Behind the buzz and beyond the hype: Our daily Nanowerk-exclusive nanotechnology feature article. Some stories are more like an introduction to nanotechnology, some are about understanding current developments, and some are advanced reviews of leading edge research.
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Showing spotlights 1 - 6 of 898 in category All (newest first):
Materials engineers are keen to exploit the outstanding mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes for applications in fibers, composites, fabrics and other larger-scale structures and devices. The ability to fabricate continuous, multifunctional yarns represents an important step in this direction. The development of a continuous, weavable multilayered CNT yarn with superior mechanical, structural, surface, and electrical properties would open the way for a wide range of structural and functional applications, including composites, intelligent fabrics, catalyst supports, and sensors. Researchers in China now demonstrate the fabrication of a novel continuous yarn of CNTs with a multiple-layer structure by a CVD spinning process. The yarn consists of multiple monolayers of CNTs concentrically assembled in seamless tubules along the yarn axis.... nanotechnology article
Carbon nanotubes are 'strange' nanostructures in a sense that they have both high mechanical strength and extreme flexibility. Deforming a carbon nanotube into any shape would not easily break the structure, and it recovers to original morphology in perfect manner. Researchers in China are exploiting this phenomenon by making CNT sponges consisting of a large amount of interconnected nanotubes, thus showing a combination of useful properties such as high porosity, super elasticity, robustness, and little weight. The nanotube sponges not only show exciting properties as a porous material but they also are very promising to be used practically in a short time. The production method is simple and scalable, the cost is low, and the sponges can find immediate use in many fields related to water purification. ... nanotechnology article
Bismuth telluride and its alloys are unique materials. They are the best thermoelectric materials known today, and they are as important to the thermoelectric industry - for cooling and energy generation applications - as silicon is important to the electronic industry. It has been predicted theoretically that structuring bismuth telluride into crystalline ultra-thin films (with the thickness of few nanometers) would lead to a drastic improvement of the thermoelectric figure of merit, which defines the efficiency of the thermoelectric energy conversion. The improvement comes as a result of the strong quantum confinement of charge carriers and reduction of the thermal conductivity. In addition to their thermoelectric applications, bismuth telluride thin films recently attracted attention as promising topological insulators - a newly discovered class of materials with unusual properties. Researchers have now succeeded in 'graphene-inspired' mechanical exfoliation of atomically-thin crystals of bismuth telluride.... nanotechnology article
Materials that can produce electricity are at the core of piezoelectric research and the vision of self-powering machines and devices. Nanotechnology researchers are even pursuing nanopiezotronics devices that have the potential of converting biological mechanical energy, acoustic/ultrasonic vibration energy, and biofluid hydraulic energy into electricity, demonstrating a new pathway for self-powering of wireless nanodevices and nanosystems. In addition to miniaturizing piezoelectric devices down to the nanoscale, nanotechnology is also contributing to making next-generation devices more effective. Piezoelectric ceramics for instance generate electrical charge or voltage when they experience stress/strain, and thus are highly efficient at converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. However, ceramics are rigid, which greatly limits the applicability of the energy harvesting. Researchers have now demonstrated that high performance piezoelectric ceramics can be transferred in a scalable process onto rubber or plastic, rendering them flexible without any sacrifice in energy conversion efficiency.... nanotechnology article
Multifunctional nanoparticles are at the core of a growing field called theranostics that develops technologies physicians can use to diagnose and treat diseases in a single procedure. The major promise of theranostics is to bring together key stages of a medical treatment, such as the diagnosis and therapy, and thus to make a treatment shorter, safer and more efficient. Theranostic approaches require adequate tools with a high multi-functionality and selectivity. The initial phase of the development of theranostics has already revealed the two general challenges: lack of multifunctional methods and agents, and the lack of selectivity and specificity of available agents - that ultimately requires cell and molecular levels. Researchers have now developed a novel method based on gold nanoparticle-generated transient photothermal vapor nanobubbles, a structure they refer to as plasmonic nanobubbles.... nanotechnology article
About two years ago we reported on the concept of a biological nanofactory that comprises multiple functional modules: a targeting module specifically targets cells; a sensing module senses and transports raw materials that are present in their vicinity; a biosynthesis module converts raw materials to useful molecules, transport them back to the cell surface, and self-destructs upon completion of this sequence (self-destruct module).
Scientists at the University of Maryland have now demonstrated what was conceptualized in this earlier vision. Moreover they have added a quality that was not originally conceived - the nanofactory needs to have modalities that enable its own assembly. The scientists used the principles of synthetic biology to create the enzyme pathway that has as a part of it an assembly domain. Then, they used 'biofabrication' to assemble antibodies on to the synthesis domain, which enables targeting.... nanotechnology article
