Latest Nanowire Stories
Processes which lend materials new characteristics are generally complicated and therefore often rather difficult to reproduce. So surprise turns to astonishment when scientists report on new methods which not only produce outstanding results despite the fact that they use economically priced starting materials but also do not need expensive instrumentation.Just a simple framework made of polystyreneThis is exactly what Jamil Elias and Laetitia Philippe of Empa's Mechanics of Materials and...
Nanotechnology refers to a broad range of tools, techniques and applications that simply involve particles on the approximate size scale of a few to hundreds of nanometers in diameter. Particles of this size have some unique physicochemical and surface properties that lend themselves to novel uses. Indeed, advocates of nanotechnology suggest that this area of research could contribute to solutions for some of the major problems we face on the global scale such as ensuring a supply of safe...
Surface tension isn't a very powerful force, but it matters for small things "” water bugs, paint, and, it turns out, nanowires.Nanowires are so tiny that a human hair would dwarf them "” some have diameters 150 billionths of a meter. Because of their small size, surface tension that occurs during the manufacturing process pulls them together, limiting their usefulness. This is a problem because the wires are seen as a potential core element of new and more powerful microelectronics,...
Imagine being able to drop a toothpick on the head of one particular person standing among 100,000 people in a stadium. It sounds impossible, yet this degree of precision at the cellular level has been demonstrated by researchers affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University Institute for NanoBioTechnology. Their study was published online in June in Nature Nanotechnology.The team used precise electrical fields as "tweezers" to guide and place gold nanowires, each about one-two...
Process for manufacturing nanoelectronic 'mini-circuits' developedOrganic semiconductors are very promising candidates as starting materials for the manufacture of cheap, large area and flexible electronic components such as transistors, diodes and sensors on a scale ranging from micro to nano. A condition for success in achieving this goal is the ability to join components together with electrically conducting links "“ in other words, to create an electronic circuit. Empa scientists have...
Scientists can now peer into the inner workings of catalyst nanoparticles 3,000 times smaller than a human hair within nanoseconds. The findings point the way toward future work that could greatly improve catalyst efficiency in a variety of processes that are crucial to the world's energy security, such as petroleum catalysis and catalyst-based nanomaterial growth for next-generation rechargeable batteries. The work was performed in a collaborative effort by Lawrence Livermore National...
A scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has created visible-light catalysis, using silver chloride nanowires decorated with gold nanoparticles, that may decompose organic molecules in polluted water."Silver nanowires have been extensively studied and used for a variety of applications, including transparent conductive electrodes for solar cells and optoelectronic devices," said nanoscientist Yugang Sun of Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials. "By...
Material's fluctuating response to a magnetic field could lead to switchable superconducting wiresA team of scientists from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has fabricated thin films patterned with large arrays of nanowires and loops that are superconducting "” able to carry electric current with no resistance "” when cooled below about 30 kelvin (-243 degrees Celsius). Even more interesting, the scientists showed they...
Scientists have made a breakthrough toward creating nanocircuitry on graphene, widely regarded as the most promising candidate to replace silicon as the building block of transistors. They have devised a simple and quick one-step process based on thermochemical nanolithography (TCNL) for creating nanowires, tuning the electronic properties of reduced graphene oxide on the nanoscale and thereby allowing it to switch from being an insulating material to a conducting material.The technique works...
After running a series of complex computer simulations, researchers have found that flaws in the structure of magnetic nanoscale wires play an important role in determining the operating speed of novel devices using such nanowires to store and process information. The finding*, made by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Maryland, and the University of Paris XI, will help to deepen the physical understanding and guide the...
