#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,
scientists at the U s. Department of energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed new insight into why fast charging inhibits this material's performance.
"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
#Graphene and related materials promise cheap flexible printed cameras Dr Felice Torrisi University Lecturer in Graphene technology has been awarded a Young International Researchers'Fellowship from the National Science Foundation
of China to look at how graphene and two-dimensional materials could enable printed and flexible eyes.
Graphene the ultimate thin membrane along with a wide range of two-dimensional (2d)- crystals (e g. hexagonal Boron nitride (h-BN) Molybdenum Disulfide (Mos2) and Tungsten Disulfide (WS2)) have changed radically the landscape
For example graphene is highly conductive flexible and transparent and it is superior to conductive polymers in terms of cost stability and performance;
In 2012 Drs Felice Torrisi Tawfique Hasan and Professor Andrea Ferrari at the Cambridge Graphene Centre invented a graphene ink
The graphene-based ink enables cost-effective printed electronics on plastic. Felice explains: Other conductive inks are made from precious metals such as silver
and process whereas graphene is both cheap environmentally stable and does not require much processing after printing.
and centrifugation process to unveil graphene potential in inks and coating for printed electronicsover the last two years Dr Torrisi
and the team at the Cambridge Graphene Centre have been looking to formulate a set of inks based on various 2d crystals setting a new platform for printed electronics.
based on graphene and 2d crystal-inks. The optical response of the printed 2d crystal inks combined with their flexibility on plastic substrate
#Cost-effective solvothermal synthesis of heteroatom (S or N)- doped graphene developed A research team led by group leader Yung-Eun Sung has announced that they have developed cost-effective technology to synthesize sulfur-doped and nitrogen-doped graphenes
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.
and cost effectiveness processes that can produce heteroatom (S or N)- doped graphenes. Moreover these materials enhance the performance of secondary batteries
and nitrogen-doped graphenes by using a simple, single-step solvothermal method. These heteroatom-doped graphene exhibited high surface areas and high contents of heteroatoms.
In addition, the lithium-ion batteries that had applied modified graphenes to it, exhibited a higher capacity than the theoretical capacity of graphite
which was used previously in lithium-ion batteries. It presented high chemical stability which resulted in no capacity degradation in charge and discharge experiments.
The heteroatom-doped graphenes suggest the potential to be employed as an effective, alternative chemical material by demonstrating performance comparable to that of the expensive platinum catalyst used for the cathode of fuel cell batteries.
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.
These atom-thin sheets including the famed super material graphene feature exceptional and untapped mechanical and electronic properties.
The team virtually examined this exotic phase transition in graphene boron nitride molybdenum disulfide and graphane all promising monolayer materials.
Within the honeycomb-like lattices of monolayers like graphene boron nitride and graphane the atoms rapidly vibrate in place.
In the case of graphene boron nitride and graphane the backbone of the perfect crystalline lattice distorted toward isolated hexagonal rings.
The soft mode distortion ended up breaking graphene boron nitride and molybdenum disulfide. 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.
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.
and exploit graphene and its cousins Isaacs said. For example we've been working with Columbia experimentalists who use a technique called'nanoindentation'to experimentally measure some of
what we simulated. Explore further: Engineers envision an electronic switch just three atoms thick More information:
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
This coating is mad e of carbon nanotubes-each 10000 times thinner than a human hair wrote Ian Johnston in The Independent on Sunday.
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.
Quantum dots Wolkow says, are vessels that confine electrons, much like pockets on a pool table. The dots can be spaced
and being able to record the magnitude of resistance paves the way to design superior nanoelectronic devices,
the research team observed how single electrons jump in and out of the quantum dots, and devised a method of monitoring how many electrons fit in the pocket and measuring the dot's charge.
give scientists the ability to monitor the charge of quantum dots. They've also found a way to create quantum dots that function at room temperature,
meaning costly cryogenics is not necessary.""That's exciting because, suddenly, things that were thought of as exotic,
Thanks to the EU-funded research project called NANOANTENNA completed in March 2013, physicists joined forces with chemists,
nanotechnologists and biomedical researchers with the aim of developing a so-called plasmonic nanobiosensor for the detection of proteins.
It consisted of nanoantennas, tiny gold rods about 100 to 200 nanometres long and 60 to 80 nm wide.
By shining light onto such a nanoantenna, the electrons inside start moving back and forth, amplifying the light radiation in hot spots regions of the antenna,
If these molecules are close to nanoparticles, the plasmons in the nanoparticles enhance the Raman signal coming from the molecules that have to be detected with several orders of magnitude.
The nanoantennas developed in this project only enhance the emitted Raman signal if the biomolecules are close to the hot spots Therefore,
the molecules have to be trapped to be detected. To do so, the researchers attached bioreceptors, fragments of DNA engineered to recognise specific proteins, to the nanoantennas.
When the nanoantennas studded with the bioreceptors are incubated in a solution that contains the biomarkers to be detected,
the latter become attached to the nanoantennas. When, subsequently, these nanoantennas are illuminated with light, they show the Raman fingerprints of both the bioreceptor and the biomarker,
as Gucciardi points out. One expert comments that health-care programmes are quickly moving to prevention
and early detection of diseases, done in point-of-care (POC) or bed-side conditions."
"says Alexandre Brolo, professor of chemistry specialised in nanotechnology research, who has been developing plasmonic biosensors at the University of Victoria, British columbia, Canada.
"says Maria Carmen Estévez, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Bellaterra, Spain.
One possibility is to use hybrid solar cells that combine silicon nanowires with low-cost, photoresponsive polymers. The high surface area and confined nature of nanowires allows them to trap significant amounts of light for solar cell operations.
Unfortunately, these thin, needle-like structures are very fragile and tend to stick together when the wires become too long.
Now, findings by Xincai Wang from the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and co-workers from Nanyang Technological University could turn the tables on silicon nanowires by improving the manufacturing of silicon'nanoholes'arrow cavities carved into silicon wafers
Nanoholes are particularly effective at capturing light because photons can ricochet many times inside these openings until absorption occurs.
One significant problem, notes Wang, is control of the initial stages of nanohole formation crucial period that can often induce defects into the solar cell.
'maskless'approach to producing nanoholes using silver nanoparticles. First, they deposited a nanometer-thin layer of silver onto a silicon wafer
which they toughened by annealing it using a rapid-burst ultraviolet laser. Careful optimization of this procedure yielded regular arrays of silver nanospheres on top of the silicon surface,
with sphere size and distribution controlled by the laser annealing conditions. Next, the nanosphereilicon complex was immersed into a solution of hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid mixture that eats away at silicon atoms directly underneath the catalytic silver nanospheres.
Subsequent removal of the silver particles with acid produced the final, nanohole-infused silicon surface (see image).
The team analyzed the solar cell activity of their nanohole interfaces by coating them with a semiconducting polymer and metal electrodes.
Their experiments revealed a remarkable dependence on nanohole depth: cavities deeper than one micrometer showed sharp drops in power conversion efficiency from a maximum of 8. 3 per cent due to light scattering off of rougher surfaces and higher series
resistance effects.""Our simple process for making hybrid silicon nanohole devices can successfully reduce the fabrication costs
which impede the solar cell industry, "says Wang.""In addition, this approach can be transferred easily to silicon thin films to develop thin-film siliconolymer hybrid solar cells with even higher efficiency. e
Making graphene from plastic? Graphene is gaining heated attention dubbed a wonder material with great conductivity flexibility and durability.
However graphene is hard to come by due to the fact that its manufacturing process is complicated and mass production not possible.
Recently a domestic research team developed a carbon material without artificial defects commonly found during the production process of graphene
while maintaining its original characteristics. The newly developed material can be used as a substitute for graphene in solar cells and semiconductor chips.
Further the developed process is based on the continuous and mass-produced process of carbon fiber making it much easier for full-scale commercialization.
In recognition of the innovative approach the research was introduced on the cover of Nanoscale a high impacting peer-reviewed journal in the field of nano science.
along with Dr. Seok-In Na at Chonbuk National University and Dr. Byoung Gak Kim at KRICT synthesized carbon nanosheets similar to graphene using polymer
The research outcome was introduced in Nanoscale a journal of Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK under the title of One-step Synthesis of Carbon Nanosheets Converted from a Polycylic Compound
To manufacture high quality graphene in large volume the CVD (chemical vapor deposition)* method is used widely.
and move the manufactured graphene to another board such as a solar cell substrate. In this process the quality quickly degrades as it is prone to wrinkles or cracks.
It is a method of manufacturing graphene on the board of metal film that serves as a catalyst.
and graphene has to be transported to another board. The research team developed carbon nanosheet in a two-step process which consists of coating the substrate with a plymer solution and heating.
Considering that the existing process consists of 8 steps to manufacture graphene the new method makes it much simpler.
In addition the new method can be used directly as solar cell without any additional process. The research team synthesized a polymer with a rigid ladder structure namely PIM-1 (Polymer of intrinsic microporosity-1) to form the#through the simpole process
The carbon nanosheet can be mass-produced in a simpler process while having high quality since the new process bypasses the steps that are prone to formation of defects such as elimination of the metal substrate or transfer of graphene to another board.
The final product is as effective as graphene. Dr. Han Ik Joh at KIST said It is expected to be applied for commercialization of transparent and conductive 2d carbon materials without difficulty
since this process is based on the continuous and mass-produced process of carbon fiber. Explore further:
#Shrinky Dinks close the gap for nanowires How do you put a puzzle together when the pieces are too tiny to pick up?
to close the gap between nanowires in an array to make them useful for high-performance electronics applications.
Nanowires are extremely fast, efficient semiconductors, but to be useful for electronics applications, they need to be packed together in dense arrays.
Researchers have struggled to find a way to put large numbers of nanowires together so that they are aligned in the same direction and only one layer thick."
"Chemists have done already a brilliant job in making nanowires exhibit very high performance. We just don't have a way to put them into a material that we can handle,
people can make nanowires and nanotubes using any method they like and use the shrinking action to compact them into a higher density."
"The researchers place the nanowires on the Shrinky Dinks plastic as they would for any other substrate,
but then shrink it to bring the wires much closer together. This allows them to create very dense arrays of nanowires in a simple, flexible and very controllable way.
The shrinking method has added the bonus of bringing the nanowires into alignment as they increase in density.
Nam's group demonstrated how even wires more than 30 degrees off-kilter can be brought into perfect alignment with their neighbors after shrinking."
Nam first had the idea for using Shrinky Dinks plastic to assemble nanomaterials after seeing a microfluidics device that used channels made of shrinking plastic.
and the low cost of plastic could have a huge impact on nanowire assembly and processing for applications."
"I'm interested in this concept of synthesizing new materials that are assembled from nanoscale building blocks, "Nam said."
For example, experiments have shown that film made of packed nanowires has properties that differ quite a bit from a crystal thin film."
made of densely packed nanowires, that could harvest energy from light much more efficiently than traditional thin-film solar cells s
Lots of pores for sulfur The chemists Professor Thomas Bein (LMU), Coordinator of the Energy conversion Division of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich, Professor Linda Nazar (University of Waterloo, Waterloo Institute
of Nanotechology) and their colleagues have succeeded now in producing a novel type of nanofiber whose highly ordered and porous structure gives it an extraordinarily high surface-to-volume ratio.
During the procedure, the carbon nanotubes and thus the pore size shrink to a lesser extent than they would in the absence of the confining template
#Chirality-controlled growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes Recently, Professor Li Yan's research team developed a novel strategy to produce single-walled carbon nanotubes with specific chirality by applying a new family of catalysts,
"We need to use structure specific carbon nanotubes for real applications. The structure controlled growth has been a dream of our field for about 20 years.
I believe her idea to use W-based catalyst is the landmark of growth of carbon nanotubes.
We expect a plenty of very useful applications of carbon nanotubes based on her new discovery, "said Professor Shigeo Maruyama from The University of Tokyo,
who also serves the president of Fullerene, Carbon nanotubes, and Graphene research Society of Japan. Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT
which can be considered as a seamlesscylinder formed by rolling a piece of graphene, may be either metallic
or semiconducting depending on the manner of rolling denoted as (n m)( or the'chirality').'Relying on the fantastic structure and property, especially the extremely high mobility for both electrons and holes,
SWNTS has shown great potential in various fields such as nanoelectronics. In 2009, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) selected carbon-based nanoelectronics to include carbon nanotubes
and graphene for additional resources and detailed road mapping for ITRS as promising technologies targeting commercial demonstration in the next 10-15 year horizon.
However, it has been a big challenge for over 20 years to realize the chirality-selective synthesis of SWNTS.
As stated by Dr. Avouris in his review article published in Nature Nanotechnology (V. 2 P. 605"
the main hurdle (of carbon-based electronics) is our current inability to produce large amounts of identical nanostructureshere is no reliable way to directly produce a single CNT type such as will be needed in a large integrated system."
"Inspiringly, Professor Li and her collaborators have made a breakthrough on this issue. The catalysts, tungsten-based bimetallic alloy nanoparticles of non-cubic symmetry, have high melting points
and consequently are able to maintain their crystal structure during the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process,
Experimental evidence and theoretical simulation reveal that the good structural match between the carbon atom arrangement around the nanotube circumference
and the arrangement of the atoms in one of the planes of the nanocrystal catalyst facilitates the (n,
This method is also valid for other tungsten-based alloy nanocatalysts to grow SWNTS of various designed chirality."
"Employing tungsten-based alloy nanocrystals with unique structure as catalysts paves a way for the ultimate chirality control in SWNT growth.
carbon-based nanoelectronics",said Li. The work was evaluated highly by Professor Jie Liu at Duke university,
"The chirality-specific growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes is the most challenging and important issue in the field,
This development is very important for the applications of carbon nanotubes in many fields especially nanoelectronics. c
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