Nanotechnology News – Latest Headlines

Modeling how thin films break up

Researchers model phenomena collectively known as 'dewetting' in microscale to nanoscale thin films.

Jun 19th, 2015

A diode a few atoms thick shows surprising quantum effect

A quantum mechanical transport phenomenon demonstrated for the first time in synthetic, atomically-thin layered material at room temperature could lead to novel nanoelectronic circuits and devices.

Jun 19th, 2015

First solar cell made of highly ordered molecular frameworks

Researchers have developed a material suited for photovoltaics. For the first time, a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFs). The material is highly elastic and might also be used for the flexible coating of clothes and deformable components.

Jun 19th, 2015

Explained: chemical vapor deposition

Technique enables production of pure, uniform coatings of metals or polymers, even on contoured surfaces.

Jun 19th, 2015

A bundled attraction

A magnetic field and a protein jacket are all that is needed to create bundles of one-dimensional arrays of 'superparamagnetic' nanoparticles.

Jun 19th, 2015

Adapting nanotechnology imaging tools to study ants' heat-deflecting adaptations

In a typical experiment involving biological material such as nanoscale hairs, it would usually be sufficient to use an electron microscope to create an image of the surface of the specimen. This research, however, required to look inside the ant hairs and produce a cross-section of the structure's interior. The relatively weak beam of electrons from a standard electron microscope would not be able to penetrate the surface of the sample.

Jun 18th, 2015

X-ray imaging reveals secrets in battery materials

Imaging and data analysis techniques offer new approach to probing material properties.

Jun 18th, 2015

Staying cool: Saharan silver ants inspire nanophotonics research

Researchers first to show that Saharan silver ants can control electromagnetic waves over an extremely broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum--findings may lead to biologically inspired coatings for passive radiative cooling of objects.

Jun 18th, 2015

Biomedical breakthrough: Carbon nanoparticles you can make at home

Researchers have found an easy way to produce carbon nanoparticles that are small enough to evade the body's immune system, reflect light in the near-infrared range for easy detection, and carry payloads of pharmaceutical drugs to targeted tissues.

Jun 18th, 2015

Graphene wrappings could boost chip speeds by up to 30 percent

Inside each chip are millions of tiny wires to transport data; wrapping them in a protective layer of graphene could boost speeds by up to 30 percent.

Jun 18th, 2015

Structural origin of glass transition

Scientists have demonstrated through computer simulations that the enhancement of fluctuations in a liquid's structure plays an important role as a liquid becomes a solid near the glass-transition point, a temperature below the melting point. This result increases our understanding of the origin of the glass transition and is expected to shed new light on the structure of liquids, thought until now to have been uniform and random.

Jun 18th, 2015

Researchers design placenta-on-a-chip to better understand pregnancy

Researchers have developed a 'placenta-on-a-chip' to study the inner workings of the human placenta and its role in pregnancy. The device was designed to imitate, on a micro-level, the structure and function of the placenta and model the transfer of nutrients from mother to fetus.

Jun 18th, 2015

Nanoscale asymmetry leads to Janus-like nanoparticle membranes

Using grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering (GISAXS) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), very small differences in the distribution of coated-nanoparticle membranes were detected and found to be responsible for their folding into tubular structures. Molecular dynamics simulations show this is related to surface molecular packing density and mobility.