Since the shortest wavelength we can see is around 400 nanometers (nm) that means anything 200 nm
The challenge for biologists is that the molecules they want to see are often only a few tens of nanometers in size.
Yakobson's lab first reported in a Nano Letters paper last year that unlike graphene 2-D boron rolled into a nanotube would always be metallic.
which might bring in lots of new physics and chemistry especially on the nanoscale. For example 2-D boron is more conductive than graphene because of its unique electronic structure and atomic arrangement.
The team's analysis revealed that multiple layers of cells in the seed coat are made each up of a cylindrically layered architecture with high regularity on the nanoscale.
The researchers also benefited from facilities at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems which is part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network supported by the U s. National Science Foundation.
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard also contributed to this research. Story Source:
The materials at play--graphene and hexagonal boron nitride--have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
He is one of the authors of the new work that appears this week in Nature Nanotechnology.
While Rice's technical capabilities limited features to a resolution of about 100 nanometers the only real limits are defined those by modern lithographic techniques according to the researchers.
A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. It should be possible to make fully functional devices with circuits 30 even 20 nanometers wide all in two dimensions said Rice researcher Jun Lou a co-author of the new paper.
That would make circuits on about the same scale as in current semiconductor fabrication he said.
A focused ion beam system was used later to create even finer patterns down to 100-nanometer resolution without masks.
The technology relies on inert nontoxic magnetic nanoparticles that are inserted into the living cells. Researchers can then use magnets to lift
They reported their results in the journal ACS Nano. We obtained information about electron scattering at the boundaries that shows it significantly limits the electronic performance compared to grain boundary free graphene Lyding said.
and Nanotechnology Lab and transferring the thin films to a silicon (Si02) wafer. They then used the STM at Beckman developed by Lyding for analysis led by first author Justin Koepke of Lyding's group.
#New nanotech fiber: Robust handling, shocking performancerice University's latest nanotechnology breakthrough was more than 10 years in the making
but it still came with a shock. Scientists from Rice the Dutch firm Teijin Aramid the U s. Air force and Israel's Technion Institute this week unveiled a new carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber that looks
and acts like textile thread and conducts electricity and heat like a metal wire. In this week's issue of Science the researchers describe an industrially scalable process for making the threadlike fibers which outperform commercially available high-performance materials in a number of ways.
We finally have a nanotube fiber with properties that don't exist in any other material said lead researcher Matteo Pasquali professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry at Rice.
The phenomenal properties of carbon nanotubes have enthralled scientists from the moment of their discovery in 1991.
Nanotubes'conductive properties--for both electricity and heat--rival the best metal conductors. They also can serve as light-activated semiconductors drug-delivery devices
Unfortunately carbon nanotubes are also the prima donna of nanomaterials; they are difficult to work with despite their exquisite potential.
For starters finding the means to produce bulk quantities of nanotubes took almost a decade.
Scientists also learned early on that there were several dozen types of nanotubes--each with unique material and electrical properties;
Creating large-scale objects from these clumps of nanotubes has been a challenge. A threadlike fiber that is less than one-quarter the thickness of a human hair will contain tens of millions of nanotubes packed side by side.
Ideally these nanotubes will be aligned perfectly--like pencils in a box--and tightly packed. Some labs have explored means of growing such fibers whole
but the production rates for these solid-state fibers have proven quite slow compared with fiber-production methods that rely on a chemical process called wet spinning.
In this process clumps of raw nanotubes are dissolved in a liquid and squirted through tiny holes to form long strands.
Shortly after arriving at Rice in 2000 Pasquali began studying CNT wet-spinning methods with the late Richard Smalley a nanotechnology pioneer and the namesake of Rice's Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
and colleagues to create the first pure nanotube fibers. The work established an industrially relevant wet-spinning process for nanotubes that was analogous to the methods used to create high-performance aramid fibers--like Teijin's Twaron
--which are used in bulletproof vests and other products. But the process needed to be refined. The fibers weren't very strong or conductive due partly to gaps and misalignment of the millions of nanotubes inside them.
Achieving very high packing and alignment of the carbon nanotubes in the fibers is said critical study co-author Yeshayahu Talmon director of Technion's Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute who began collaborating with Pasquali about five years ago.
The next big breakthrough came in 2009 when Talmon Pasquali and colleagues discovered the first true solvent for nanotubes--chlorosulfonic acid.
For the first time scientists had a way to create highly concentrated solutions of nanotubes a development that led to improved alignment and packing.
Until that time no one thought that spinning out of chlorosulfonic acid was possible because it reacts with water Pasquali said.
and conductivity of spun fibers could also be improved if the starting material--the clumps of raw nanotubes--contained long nanotubes with few atomic defects.
In 2010 Pasquali and Talmon began experimenting with nanotubes from different suppliers and working with AFRL scientists to measure the precise electrical and thermal properties of the improved fibers.
Iridescence in plants is produced by nanoscale ridges on the top of the cells in the petal's epidermal surface.
%The two findings have been published simultaneously today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. For quantum computing to become a reality we need to operate the bits with very low error rates says Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak who is Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW where the devices were made.
Briseno with colleagues and graduate students at UMASS Amherst and others at Stanford university and Dresden University of Technology Germany report in the current issue of Nano Letters that by using single-crystalline organic nanopillars
Nanopillars are engineered nanoscale surfaces with billions of organic posts that resemble blades of grass and like grass blades they are particularly effective at converting light to energy.
#Nanocomposites toughen upan alternative fabrication route improves the properties of aluminum-based nanocomposites with great potential for vehicles of the futureone challenge in producing strong elastic
and hard-wearing nanocomposites is obtaining an even distribution of the nanoparticles in the metal matrix.
Their technique is a viable new method for manufacturing nanocomposites and has exciting potential for the car space and defense industries.
They then injected a slurry of aluminum oxide nanoparticles into the holes and heated the sheet in an oven.
Placing the nanoparticles in the sheet prior to the friction stir processing step significantly increased the concentration of nanoparticles in the composite.
The team used scanning electron microscopy to check two key properties that influence the strength of nanocomposites.
They first demonstrated that the nanoparticles were dispersed uniformly which means the material has no weak points.
and without the Al2o3 nanoparticles the team showed that the nanoparticles contributed to the reduction in grain size.
The best nanoparticle distribution and smallest aluminum alloy grains were obtained after passing the rotating tool through the sheet four times.
We plan to continue this research to further improve the mechanical and thermal properties as well as the wear resistance of the nanocomposites says Guo.
The material is made of graphene nanoribbons atom-thick strips of carbon created by splitting nanotubes a process also invented by the Tour lab
The new films are between 50 and 200 nanometers thick--a human hair is about 50000 nanometers thick
and Vladimir Volman an engineer at Lockheed martin. Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of computer science.
He is a member of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
and engineers at Penn State the Hungarian Academy of Sciences the Forest Research Institute in Matrafured Hungary and the USDA--created the decoys using a bioreplication process with nanoscale fidelity.
The finished bioreplicated decoys retained the surface texture of the beetle at the nanoscale. Additionally we painted some decoys a metallic green.
According to Domingue the light-scattering properties of the beetle's shell--which the team experimentally demonstrated using a white laser--made the nano-bioreplicated decoys more lifelike and therefore more attractive to males than the non-textured 3d printed decoy.
#Rolling neat nanotube fibers: Acid-free approach leads to strong conductive carbon threadsthe very idea of fibers made of carbon nanotubes is neat
but Rice university scientists are making them neat--literally. The single-walled carbon nanotubes in new fibers created at Rice line up like a fistful of uncooked spaghetti through a process designed by chemist Angel Martã and his colleagues.
The tricky bit according to Martã whose lab reported its results this month in the journal ACS Nano is keeping the densely packed nanotubes apart before they're drawn together into a fiber.
Left to their own devices carbon nanotubes form clumps that are perfectly wrong for turning into the kind of strong conductive fibers needed for projects ranging from nanoscale electronics to macro-scale power grids Earlier research at Rice by chemist
and chemical engineer Matteo Pasquali a co-author on the new paper used an acid dissolution process to keep the nanotubes separated until they could be spun into fibers.
Now Martã Pasquali and their colleagues are producing neat fibers with the same mechanical process
Matteo's group used chlorosulfonic acid to protonate the surface of the nanotubes Martã said.
A process revealed last year by Martã and lead authors Chengmin Jiang a graduate student and Avishek Saha a Rice alumnus starts with negatively charging carbon nanotubes by infusing them with potassium a metal and turning
otherwise dampen the nanotubes'ability to repel one another. Put enough nanotubes into such a solution and they're caught between the repellant forces
and an inability to move in a crowded environment Martã said. They're forced to align--a defining property of liquid crystals
and tightly binds the nanotubes together Martã said. But to make macroscopic materials the Martã team needed to pack many more nanotubes into the solution than in previous experiments.
As you start increasing the concentration the number of nanotubes in the liquid crystalline phase becomes more abundant than those in the isotropic (disordered) phase and that's exactly
what we needed Martã said. The researchers discovered that 40 milligrams of nanotubes per milliliter gave them a thick gel after mixing at high speed
and filtering out whatever large clumps remained. It's like a centrifuge together with a rotary drum Martã said of the mixing gear.
Feeding this dense nanotube gel through a narrow needle-like opening produced continuous fiber on the Pasquali lab's equipment.
and the team is investigating ways to improve their electrical properties through doping the nanotubes with iodide.
but gave the process a spin with a different preparation so now we're the first to make neat fibers of pure carbon nanotube electrolytes.
The nanotube electrolyte solution could be protected from oxygen and water which would have caused precipitation of the nanotubes he said.
It turns out that this is not a showstopper because we want the nanotubes to precipitate
and stick to each other as soon as they exit the sealed system through the needle. The process was not hard to control adapt
Professor in Mechanical engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry and chair of the Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering.
Pasquali is chair of the Department of chemistry and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry.
Martã is an assistant professor of chemistry and bioengineering and of materials science and nanoengineering. The Welch Foundation supported the research.
#Combining antibodies, iron nanoparticles and magnets steers stem cells to injured organsresearchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute infused antibody-studded iron nanoparticles into the bloodstream to treat
The combined nanoparticle enabled precise localization of the body's own stem cells to the injured heart muscle.
In an attempt to target healing stem cells to the site of the injury researchers coated iron nanoparticles with two kinds of antibodies proteins that recognize
After the nanoparticles were infused into the bloodstream they successfully tracked to the injured area and initiated healing.
That makes it a promising candidate for nanoelectronic applications that require stable properties according to new research by Rice university theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues.
In a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters the Rice team analyzed the properties of elemental bonds between semiconducting phosphorus atoms in 2-D sheets.
Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering a professor of chemistry and a member of Rice's Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
and Robert Vajtai a senior faculty fellow and Pulickel Ajayan the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry and chair
of the Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering both at Rice. The National Science Foundation (NSF;
and functions of nanomaterialsby â#drawingâ##micropatterns on nanomaterials using a focused laser beam scientists could modify properties of nanomaterials for effective applications in photonic and optoelectric applications.
The challenges faced by researchers in modifying properties of nanomaterials for application in devices may be addressed by a simple technique thanks to recent innovative studies conducted by scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS.
Instead of focusing sunlight we can focus laser beam onto a wide variety of nanomaterials and study effects of the focused laser beam has on these materials. â#Micropatterns â#drawnâ##on Mos2 films could enhance electrical conductivity
This innovation was published first online in the journal ACS Nano on 24 may 2014. Hidden images â#drawnâ##by focused laser beam on silicon nanowires could improve optical functionalitiesin a related study published in the journal Scientific Reports on 13 may 2014 Prof Sow led
another team of researchers from the NUS Faculty of science in collaboration with scientists from Hong kong Baptist University to investigate how â#drawingâ##micropatterns on mesoporous silicon nanowires could change the properties of nanowires and advance their applications.
The team scanned a focused laser beam rapidly onto an array of mesoporous silicon nanowires which are packed closely like the tightly woven threads of a carpet.
They found that the focused laser beam could modify the optical properties of the nanowires causing them to emit greenish-blue fluorescence light.
This is the first observation of such a laser-modified behaviour from the mesoporous silicon nanowires to be reported.
 The researchers systematically studied the laser-induced modification to gain insights into establishing control over the optical properties of the mesoporous silicon nanowires.
Their understanding enabled them to â#drawâ##a wide variety of micropatterns with different optical functionalities using the focused laser beam.
To put their findings to the test the researchers engineered the functional components of the nanowires with interesting applications.
To develop materials with properties that can cater to the industryâ##s demands Prof Sow together with his team of researchers will extend the versatile focused laser beam technique to more nanomaterials.
In a new paper available online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters a Rice team led by chemist James Tour compared its RRAM technology to more than a dozen competing versions.
Tour is Rice's T. T. and W. F. Chao Chair in Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and nanoengineering and of computer science.
Researchers unzip nanotubes by shooting them at 15,000 mphcarbon nanotubes unzipped into graphene nanoribbons by a chemical process invented at Rice university are finding use in all kinds of projects
The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan discovered that nanotubes that hit a target end first turn into mostly ragged clumps of atoms.
But nanotubes that happen to broadside the target unzip into handy ribbons that can be used in composite materials for strength
The Rice researchers led by graduate student Sehmus Ozden reported their finding in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
Until now we knew we could use mechanical forces to shorten and cut carbon nanotubes. This is the first time we have showed carbon nanotubes can be unzipped using mechanical forces.
The researchers fired pellets of randomly oriented multiwalled carbon nanotubes from a light gas gun built by the Rice lab of materials scientist Enrique Barrera with funding from NASA.
The pellets impacted an aluminum target in a vacuum chamber at about 15000 miles per hour. When they inspected the resulting carbon rubble they found nanotubes that smashed into the target end first
or at a sharp angle simply deformed into a crumpled nanotube. But tubes that hit lengthwise actually split into ribbons with ragged edges.
Hypervelocity impact tests are used mostly to simulate the impact of different projectiles on shields spacecraft
We were investigating possible applications for carbon nanotubes in space when we got this result.
Single-wall nanotubes do just the opposite; when the tube flattens the bottom wall hits the inside of the top wall
Ozden explained that the even distribution of stress along the belly-flopping nanotube which is many times longer than it is wide breaks carbon bonds in a line nearly simultaneously.
The researchers said 70 to 80 percent of the nanotubes in a pellet unzip to one degree or another.
Barrera is a professor of materials science and nanoengineering. Ajayan is Rice's Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry and chair of the Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering.
The Department of defense U s. Air force Office of Scientific research through a Multidisciplinary University Research Institute grant and the Brazilian agencies National Council for Scientific and Technological Development Coordination for the Improvement of Higher education
Published in the journal ACS Nano the Monash University research shows for the first time detailed insights into the structure of milk during digestion.
and Professor Ben Boyd from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) the team looked at the nanostructure of milk to find out how its components interact with the human digestive system.
The Rice material a nanoporous solid of carbon with nitrogen or sulfur is inexpensive and simple to produce compared with the liquid amine-based scrubbers used now Tour said.
Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and nanoengineering and of computer science.
Even without the kind of pressure needed to make macroscale diamonds the energy knocked loose hydrogen atoms to prompt a chain reaction between layers of graphite in the coal that resulted in diamonds between 2 and 10 nanometers wide.
But the most nano of the nanodiamonds were seen to fade away under the power of the electron beam in a succession of images taken over 30 seconds.
There is a window of stability for diamonds within the range of 19-52 angstroms (tenths of a nanometer) beyond
Stable nanodiamonds up to 20 nanometers in size can be formed in hydrogenated anthracite they found though the smallest nanodiamonds were continued unstable under electron-beam radiation.
Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical engineering and Materials Science a professor of chemistry and a member of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
and nanoparticles against foodborne pathogens associated with meat and poultry. The results demonstrate that the bacterial pathogens were inhibited significantly by the use of the antimicrobial films said Catherine Cutter professor of food science.
zinc oxide nanoparticles or silver nanoparticles. The compounds then were incorporated into edible films made from pullulan
and nanoparticles vacuum packaged and then evaluated for bacterial growth following refrigerated storage for up to three weeks.
or nanoparticles have the potential to improve the safety of refrigerated fresh or further-processed meat and poultry products said Cutter.
To fulfil these criteria ETH researchers used nanotechnology and nature's information storehouse DNA. A piece of artificial genetic material is the heart of the mini-label.
which has been published in the journal ACS Nano. To ensure that the particles can be fished out of the oil as quickly
they magnetised the tag by attaching iron oxide nanoparticles. Experiments in the lab showed that the tiny tags dispersed well in the oil
if the concentration of nanoparticles does not match the original value other oil--presumably substandard--must have been added.
when synthetic DNA nanoparticles are floating around in it? These are things that we already ingest today says Grass.
Nanoreporters tell sour oil from sweetscientists at Rice university have created a nanoscale detector that checks for
The nanoreporter is sized based on nanometer carbon material developed by a consortium of Rice labs led by chemist James Tour
When exposed to hydrogen sulfide the nanoparticles'fluorescent properties immediately change. When pumped out of a production well the particles can be analyzed with a spectrometer to determine the level of contamination This paper is a big step
because we're making our nanoreporters detect something that's not oil Wong said suggesting the possibility that nanoparticles may someday be able to capture sulfur compounds before they can be pumped to the surface.
We found the longer the PVA polymer chains the more stable the nanoparticles were in the high temperatures they're subjected to said Rice graduate student Chih-Chau Hwang co-lead author of the paper with fellow graduate student Gedeng Ruan.
along with DNA enveloped in nanoparticles. If the film is destroyed both the foam and the dye are released thereby rendering the cash useless.
The DNA nanoparticles that are released also mark the banknotes so that their path can be traced. Laboratory experiments with 5 euro banknotes have shown that the method is effective.
Conventional copper electrodes consist of individual nanoparticles that just sit on top of each other Kanan said. Oxide-derived copper on the other hand is made of copper nanocrystals that are linked all together in a continuous network with well-defined grain boundaries.
Our models suggest that the nanocrystalline network in the oxide-derived copper was critical for achieving these results.
and is described online in a new paper in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.
This new method will allow us to exploit the properties of molybdenum diselenide in a number of applications said study leader Pulickel Ajayan chair of Rice's Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering.
and nanoengineering and of chemistry at Rice Characterizing both the structure and function of a material as we have done in this paper is critical to such advances.
As with many nanomaterials scientists have found that the physical properties of TMDCS change markedly when the material has nanoscale properties.
For example a slab of molybdenum diselenide that is even a micron thick has an indirect bandgap
One of the driving forces in Rice's Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering is the close collaborations that develop between the people who are focused on synthesis
Research to find the best nanofluid for heat transfera mixture of diamond nanoparticles and mineral oil easily outperforms other types of fluid created for heat-transfer applications according to new research by Rice university.
Rice scientists mixed very low concentrations of diamond particles (about 6 nanometers in diameter) with mineral oil to test the nanofluid's thermal conductivity
They found it to be much better than nanofluids that contain higher amounts of oxide nitride or carbide ceramics metals semiconductors carbon nanotubes and other composite materials.
The work that could improve applications where control of heat is paramount was led by Pulickel Ajayan chair of Rice's new Materials Science and Nanoengineering Department and Rice alumnus Jaime Taha-Tijerina now a research scientist
and drilling medical therapy and diagnosis biopharmaceuticals air conditioning fuel cells power transmission systems solar cells micro-and nanoelectronic mechanical systems and cooling systems for everything from engines to nuclear reactors.
Researchers have been looking since the late 1990s for efficient customizable nanofluids that offer a middle ground.
They use sub-100 nanometer particles in low-enough concentrations that they don't limit flow
Brownian motion and nanoparticle/fluid interactions play an important role Taha-Tijerina said. We observed enhancement in thermal conductivity with incremental changes in temperature and the amount of nanodiamonds used.
and some preliminary results have been published in ACS Nano Zhang said. He added that the next step is to contact manufacturers
Today's filtration membranes have nanoscale pores that are not something you can manufacture in a garage very easily Karnik says.
Before experimenting with contaminated water the group used water mixed with red ink particles ranging from 70 to 500 nanometers in size.
This experiment showed that sapwood is naturally able to filter out particles bigger than about 70 nanometers.
However in another experiment the team found that sapwood was unable to separate out 20-nanometer particles from water suggesting that there is a limit to the size of particles coniferous sapwood can filter.
Karnik says sapwood likely can filter most types of bacteria the smallest of which measure about 200 nanometers.
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