Nanotechnology Spotlight – Latest Articles

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Showing Spotlights 289 - 296 of 315 in category All (newest first):

 

Discovery of new structural evolution of carbon nanotubes

Researchers at the University of Sydney have revealed a new structural evolution of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in epoxy composites during contact sliding and have shown that the evolution has three stages which are a) the bonding breakage of the CNTs, b) the formation of sinusoidal shells, and c) the consolidation of nanoparticles. This may present a potentially effective way to obtain nanoparticles with controlled structure and size.

Jul 21st, 2006

Carbon nanotube nanothermometers

The oxidation-assisted temperature measurement with carbon nanotube nanothermometers that contain liquid gallium is a novel and reliable method that can be used over a moderate temperature range and can be applied in any environment where air is present. All the other available techniques that are capable to measure temperature at the nanometer scale are limited by either that they are only workable in a very narrow temperature range or that they can only be applied in a special environment.

Jul 20th, 2006

Building optical molecular probes with nanotubes

Researchers in South Korea used single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to tag single-stranded DNA to locate a particular sequence of DNA within a complex genome. The results show that SWNTs may be used as generic nano-biomarkers for the precise detection of specific kinds of genes.

Jul 18th, 2006

A new concept for compound nanotube fabrication

nanowiresA new method based on the nanoscale Kirkendall effect was demonstrated to fabricate compound nanotubes. Through a spinel-forming solid-state reaction, high aspect-ratio core-shell ZnO-Al2O3 nanowires transform into monocrystalline ZnAl2O4 nanotubes.

Jul 14th, 2006

A novel method for mass production of nanotube based electronics

The mass production of nanoelectronic devices has been hampered by difficulties in aligning and integrating the millions of nanotubes required for the job. Now, researchers in South Korea have developed a method to precisely assemble and align single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) onto solid substrates without relying on external forces such as electric or magnetic fields. This result could be an important guideline for the large-scale directed-assembly of integrated devices based on SWCNTs.

Jul 5th, 2006

A novel fabrication of magnesium nitride nanowires in nanoreactors

Carbon nanotubes have been used as nanoreactors in a simple thermal reaction process for the fabrication of high-quality, large-yield single-crystalline magnesium nitride nanowires. These nanowires are homogeneously sheathed over the entire lengths with very thin graphitic carbon tubular layers, which effectively prevent the decomposition in the presence of water in the atmosphere.

Jun 28th, 2006

Carbon nanotubes as nanoextruders

The ultimate internal pressure that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can resist is only an order of magnitude below the pressure in the center of Earth. Using this high strength against internal pressure, researchers have used CNTs as pressure cells for the deformation of crystalline materials. Controlled irradiation of multiwalled CNTs can cause large pressure buildup within the nanotube cores that can plastically deform, extrude, and break solid materials that are encapsulated inside the core. Carbon nanotubes thus offer a template for use as compression/extrusion cells to study pressure-induced phase transformations and deformations of various solid nanomaterials.

Jun 26th, 2006