Showing posts with label nanoscience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nanoscience. Show all posts

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.

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2012-10-22

Nano-Material with Color and Texture of Butterfly Wings

Penn Researchers Find New Way to Mimic the Color and Texture of Butterfly Wings | Penn News


PHILADELPHIA — The colors of a butterfly’s wings are unusually bright and beautiful and are the result of an unusual trait; the way they reflect light is fundamentally different from how color works most of the time.

A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to generate this kind of “structural color” that has the added benefit of another trait of butterfly wings: super-hydrophobicity, or the ability to strongly repel water.

The research was led by Shu Yang, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and included other members of her group: Jie Li, Guanquan Liang and Xuelian Zhu.


Butterfly wings biomimicry for dirt free coated surfaces | RobAid


[...] the team exploited microphase separation of crosslinked polymer chains from nonsolvents to generate nanoroughness (≤120 nm) on holographically patterned diamond photonic crystals.

The process of formation of these nanoroughened patterns consists out of spin-coating, pre-exposure bake, exposure, post-exposure bake (PEB), development, solvent rinsing and critical-point drying (CPD). The pattern is etched with the use of a laser which etches a 3D cross-linked pattern in a kind of material called photoresist. A solvent then washes away all the photoresist untouched by the laser, creating the 3D structure that affects light to create the color effects.

SHU YANG GROUP :: RESEARCH

Bio-organisms often exhibit an exquisite array of hierarchical organization with multiscale structures as exemplified by the iridescence in blue Morpho rhetenor butterflies, the waveguiding properties in diatom exoskeletons, the self-cleaning ability of lotus leaves, and the dry adhesion of Gecko foot hairs. These examples provide inspiration for the development of new functional hybrid materials. To mimic hierarchical organization in Nature, one of the emerging strategies is the convergence of top-down microfabrication and bottom-up nanoassembly.




Interview With Professor Shu Yang Of The University of Pennsylvania - Science News - redOrbit

[...]

RO: Can you give us an idea of what this material would actually look like when applied to a large surface like, say, an office building or a house? Would it really have that same intense, shimmering quality that we associate with peacock feathers and butterfly wings?
Yang: Yes. Since the structural color is a reflective color that is dependent on the structure, it does not suffer photobleaching like pigmentation. As long as the structure maintains its integrity, we will always see the intense shiny color from these materials. However, to fabricate the 3D photonic structures reported in our paper, we used a state-of-art non-conventional 3D lithography technique. So it is not intended for low-cost, large area fabrication. We believe that the concept we demonstrated here is applicable to other fabrication methods.
RO: Aside from its potential use in beautifying the outsides of buildings, have you imagined any other potential uses for such this material, or is that something you plan on leaving to the marketing experts?
Yang: It could be used as a traffic sign, which needs to be shiny and clean in the rainy or snowy days. It could be used as a bulletin board on the highway or on the building. It could be used as a fancy, protective cover of the iPhone or iPad. It could also be used as camouflage or something that could be worn by the soldiers, for example, as blast injury dosimeters.
We are currently looking into new methods that will allow us to mass-produce these materials for potential commercialization. Of course, we welcome any suggestion from experts about market needs.



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2012-05-03

MIT Develops Fog-free Glass

Textured glass provides a clear view - physicsworld.com

Researchers in the US have developed a new type of textured glass that they claim is glare free and could either be self-cleaning or highly anti-fogging. The surface of the material – described as "multifunctional" glass – has a nanotextured array of conical features that is coated in a surfactant, giving the glass its desirable properties.

Inspired by nature

According to the researchers, the inspiration for their multifunctional glass came from nature – where many biological surfaces perform multiple specific tasks. For their work, they looked at everything from water-repellent lotus leaves to the Namib Desert beetle, which is capable of collecting water from fog on its hardened wings, and to moth eyes that helped develop anti-reflective coating.



One of the most instantly recognizable features of glass is the way it reflects light. But a new way of creating surface textures on glass, developed by researchers at MIT, virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare — and whose surface causes water droplets to bounce right off, like tiny rubber balls.

Through a glass, clearly - MIT News Office

The technology is described in a paper published in the journal ACS Nano, co-authored by mechanical engineering graduate students Kyoo-Chul Park and Hyungryul Choi, former postdoc Chih-Hao Chang SM ’04, PhD ’08 (now at North Carolina State University), chemical engineering professor Robert Cohen, and mechanical engineering professors Gareth McKinley and George Barbastathis.

Revolutionary Glare-Free Glass Could be in Your Smartphone in the Future - International Business Times

The technology could be used for a variety of applications. The glass could replace the touchscreens used in smartphones, tablets and PC displays.  The self-cleaning nature of the glass could also be used in solar panels, which can lose efficiency over time due to accumulated dust and dirt. Solar panels protected by the new glass could avoid these dust problems and perform more optimally.  The researchers are also looking to use the glass in microscopes and cameras as well as televisions and even windows.

The research was funded by the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research as well as Singapore's National Research Foundation and the Xerox Foundation. The works is published in the April 8 edition of the journal ACS Nano

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2012-03-15

Nanoscale 3D printing

Fast 3D printing with nanoscale precision | KurzweilAI

Printing three dimensional objects with very fine details using two-photon lithography can now be achieved orders of magnitude faster than similar devices in a breakthrough by Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) researchers.

The 3D printing process uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a hardened line of solid polymer a few hundred nanometers wide.

Additive Manufacturing Technologies : Projects


Additive Manufacturing Technologies refers to manufacturing techniques which build up three-dimensional structures by sequentially adding material. Usually this is done by decomposing a part into thin layers and sequentially stacking up layer-by-layer. 

Additive Manufacturing Technologies : Two photon polymerization

Two-photon polymerisation (2PP) is a technique to fabricate three dimensional structures with resolutions down to 100nm (see St. Stephan’s cathedral and Tower Bridge). An fs-pulsed laser (usually emitting at 800nm) is focussed in the volume of a photopolymerisable formulation. Polymerisation only occurs in the focal point, where the intensity of the absorbed light is highest. This technique is the first AMT capable of fabricating true 3D structures without the necessity of layer-by-layer manufacturing.





High speed fabrication of race car - YouTube


In the video, a race car with dimensions of 330x130x100µm3 is fabricated. The structure consists of 100 layers, each made of an average of 200 polymer lines. It is finished in 4 minutes and resembles the CAD file at a precision of ±1µm.

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2011-12-21

Painting Solar Cells with Cheap Quantum Dot Solar Paint

Solar paint promises to turn any surface into a solar cell | ZME Science

Researchers have successfully managed to create a “solar paint” made out of quantum dots, which exhibits similar properties to multifilm solar cell architectures. The later are sophisticated, expensive and require a lot of time to deploy; the paint can be easily applied to basically any surface, like a house’s roof, and prepare it to easily generate photocurrent.


Solar cell could be cheaper than fossil fuel | TG Daily

By harvesting waste heat, researchers from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have for the first time built a solar cell with an external quantum efficiency over 100 percent.

A cell's external quantum efficiency is the number of electrons flowing per second in its external circuit, divided by the number of photons per second entering it, and is different at different wavelengths.

The best result for the NREL solar cell was 114 percent. it means, says the team, that solar energy has a competitive future, making it possibly cheaper than energy from fossil or nuclear fuels.


Researchers prepare cheap quantum dot solar paint



The researchers, Mathew P. Genovese of the University of Waterloo in Canada, with Ian V. Lightcap and Prashant V. Kamat of the Radiation Laboratory and Department of Chemistry and at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, will be publishing their study in an upcoming issue of ACS .

The new solar paint, which the researchers humorously call “Sun Believable solar paint,” consists of a yellow or brown paste made of . The small size of these tiny semiconductor nanocrystals makes it possible to capture nearly all incident visible sunlight with an extremely thin layer of dots. The researchers experimented with three types of quantum dots: CdS, CdSe, and TiO2, all of which are powder-like, with water and tert butanol as the solvent. As Kamat explained, all commercial paints are TiO2 nanoparticle-based suspensions. But instead of adding dye to give the paint a desired color, here the researchers added colored semiconductor nanocrystals to the solar paint to achieve the desired optical and electronic properties.


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2011-11-30

A Self-Powered Nano Device with Wireless Data Transmission


A Self-Powering Nano-Transmitter via ACS

Scientists working with DARPA and Department of Energy backing have cracked the code on a kind of technological milestone, for the first time developing a nano-device capable of powering itself by harvesting energy from vibrations while at the same time transmitting data wirelessly over long distances. That kind of technology could have huge implications for devices ranging from surveillance implements to airborne sensors to implantable medical devices.

First self-powered device with wireless data transmission

Zhong Lin Wang and colleagues explain that advances in electronics have opened the door to developing tiny devices that operate battery-free on minute amounts of electricity that can be harvested from the pulse of a blood vessel, a gentle breeze, or the motions of a person walking. “It is entirely possible to drive the devices by scavenging energy from sources in the environment such as gentle airflow, vibration, sonic wave, solar, chemical, and/or thermal energy,” the scientists explain.

The device consists of a nanogenerator that produces electricity from mechanical vibration/triggering, a capacitor to store the energy, and electronics that include a sensor and a radio transmitter similar to those in Bluetooth mobile phone headsets. Their device transmitted wireless signals that could be detected by an ordinary commercial radio at distances of more than 30 feet.


Nanogenerator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nanogenerator is an energy harvesting device converting the external kinetic energy into an electrical energy based on the energy conversion by nano-structured piezoelectric material. Although its definition may include any types of energy harvesting devices with nano-structure converting the various types of the ambient energy (e.g. solar power and thermal energy), it is used in most of times to specifically indicate the kinetic energy harvesting devices utilizing nano-scaled piezoelectric material after its first introduction in 2006.[1]
Although still in the early stage of the development, it has been regarded as a potential breakthrough toward the further miniaturization of the conventional energy harvester, possibly leading the facile integration with the other types of energy harvester converting the different types of energy and the independent operation of mobile electronic devices with the reduced concerns for the energy source, consequently.


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2011-11-22

A Single-Molecule Nanocar

Four-wheel nanocar takes to the road - nanotechweb.org

A "four-wheel drive car" less than one billionth the length of an average SUV has been built and operated by researchers in the Netherlands and Switzerland. The molecular machine is about 1 nm long and uses electrons as fuel as it navigates across a copper surface. The tiny device could find use in nanometre-sized robotics or as tiny transporters that shift molecules around.

It's the world's smallest electric car – by a BIG margin


Constructed from a single molecule, the nano car sports four-wheel drive, with each "wheel" acting as a separate motor. It is able to travel in an almost straight line, across a copper surface. Instead of carrying its own battery, the car receives electricity from the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope, positioned above it. People who dismiss EVs because of their limited range, however, aren't likely to be impressed - the nano car requires a 500-millivolt charge once every half-revolution of its wheels.




The car doesn't carry its own fuel supply, but it's relatively easy to provide one. Provided that the temperature is kept at is 7K, there's enough energy in the system to provide the vibrational boost. That leaves the matter of the electrons. The authors fed these to the molecule using an scanning tunneling microscope tip. Placing it on a metal surface (in this case, copper) provided the electrons with some place to go afterwards.

Remarkably, it all worked. The authors gave one of the molecules 10 pulses of electrons, and watched it relocate after each one, moving a total of six nanometers by the time the last was delivered. It didn't move in a straight line, however, as it appears that there are some instances where one or more of the wheels doesn't actually turn. That can cause the molecule to move a shorter distance or even veer off to the side.




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2011-10-17

Self-Replicating Nanoscale Patterns Promising for Fabrication of New Materials

Scientists Build Self-Replicating Molecule : Discovery News

New York University researchers led by Paul Chaikin have found a way to use synthetic DNA to make molecules that reproduce themselves. The technique gives scientists a tool to create different combinations on the DNA that aren't necessarily available in nature. That opens up billions of possibilities for building completely new materials and even molecular machines. Chaikin and his colleaques reported their results in this week's journal Nature.


NYU scientists have developed artificial structures that can self-replicate, a process that has the potential to yield new types of materials. These structures consist of triple helix molecules containing three DNA double helices. Image courtesy of Nature.

“This is the first step in the process of creating artificial self-replicating materials of an arbitrary composition,” said Paul Chaikin, a professor in NYU’s Department of Physics and one of the study’s co-authors. “The next challenge is to create a process in which self-replication occurs not only for a few generations, but long enough to show exponential growth.”

“While our replication method requires multiple chemical and thermal processing cycles, we have demonstrated that it is possible to replicate not just molecules like cellular DNA or RNA, but discrete structures that could in principle assume many different shapes, have many different functional features, and be associated with many different types of chemical species,” added Nadrian Seeman, a professor in NYU’s Department of Chemistry and a co-author of the study.


DNA tiles
The researchers used artificial structures of DNA - so-called DNA tiles - dissolved in water to demonstrate the new process. These tiles are several tens of nanometres in size and consist of compactly folded  DNA strands, from which four loose ends with a specific sequence of the bases A, C, G and T protrude. Like a barcode, these sticky ends determine the identity of a tile and ensure that tiles with complementary ends attach to each other: A always adheres to T, and C to G. When joined, the ends of the two tiles together form the characteristic double helix structure.

Sticking
The researchers arranged seven tiles with two different identities (for example indicated with the letters X and Y) to form the ‘word’ X-Y-Y-X-Y-X-Y. Subsequently, tiles with complementary sticky ends, X' and Y', spontaneously attached themselves in the right order to this initial structure (X'-Y'-Y'-X'-Y'-X'-Y'). The sticky ends only stick at a lower temperature and so the 'daughter word' was separated from the initial structure by briefly increasing the temperature. After this the researchers repeated the process with the remaining separate tiles until these formed 'granddaughters' with exactly the same XY sequence of letters

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2010-06-24

Self-assembling Biological Nanodevices Based Upon Tensegrity

HMS website banner

Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand

BOSTON, Mass. (June 21, 2010) —By emulating nature’s design principles, a team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand. In contrast to existing nanotechnologies, these programmable nanodevices are highly suitable for medical applications because DNA is both biocompatible and biodegradable.

Built at the scale of one billionth of a meter, each device is made of a circular, single-stranded DNA molecule that, once it has been mixed together with many short pieces of complementary DNA, self-assembles into a predetermined 3D structure. Double helices fold up into larger, rigid linear struts that connect by intervening single-stranded DNA. These single strands of DNA pull the struts up into a 3D form—much like tethers pull tent poles up to form a tent. The structure’s strength and stability result from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression.

This architectural principle—known as tensegrity—has been the focus of artists and architects for many years, but it also exists throughout nature. In the human body, for example, bones serve as compression struts, with muscles, tendons and ligaments acting as tension bearers that enable us to stand up against gravity. The same principle governs how cells control their shape at the microscale.

An electron micrograph of an actual nanoscale tensegrity built using the new DNA-based, self-assembling nanofabrication capabilities. Scale bars equal 20 nanometers (billionths of a meter). Images by Tim Liedl

Nature Nanotechnology
Published online: 20 June 2010 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2010.107

Self-assembly of three-dimensional prestressed tensegrity structures from DNA

Tim Liedl Björn, Högberg, Jessica Tytell, Donald E. Ingber & William M. Shih


Tensegrity



Tensegrity structures are structures based on the combination of a few simple but subtle and deep design patterns:
  • loading members only in pure compression or pure tension, meaning the structure will only fail if the cables yield or the rods buckle
  • preload or tensional prestress, which allows cables to be rigid in tension
  • mechanical stability, which allows the members to remain in tension/compression as stress on the structure increases
Because of these patterns, no structural member experiences a bending moment. This produces exceptionally rigid structures for their mass and for the cross section of the components.















Welcome to the Shih Lab. We explore design principles for self-assembling molecular machines, primarily using structural DNA nanotechnology to build our model systems. We seek to apply our knowledge towards construction of artificial systems that help solve problems of biological and medical interest.
[...]

Collected from: Home

William Shih

Shih is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, and Department of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
[...]


Sources
HMS Press Release - Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand
http://hms.harvard.edu/public/news/2010/062110_ingber.html
Self-assembly of three-dimensional prestressed tensegrity structures from DNA : Abstract : Nature Nanotechnology
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nnano.2010.107.html
Tensegrity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity
YouTube - Step by Step Tensegrities (the real thing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPLcci1uoEI
Home : Wyss Institute at Harvard
http://wyss.harvard.edu/
Home
http://research4.dfci.harvard.edu/shih/SHIH_LAB/Home.html
William Shih : Wyss Institute at Harvard
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/127/william-shih

Related
Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/hms-rcs062110.php
Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand
http://www.physorg.com/news196427602.html
Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100622091740.htm
DailyTech - Harvard Debuts Self-assembling Biological Nanodevices
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=18818
Creation Of Self-Assembling Nanodevices That Move And Change Shape On Demand
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/192640.php

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2010-03-20

Memristor Device Mimics Brain Synapse

Clipped from: Memristor: A Device That Mimics The Brain’s Synaptic Action - PSFK

Memristor: A Device That Mimics The Brain’s Synaptic Action


A US military-funded project used memristors, a device whose resistance at any moment depends on the last voltage it experienced, to attempt building brain-like computers.


Clipped from: Silver sputtered nano chips mimic brain synapse

RSC - Advancing the Chemical Sciences



Silver sputtered nano chips mimic brain synapse

The two-terminal electronic device, known as a memristor ('memory' + 'resistor'), is similar to a biological synapse in that its conductance can be precisely changed by controlling the charge running through it. The researchers found that changing the way they embedded silver ions in the silicon-based devices improved their performance.

A memristor's resistance is controlled by its 'memory' of the currents and voltages it has been exposed to. 'It can be employed to build a computer in the way that nature builds brains,' explained Wei Lu of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.


How memristors can act as synapses between neurons, with schematics of the memristor structure and the two-terminal device in the insets.


Clipped from: Lu Nanoelectronics Group » Projects

Neuromorphic Circuits Based on Memristor Synapses
(Sung Hyun Jo and Ting Chang)



A synapse is essentially a two-terminal device and bears striking resemblance to an electrical device termed memristor (memory + resistor). Similar to a biological synapse, the conductance of a memristor can be incrementally modified by controlling charge flown through it. This project aims to build computers following the approach nature builds brains. In the proposed memristor-based neuromorphic system, CMOS computing units will serve as neurons and a crossbar array of memristors will serve as synapses, as shown in the image above. This hybrid CMOS/memristor circuit that can potentially offer connectivity and function density comparable to those of biological systems. In particular, we have developed nanoscale Si-based memristors and verified that Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), an important synaptic modification rule for competitive Hebbian learning, can be achieved in the hybrid CMOS/memristor system.

Clipped from: Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: "Wei Lu Receives CAREER Award"

Wei Lu Receives CAREER Award



Prof. Wei Lu, assistant professor in division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recently awarded an NSF CAREER grant for his research project, "Understanding, Development and Applications of Nanoscale Memristor Devices."

Sources:
  1. Memristor: A Device That Mimics The Brain’s Synaptic Action - PSFK
  2. Silver sputtered nano chips mimic brain synapse
  3. Lu Nanoelectronics Group » Projects
  4. Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: "Wei Lu Receives CAREER Award"
Related:
  1. Engineer's memristor chip could lead to faster, cheaper computers
  2. Wei Lu: EECS Faculty, Nanoelectronics
  3. Brain-Like Computer Closer to Realization
  4. Electronics 'missing link' brings neural computing closer - tech - 15 March 2010 - New Scientist
  5. Nanoscale Memristor Device as Synapse in Neuromorphic Systems - Nano Letters (ACS Publications)
  6. Memristor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  7. Memristor found: HP Labs proves fourth integrated circuit element
  8. MEMRISTOR- A groundbreaking breakthrough in fundamental electronics!!
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2010-03-13

New Way to Produce Electricity: Thermopower Waves in Carbon Nanotubes

Clipped from: BBC News - Nanometre 'fuses' for high-performance batteries
BBC

Nanometre 'fuses' for high-performance batteries

Minuscule tubes coated with a chemical fuel can act as a power source with 100 times more electrical power by weight than conventional batteries.

As these nano-scale "fuses" burn, they drive an electrical current along their length at staggering speeds.


The never-before-seen phenomenon could lead to a raft of energy applications.

Researchers reporting in Nature Materials say that unlike normal batteries, the nanotubes never lose their stored energy if left to sit. 

Clipped from: Big power from tiny wires



Big power from tiny wires

New discovery shows carbon nanotubes can produce powerful waves that could be harnessed for new energy systems.

 
A carbon nanotube (shown in illustration) can produce a very rapid wave of power when it is coated by a layer of fuel and ignited, so that heat travels along the tube.


A previously unknown phenomenon

In the new experiments, each of these electrically and thermally conductive nanotubes was coated with a layer of a reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposing. This fuel was then ignited at one end of the nanotube using either a laser beam or a high-voltage spark, and the result was a fast-moving thermal wave traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube like a flame speeding along the length of a lit fuse. Heat from the fuel goes into the nanotube, where it travels thousands of times faster than in the fuel itself.  As the heat feeds back to the fuel coating, a thermal wave is created that is guided along the nanotube. With a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, this ring of heat speeds along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heating produced by that combustion, it turns out, also pushes electrons along the tube, creating a  substantial electrical current.


Clipped from: YouTube - Nanotube fuses for energy



The never-before-seen phenomenon could lead to a raft of energy applications.
Researchers reporting in Nature Materials say that unlike normal batteries, the nanotubes never lose their stored energy if left to sit.

The team, led by Michael Strano of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coated their nanotubes - cylinders just billionths of a metre across - with a chemical fuel known as cyclotrimethylene trinitramine. 


Clipped from: Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves : Abstract : Nature Materials
Nature Materials
Published online: 7 March 2010 | doi:10.1038/nmat2714

Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves

Wonjoon Choi, Seunghyun Hong, Joel T. Abrahamson, Jae-Hee Han, Changsik Song, Nitish Nair, Seunghyun Baik & Michael S. Strano



Sources:
  1. BBC News - Nanometre 'fuses' for high-performance batteries
  2. Big power from tiny wires
  3. YouTube - Nanotube fuses for energy
  4. Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves : Abstract : Nature Materials
  5. MIT Discovers Thermopower Waves which Have Hundreds of Times the Energy by Weight of Lithium ion Batteries
Related:
  1. Nanotubes help create thermopower waves
  2. MIT researchers discover new energy source - CNN.com
  3. Thermopower waves draw big power from tiny wires | R&D Mag
  4. MIT Scientists Discover a Way to Generate Electricity with Thermopower Waves in Carbon Nanotubes : TreeHugger
  5. MIT Scientists Discover Thermopower Waves Using Carbon Nanotubes | Inhabitat
  6. the green skeptic™: Thermopower Waves: A New Discovery at MIT
  7. Its All About Pakistan
  8. People
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2009-12-15

'Micro-ants' -- Moving tiny particles using magnetic fields

clipped from web.mit.edu
MIT News

‘Micro-ants’: Tiny conveyor belts for the 21st century

clipped from www.physorg.com

A new kind of micro-mobility: Moving tiny particles using magnetic fields (w/ Video)

Alfredo Alexander-Katz, the Toyota Career Development Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and his doctoral student Charles Sing and other researchers, devised a system that uses tiny beads made of polymers with specks of in them. With these beads suspended in a liquid, they applied a rotating magnetic field, which caused the beads to spontaneously form short chains which began spinning, creating currents that could then carry along surrounding particles — even particles as much as 100 times larger than the beads themselves.

clipped from web.mit.edu

Chains of superparamagnetic colloidal particles rotate to produce flows on length scales much larger than the chain dimensions, allowing them to behave like "micro-ants" that can move large particles.
Photo - Image: Charles Sing
clipped from web.mit.edu

blog it

Sources:
  1. ‘Micro-ants’: Tiny conveyor belts for the 21st century
  2. A new kind of micro-mobility: Moving tiny particles using magnetic fields (w/ Video)
  3. New microscopic system could provide method for moving tiny objects inside a microfluidic chip
Related:
  1. The Alexander-Katz Group
  2. The Alexander-Katz Group: Research
  3. DMSE - Faculty - Alfredo Alexander-Katz
  4. New kind of micro-mobility: Microscopic system for moving tiny objects inside a microfluidic chip
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