniques used in the Nature Communications study could be adapted easily to study other larger areas of the brain with more expansive arrays.
Ertugrul Cubukcu's lab at Materials science and engineering Department helped with the graphene processing technology used in fabricating flexible transparent neural electrodes as well as performing optical and materials characterization in collaboration with Euijae Shim and Jason Reed.
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