Showing posts sorted by date for query nanotechnology. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query nanotechnology. Sort by relevance Show all posts

2013-09-17

Butterfly Wings Inspire New Nanotechnology


2012-10-31

IBM's Nanotube Chip Breakthrough


I.B.M. research reports Nanotube Chip Breakthrough (IBM Innovation Center Silicon Valley)

John Markoff writes in the New York Times:

I.B.M.scientists are reporting progress in a chip-making technology that is
likely to ensure that the basic digital switch at the heart of modern
microchips will continue to shrink for more than a decade.

The advance, first described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on
Sunday, is based on carbon nanotubes — exotic molecules that have long
held out promise as an alternative to silicon from which to create the
tiny logic gates now used by the billions to create microprocessors and
memory chips.

Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat

Carbon nanotubes are tiny wires that can conduct digital computer signals at five or 10 times the speed of traditional silicon chips. They have been around since the 1990s, but researchers have had a tough time getting them to behave. When they try to line these wires together in a useful grid as part of a computer design, the wires have a tendency to behave like wet spaghetti noodles.




Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat


[...] For the first time since research began on these carbon nanotubes, IBM has succeeded in placing them with near-perfect accuracy on the surface of a silicon chip in order to make electronic circuits.

Guha said the accomplishment is big one, though there are several obstacles that still stand in the way of mass production.

If those challenges are met, then we will see a huge leap in computing performance, as microprocessors for everything from PCs to smartphones will be able to take advantage of the technological advance. They could have applications in integrated circuits, energy storage and conversion, biomedical sensing, and DNA sequencing.

Labels: , , , ,

2012-08-26

Wood Pulp, World's New Wonder Material

Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material - tech - 23 August 2012 - New Scientist

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material. Japan-based Pioneer Electronics is applying it to the next generation of flexible electronic displays. IBM is using it to create components for computers. Even the US army is getting in on the act, using it to make lightweight body armour and ballistic glass.

[...]

So why all the fuss? Well, not only is NCC transparent but it is made from a tightly packed array of needle-like crystals which have a strength-to-weight ratio that is eight times better than stainless steel. Even better, it's incredibly cheap.



Nanocellulose: A cheap, conductive, stronger-than-Kevlar wonder material made from wood pulp | ExtremeTech

What’s brown and sticky, lightweight, flexible, stronger than steel, stiffer than Kevlar, and conducts electricity? Nanocellulose. Oh, isn’t actually brown and sticky either: it’s transparent.

Nanocellulose is a new wonder material that is simply plant matter that has been carefully smashed to pieces, and then reformed into neatly-woven nanoscale crystals and fibers. You generally start with wood pulp, remove any non-cellulose impurities (such as lignin) using a homogenizer, and then gently beat the mixture to separate each of the cellulose fibers. Depending on the exact process used, these fibers then form into a thick paste (pictured above) of needle-like crystals (2nm wide, hundreds of nanometers long, below left), or a spaghetti-like structure of cellulose fibrils (below right).



Nanocellulose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nanocellulose or microfibrillated cellulose (MFC), is a material composed of nanosized cellulose fibrils with a high aspect ratio (length to width ratio). Typical lateral dimensions are 5–20 nanometers and longitudinal dimension is in a wide range from 10s of nanometers to several microns. It is pseudo-plastic. Moreover, nanocellulose exhibits the property of certain gels or fluids that are thick (viscous) under normal conditions, but flow (become thin, less viscous) over time when shaken, agitated, or otherwise stressed. This property is known as thixotropy. When the shearing forces are removed the gel regains much of its original state. The fibrils are isolated from any cellulose containing source including wood-based fibers (pulp fibers) through high-pressure, high temperature and high velocity impact homogenization (see manufacture below). Nanocellulose can also be obtained from native fibers by an acid hydrolysis, giving rise to highly crystalline and rigid nanoparticles (generally referred to as nanowhiskers) which are shorter (100s to 1000 nanometers) than the nanofibrils obtained through the homogenization route.


Forest Products Laboratory - USDA Forest Service

Nanotechnology

A leader in wood products research for over a century, the FPL is positioning itself to become the lead Federal research facility for the application of nanotechnology in forest products. Using structural, chemical, and mechanical evaluation techniques, interdisciplinary teams of scientists continue to expand FPL's nanotechnology research program.



Labels: , , ,

2012-07-20

Puralytics SolarBag 3L -- Reusable Sunlight Activated Water Purifier

Puralytic Solar Bag | The Filtered Files

Puralytics, a privately funded technology company located in Beaverton, Oregon is pioneering a new photochemical technology for water purification. They are building solutions to improve filtration for the global water challenges by combining the latest technological innovations with advanced engineering. The invention of the Solar Bag uses an effective and simple process for water purification.
The Puralytic Solar Bag has a backpack with handles that makes it easy to transport water to and from an available water source. Once the bag is filled with any water through the inlet debris filter, the bag is placed in the direct sunlight. It can either lie flat or hung from a tree or post. Once purified, the Solar Bag can be dispensed by a valve into a canteen or pot as required. By harnessing the power of the sun to purify water, the Puralytics Solar Bag will deliver clean drinking water that meets the World Health Organization (WHO) standards in remote areas.

Bag versus bottle? Puralytics’ new approach to pure portable water | SmartPlanet


It takes about three hours for the SolarBag to produce 3 liters of fresh water in direct sunlight (four to six hours if it is cloudy). It can be used several times per day, and Puralytics said the bag can be reused hundreds of times before it needs to be replaced.

The SolarBag exceeds U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for water purifiers, according to Puralytics. “The versatility and performance of the SolarBag makes it the best water purifier on the market for remote and emergency applications,” said Mark Owen, found and CEO of Puralytics. “It’s light, simple to use, easily transportable and reliable.”


Puralytics :: Pure Water




The Details

Sunlight, even on a cloudy day, activates our new, powerful purification capability, embedded in our nanotechnology coated mesh insert. This activates the 5 photochemical processes that purify water and reduce or destroy contaminants found in virtually all water sources.

Treats up to 9 liters of water per day. Reusable hundreds of times.


Easy to Use

Fill bag with water from any fresh water source using supplied cloth filter.

Place the SolarBag in an area open to the sky. Wait 2 - 3 hours on a sunny day, or 4 - 6 hours on a cloudy day or if the source water is tea-colored.

Enjoy your safe, purified water! Again, and again, and again...


TEDx The Future of Water - YouTube

In "The Future of Water" a TEDx talk presented at Oregon State University on April 17, 2012, Puralytics CEO Mark Owen presents the water crisis, defines that the conventional solution to this crisis - municipal water purification - does not and can not supply SAFE water to the world's people, and calls for the development of a new breed of intelligent, decentralized water systems using new technologies.




Labels: , , ,

2012-05-15

Virus-based Piezoelectric Energy Generation


Update 2012-08-14

Piezoelectric virus M13 bacteriophage could power your mobile phone | Mail Online

  • Virus can turn movement into electricity
  • Could one day power your mobile phone or a pacemaker as you walk

A team at the University of California, Berkeley has discovered how to generate electricity from a virus known as M13 bacteriophage.

The virus possesses a property known as piezoelectricity, which means it can translate mechanical energy into electrical energy.

The researchers believe the discovery could one day pave the way for mobile phones that can be charged while you walk and replace the toxic piezoelectric elements already used in mobile phones.

The team found the virus could provide 25% of the power produced by a AAA battery

Generating electricity from viruses as you walk | KurzweilAI

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.

The generator produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.


Berkeley Lab Scientists Generate Electricity From Viruses « Berkeley Lab News Center

The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.

Their generator is the first to produce electricity by harnessing the piezoelectric properties of a biological material. Piezoelectricity is the accumulation of a charge in a solid in response to mechanical stress.


The first part of the video shows how Berkeley Lab scientists harness the piezoelectric properties of a virus to convert the force of a finger tap into electricity. The second part shows the “viral-electric” generators in action, first by pressing only one of the generators, then by pressing two at the same time, which produces more current.
[...]
When pressure is applied to the generator, it produces up to six nanoamperes of current and 400 millivolts of potential. That’s enough current to flash the number “1” on the display, and about a quarter the voltage of a triple A battery.

“We’re now working on ways to improve on this proof-of-principle demonstration,” says Lee. “Because the tools of biotechnology enable large-scale production of genetically modified viruses, piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future.”


Virus-based piezoelectric energy generation : Nature Nanotechnology : Nature Publishing Group



a, The M13 phage [...]  b, Side view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage [...]  c, Vertical cross-sectional view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage.[...]  d, Side-view representation of the electrostatic potential of a single M13-phage [...]





Labels: , ,

2012-01-15

IBM's Atomic-Scale Magnetic Memory

Smallest Ever Computer Memory, Using 12 Atoms, Developed By IBM

By developing a data storage device composed of just 12 iron atoms, IBM researchers may have signalled the beginning of the end for traditional computer memory. In a paper published January 13 in Science, Andreas Heinrich and his team demonstrated the smallest ever information storage system, an impressive display in an industry where bits normally take up over half a billion atoms.

[...]


The atoms, arranged in a 6x2 pattern, were positioned one at a time with the tip of a powerful scanning tunneling microscope; they use a special kind of magnetism, called antiferromagnetism. PhysOrg explains,
Different from ferromagnetism, which is used in conventional hard drives, the spins of neighboring atoms within antiferromagnetic material are oppositely aligned, rendering the material magnetically neutral on a bulk level. This means that antiferromagnetic atom rows can be spaced much more closely without magnetically interfering with each other. Thus, the scientist managed to pack bits only one nanometer apart.

Smaller Magnetic Materials Push Boundaries of Nanotechnology - NYTimes.com

Although the research took place at a temperature near absolute zero, the scientists wrote that the same experiment could be done at room temperature with as few as 150 atoms.

As part of its demonstration of the antiferromagnetic storage effect, the researchers created a computer byte, or character, out of an individually placed array of 96 atoms. They then used the array to encode the I.B.M. motto “Think” by repeatedly programming the memory block to store representations of its five letters.
An atomically assembled array of 96 iron atoms containing one byte of magnetic information in antiferromagnetic states.



IBM News room - 2012-01-12 IBM Research Determines Atomic Limits of Magnetic Memory - United States

The scientists at IBM Research used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to atomically engineer a grouping of twelve antiferromagnetically coupled atoms that stored a bit of data for hours at low temperatures. Taking advantage of their inherent alternating magnetic spin directions, they demonstrated the ability to pack adjacent magnetic bits much closer together than was previously possible. This greatly increased the magnetic storage density without disrupting the state of neighboring bits.

Writing and reading a magnetic byte: this image shows a magnetic byte imaged 5 times in different magnetic states to store the ASCII code for each letter of the word THINK, a corporate mantra used by IBM since 1914. The team achieved this using 96 iron atoms − one bit was stored by 12 atoms and there are eight bits in each byte.

IBM - Atomic-scale magnetic memory - United States

The challenge of Moore's Law
We expect our hard drives to store more and cost less every few years. But by current conventions the technology industry is reaching the physical limits of its faithful adherence to Moore's Law, which says that the number of transistors on a microchip will approximately double every two years.
To continue to advance, new methods were needed to pack more data storage and computing capabilities into smaller spaces.


More facts about atomic-scale magnetic memory: download the PDF (279KB)


Labels: , , ,

2011-11-18

World's Lightest Material

BBC News - World's 'lightest material' unveiled by US engineers

A team of engineers claims to have created the world's lightest material.
The substance is made out of tiny hollow metallic tubes arranged into a micro-lattice - a criss-crossing diagonal pattern with small open spaces between the tubes.

The researchers say the material is 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and has "extraordinarily high energy absorption" properties.

HRL Laboratories, LLC.

Using an innovative fabrication process developed at HRL, researchers created a “micro-lattice” structure of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of
100 nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Photo credit: Photo by Dan Little © HRL Laboratories, LLC.
This new material redefines the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture. Using an innovative fabrication process developed by HRL senior scientist Dr. Alan Jacobsen, the team was able to make a material that consists of 99.99% open volume by designing the 0.01% solid at the nanometer, micron and millimeter scales. “The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,” said lead author Dr. Tobias Schaedler.

In addition to its ultra-low density, the material’s cellular architecture gives rise to unprecedented mechanical behavior for a metal, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50% strain and extraordinarily high energy absorption. Developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the novel material could be used for battery electrodes, catalyst supports, and acoustic, vibration or shock energy damping.




Super-light lattice packs heavy-duty potential | Deep Tech - CNET News

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," said Tobias Schaedler, the HRL researcher who's lead author of the paper. Another HRL author, Bill Carter, likened the design to a small-scale version of the Eiffel Tower: strong, but mostly air.
This sequence of photos shows the nickel lattice being compressed for the first time, then rebounding. After a 50 percent compression, it rebounds to 98 percent its original height.
(Credit: HRL)






Labels: ,

2011-02-19

AeroVironment Hummingbird Flapping-Wing Nano-UAV

Nano Hummingbird, drone, spy plane, Pentagon: Pentagon, AeroVironment to unveil Nano Hummingbird, an experimental mini-spy plane - latimes.com

latimes.com
A pocket-size drone dubbed the Nano Hummingbird for the way it flaps its tiny robotic wings has been developed for the Pentagon by a Monrovia company as a mini-spy plane capable of maneuvering on the battlefield and in urban areas.

The battery-powered drone was built by AeroVironment Inc. for the Pentagon's research arm as part of a series of experiments in nanotechnology. The little flying machine is built to look like a bird for potential use in spy missions.


AeroVironment, Inc.: News & Events: AeroVironment Develops World’s First Fully Operational Life-Size Hummingbird-Like Unmanned Aircraft for DARPA

AeroVironment, Inc. is a leader in Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Electric Vehicle Charging Systems, and Power Cycling & Test Systems.

• Two-wing, Flapping Aircraft Hovers and Flies in Any Direction
• Total Weight of Two-thirds of an Ounce Includes Batteries and Video Camera

WASHINGTON, at AAAS Conference, Feb. 17, 2011 – AeroVironment, Inc. (AV)(NASDAQ: AVAV) today announced it has accomplished a technical milestone never before achieved -- controlled precision hovering and fast-forward flight of a two-wing, flapping wing aircraft that carries its own energy source, and uses only the flapping wings for propulsion and control.




AV is developing the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) under a DARPA sponsored research contract to develop a new class of air vehicle systems capable of indoor and outdoor operation. Employing biological mimicry at an extremely small scale, this unconventional aircraft could someday provide new reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities in urban environments.



The hand-made final concept demonstrator Nano Hummingbird has a wingspan of 16 cm (6.5 in) and weighs just 19 g (2/3 oz), which is less than the weight of a AA battery. Into this tiny and lightweight package the AeroVironment UAS team has managed to cram all the systems required for flight, including batteries, motors, communications systems and even a video camera.

The aircraft can climb and descend vertically, fly sideways left and right, fly forward and backward, as well as rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise – all under remote control and while carrying a video camera payload. It is even capable of doing a 360-degree loop.




The Nano Hummingbird met all, and exceeded many, of the Phase II technical milestones set out by DARPA:

  • Demonstrate precision hover flight.
  • Demonstrate hover stability in a wind gust flight which required the aircraft to hover and tolerate a two-meter per second (five miles per hour) wind gust from the side, without drifting downwind more than one meter.
  • Demonstrate a continuous hover endurance of eight minutes with no external power source.
  • Fly and demonstrate controlled, transition flight from hover to 11 miles per hour fast forward flight and back to hover flight.
  • Demonstrate flying from outdoors to indoors, and back outdoors through a normal-size doorway.
  • Demonstrate flying indoors 'heads-down' where the pilot operates the aircraft only looking at the live video image stream from the aircraft, without looking at or hearing the aircraft directly.
  • Fly the aircraft in hover and fast forward flight with bird-shaped body and bird-shaped wings.

Labels: , , ,

2011-02-06

Hard-tip, Soft-spring Lithography (HSL)

New way of printing nanostructures makes desktop fabrication disposable - SmartPlanet



Researchers have figured out how to make designer nanostructures using arrays of silicon pens to create tiny patterns in biological and electronic materials. This is good news for researchers at least, as the method could make it cheaper to produce computer chips and gene chips for testing purposes, reports Technology Review.

[...]

The technique is called hard-tip, soft-spring lithography (HSL). The technique basically uses hard pen tips that float on soft polymer springs. It’s different than the commonly used method called dip-pen lithography because HSL uses a hard tip instead of a soft pen tip.

The hard tip helps researchers make patterns with greater resolution. The print heads can be thrown away, giving this nanoprinting a disposable dimension to it.


Nanolithography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nanolithography is the branch of nanotechnology concerned with the study and application of fabricating nanometer-scale structures, meaning patterns with at least one lateral dimension between the size of an individual atom and approximately 100 nm. Nanolithography is used during the fabrication of leading-edge semiconductor integrated circuits (nanocircuitry) or nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS).


Scanning probe lithography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scanning probe lithography describe a set of lithographic methods, in which a microscopic or nanoscopic stylus is moved mechanically across a surface to form a pattern.



Polymer Pen Lithography uses arrays of tiny pens made of polymers to print over large areas with nanoscopic through macroscopic resolution. By simply changing contact pressure (and the amount the pens deform), as well as the time of delivery, dots of various diameters can be produced. (The pen tips snap back to their original shape when the pressure is removed.)


McCormick News Article

Method Prints Nanostructures Using Hard “Pen” Tips Floating on Soft Polymer Springs

Jan 26, 2011 12:00 PM

Northwestern University researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly prototyping nanoscale devices and structures that is so inexpensive the “print head” can be thrown away when done.

Hard-tip, soft-spring lithography (HSL) rolls into one method the best of scanning-probe lithography -- high resolution -- and the best of polymer pen lithography -- low cost and easy implementation.

HSL could be used in the areas of electronics (electronic circuits), medical diagnostics (gene chips and arrays of biomolecules) and pharmaceuticals (arrays for screening drug candidates), among others.

To demonstrate the method’s capabilities, the researchers duplicated the pyramid on the U.S. one-dollar bill and the surrounding words approximately 19,000 times at 855 million dots per square inch. Each image consists of 6,982 dots. (They reproduced a bitmap representation of the pyramid, including the “Eye of Providence.”) This exercise highlights the sub-50-nanometer resolution and the scalability of the method.

The results will be published Jan. 27 by the journal Nature.
[...]

Nature | Letter

Hard-tip, soft-spring lithography


Wooyoung Shim, Adam B. Braunschweig, Xing Liao, Jinan Chai, Jong Kuk Lim, Gengfeng Zheng & Chad A. Mirkin

Nature 469,516–520 (27 January 2011) DOI: doi:10.1038/nature09697

[...] Here we describe a low-cost and scalable cantilever-free tip-based nanopatterning method that uses an array of hard silicon tips mounted onto an elastomeric backing. This method—which we term hard-tip, soft-spring lithography—overcomes the throughput problems of cantilever-based scanning probe systems and the resolution limits imposed by the use of elastomeric stamps and tips: it is capable of delivering materials or energy to a surface to create arbitrary patterns of features with sub-50-nm resolution over centimetre-scale areas. We argue that hard-tip, soft-spring lithography is a versatile nanolithography strategy that should be widely adopted by academic and industrial researchers for rapid prototyping applications.



Labels:

2011-01-23

Killer Paper: Nano-coated Food Packaging

'Killer paper' could prolong shelf life of foods


Silver is a known killer of harmful bacteria, and has already been incorporated into things such as antibacterial keyboards, washing machines, water filters, and plastic coatings for medical devices. Now, scientists have added another potential product to the list: silver nanoparticle-impregnated “killer paper" packaging, that could help keep food from spoiling.

Led by Aharon Gedanken from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, the team discovered that paper could be covered with silver nanoparticles through the application of ultrasonic radiation – a process known as ultrasonication. It involves the formation and subsequent collapse of acoustic bubbles near a solid surface, which creates microjets that throw the desired nanoparticles onto that surface. To the team’s knowledge, this was only the second time that ultrasonication had ever been attempted on paper.





Killer paper for next-generation food packaging


Foods could get a longer shelf life using “killer
paper,” a new packaging material made of anti-
bacterial nanoparticles.

Scientists are reporting development and successful lab tests of “killer paper,” a material intended for use as a new food packaging material that helps preserve foods by fighting the bacteria that cause spoilage. The paper, described in ACS’ journal, Langmuir, contains a coating of silver nanoparticles, which are powerful anti-bacterial agents.
[...]
The scientists describe development of an effective, long-lasting method for depositing silver nanoparticles on the surface of paper that involves ultrasound, or the use of high frequency sound waves. The coated paper showed potent antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus, two causes of bacterial food poisoning, killing all of the bacteria in just three hours. This suggests its potential application as a food packaging material for promoting longer shelf life, they note.


Langmuir

Sonochemical Coating of Paper by Microbiocidal Silver Nanoparticles

Ronen Gottesman, Sourabh Shukla, Nina Perkas, Leonid A. Solovyov, Yeshayahu Nitzan, and Aharon Gedanken

Langmuir, 2011, 27 (2), pp 720–726
DOI: 10.1021/la103401z



Labels: ,

2011-01-22

Fraunhofer's Micro Nano Array Projectors

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Nanoworld in color

Press Release 20.01.2011

Microscopically small nanostructured arrays of lenses that can record or project amazingly sharp images in brilliant colors are being demonstrated by Fraunhofer research scientists at the nano tech 2011 trade show in Tokyo from February 16 to 18.


[...]
The image illuminating the wall of the Fraunhofer exhibition stand at nano tech 2011 will be produced by a luminous cube. The prototype of the new projector consists of an optical system just eleven millimeters square and three millimeters thick through which a powerful LED lamp shines. The images are amazingly sharp, the colors brilliant – all thanks to micro and nanotechnology. "The special thing about the new projection technology is that the image is already integrated in the microoptics. The pixels measuring just a hundred nanometers or so are stored in a chromium layer under the lens array. Such a microarray has around 250 microlenses, and under each lens there is a microimage. When all of them are projected onto the wall together, a high-quality complete image is produced from an extremely small projector," explains Marcel Sieler, physicist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena.


Mini-projectors – maximum performance

Research News Special Edition May 2010

[...]



In all current systems of pocket projectors, a single imaging channel is used. This means a minimal size for the projector is a given – and smaller will not work. Except for Marcel Sieler: His construction method relies on a number of regularly ordered micro-lenses – an array – as the projection lens. Thanks to the many channels, the construction length of the entire system can be clearly reduced, without impeding luminosity. A high-performance LED is used as the light source.


Prototype projector still shines through in sun-lit rooms | News | The Engineer


The technology was inspired by a device known as a fly’s eye condenser used to smooth out beams of light from LEDs. The Fraunhofer team had to design a very precisely arranged array of aspheric lenses designed with a specific shape.

The array is created from a glass wafer with moulded micro-optics on either side. ‘You put a liquid monomer layer on top of the glass and press a negative tool into it and it’s polymerised to get the perfect shape for the microlenses,’ said Sieler.

As well as the basic proof-of-concept model, the team have also used the technology to create prototypes of a larger projector for advertising and illumination, a video graphics array (VGA) camera, and a video projector that takes images from a micro-LCD display.

The team is now seeking industrial partners to help commercialise the devices and Sieler estimates that it is likely to be five years before they are available to buy.


Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)