Showing Spotlights 161 - 168 of 252 in category All (newest first):
Electronic devices with muscles-like stretchability have long been pursued, but not achieved due to the requirement that all materials in the devices - electrodes, semiconductor, and dielectric - are stretchable. In their pursuit of fully flexible and stretchable electronic devices, researchers have already reported stretchable solar cells and transistors as well as stretchable active-matrix displays. The nanomaterials used for these purposes range from coiled nanowires to graphene. Recently, researchers at UCLA have successfully demonstrated a stretchable polymer composite that is highly transparent and highly conductive, and applied this nanocomposite material to fabricating stretchable devices. This work represents a proof-of-concept, highly stretchable semiconductor device wherein every part of the device is intrinsically stretchable.
Aug 22nd, 2011
Using single molecules as electronic components like diodes, switches or transistors is the ultimate goal for future electronic nanotechnology devices. In order to explore the electronic properties of a single molecule, researchers have to make electrical contact between electrodes and molecules - and this has proven to be a big challenge. Though many efforts have been made to realize single-molecule electronics, it is still impossible to fabricate a practical single-molecule integrated circuit. One of the problems is the lack of viable methods for wiring each functional molecule. Researchers have now demonstrated a novel method for controlling single molecule chemical reactions - a kind of 'chemical soldering'.
Jul 28th, 2011
There is a physical and electrical disconnect between the world of electronics and the world of biology. Electronics tend to be rigid, operate using electrons, and are inherently two-dimensional. The brain, as a basis for comparison, is soft, operates using ions, and is three-dimensional. Researchers have therefore been looking to find different routes to create biocompatible devices that work well in wet environments like biological systems. In an exiting new development, researchers from North Carolina State University have fabricated a memory device that is soft, entirely based on liquid-based matter, and functions well in wet environments - opening the door to a new generation of biocompatible electronic devices.
Jul 19th, 2011
The field of single-molecule magnets is very promising, since an individual magnetic molecule represent the ultimate size limit to store and processing information. Magnetic molecules are considered very promising for spintronics since they can store a bit of information in an extremely small volume. However, in order to make magnetic molecules work, one has to find a way to measure their magnetization. Usual approaches are often very invasive and may lead to a strong perturbation of the properties of the molecules. A European research team has now designed and realized a novel hybrid spintronic nanodevice where the state of the molecule is measured 'indirectly', through a sensor coupled with the molecule.
Jul 5th, 2011
One enabling technology for printed and flexible electronics devices is the use of a special silver nanoparticle ink that allow the patterning of silver microelectrodes by omnidirectional printing. Taking an important step towards enabling desktop manufacturing - or personal fabrication - using very low cost, ubiquitous printing tools, researchers have now demonstrated a pen-on-paper approach as a low-cost, portable fabrication route for printed electronic and optoelectronic devices. The team demonstrates the fabrication of electronic art, flexible displays, conductive text, and radio frequency antennas with their technique. The printed features can withstand repeated bending and folding while maintaining high conductivity.
Jun 27th, 2011
Conventional metal patterning in the electronics industry is done by a photo-resist patterning with a photo-mask and metal evaporation in a vacuum chamber. This technology require expensive vacuum conditions, high processing temperatures, many steps, and toxic chemicals to fabricate one layer of a metal pattern. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to change the design of the expensive photomask once it is fabricated. Researchers have now developed a high-resolution metal nano-patterning technique by combining solution deposited metal nanoparticles and a femtosecond laser without using conventional vacuum deposition or photo-masks. With this method, the time and cost associated with high-resolution metal patterning can be reduced dramatically without using time-consuming vacuum processes and the pattern design can be easily changed in a digital manner without using expensive photo-masks.
Jun 22nd, 2011
Researchers demonstrate a new single element nanoscale device, based on the successfully commercialized phase change material technology, emulating the functionality and the plasticity of biological synapses. In the nervous system, a synapse is the junction between two neurons, enabling the transmission of electric messages from one neuron to another and the adaptation of the message as a function of the nature of the incoming signal - something that is called plasticity. Synapses dominate the architecture of the brain and are responsible for massive parallelism, structural plasticity, and robustness of the brain. Therefore, a compact nanoelectronic device emulating the functions and plasticity of biological synapses will be the most important building block of brain-inspired computational systems.
Jun 21st, 2011
Germanium was the basic material of first-generation transistors in the late 1940s and early 1950s before it was replaced by silicon (the first silicon transistor was produced by Texas Instruments in 1954). Using germanium instead of silicon as transistor material would enable faster chips containing smaller transistors because higher switching speeds than in silicon could be achieved using germanium. A novel fabrication route demonstrated by a research team in Australia, using a combination of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) lithography and high-quality crystal growth, opens up an entire new area where quantum behavior of highly confined electrons in germanium can be studied for the first time.
May 20th, 2011
Subscribe to our Nanotechnology Spotlight feed