http://www.nanowerk.com/ Nanotechnology Spotlight from Nanowerk Copyright 2005-2010 Nanowerk LLC http://www.nanowerk.com/ http://www.nanowerk.com/images/logo10.gif michael@nanowerk.com (Michael Berger) en-us Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:30:16 -0400 http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15433.php Freshwater could become the oil of the 21st century - scarce, expensive and fought over. While over 70 per cent of the Earth's surface is covered by water, most of it is unusable for human consumption. Technological advances have made desalination and demineralization feasible - albeit expensive - solutions for increasing the world's supply of freshwater. However, nanotechnology-based water purification devices have the potential to transform the field of desalination. Researchers have now demonstrated a new, efficient and fouling-free desalination process based on the ion concentration polarization (ICP) phenomenon - a fundamental electrochemical transport phenomenon that occurs when an ion current is passed through ion-selective membranes - for direct desalination of sea water. http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15433.php http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15398.php Materials that can produce electricity are at the core of piezoelectric research and the vision of self-powering machines and devices. With the emergence of nanotechnology and the use of nanomaterials, the field of piezoelectrics and nanopiezotronics has experienced a lot of new and interesting research efforts. A recent study, for instance, has demonstrated that the small vibrational energy waste generated in the environment from noise, wind power, running water, or water wave action can be scavenged or harvested as a driving force for direct water splitting. The researchers propose a new piezoelectrochemical mechanism for the direct conversion of mechanical energy to chemical energy and subsequently the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen. http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15398.php http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15381.php Artificial photosynthesis can offer a clean and portable source of energy supply as durable as the sunlight. Using sunlight to split water molecules and form hydrogen fuel is one of the most promising tactics for kicking our carbon habit. Of the possible methods, nature provides the blueprint for converting solar energy in the form of chemical fuels. A natural leaf is a synergy of the elaborated structures and functional components to produce a highly complex machinery for photosynthesis in which light harvesting, photoinduced charge separation, and catalysis modules combined to capture solar energy and split water into oxygen and hydrogen efficiently. Chinese researchers have now demonstrated the design of an efficient, cost-effective artificial system to mimic photosynthesis by copying the elaborate architectures of green leaves, replacing the natural photosynthetic pigments with man-made catalysts and thereby realizing water splitting- a major advance in energy conversion. http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15381.php http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15354.php It has been known for several years that carbon nanotubes would heat, ignite and luminesce upon exposure to certain types of electromagnetic radiation, including laser light. However, no one expected any form of fullerenes to do the same thing. Until now. A team at the University of Florida has discovered that functionalized fullerenes heat, ignite, glow and transform into other carbon nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes upon exposure to low-intensity laser light. This is the first time these findings have been published. A possible explanation for the optical heating and ignition phenomena that have been observed is a distortion of the symmetrical cage structure of the fullerenes. http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15354.php http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15292.php Continuing miniaturization has moved the semiconductor industry well into the nano realm with leading chip manufacturers on their way to CMOS using 22nm process technology. With transistors the size of tens of nanometers, researchers have begun to explore the interface of biology and electronics by integrating nanoelectronic components and living cells. While researchers have already experimented with integrating living cells into semiconductor materials other research is exploring the opposite way, i.e. integrating nanoelectronics into living cells. Researchers in Spain have demonstrated that silicon chips smaller than cells can be produced, collected, and internalized inside living cells by different techniques (lipofection, phagocytosis or microinjection) and, most significantly, they can be used as intracellular sensors. http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=15292.php