Archive for the 'NanoTechnology' Category
Radio Waves Fire Up Nanotubes Embedded In Tumors, Destroying Liver Cancer
ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2007) — Cancer cells treated with carbon nanotubes can be destroyed by non-invasive radio waves that heat up the nanotubes while sparing untreated tissue, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University has shown in preclinical experiments.
No commentsClean Process For Making Nanoparticles Uses Only Soybeans, Salts And Water
ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2007) — In 2002, U.S. farmers harvested 2.7 billion bushels of soybeans. Last year in Missouri, farmers harvested 194 million bushels of soybeans worth about $1.2 billion. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia is turning those soybeans into gold, with nothing more than a little water.
No commentsBreaking The Barrier Toward Nanometer X-ray Resolution
Science Daily — A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have overcome a major obstacle for using refractive lenses to focus x-rays. This method will allow the efficient focusing of x-rays down to extremely small spots and is an important breakthrough in the development of a new, world-leading light source facility that promises advances in nanoscience, energy, biology, and materials research.
At Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the scientists exceeded a limit on the ability to focus “hard,” or high-energy, x-rays known as the “critical angle.”
No commentsSurface plasmons enhance nanostructure possibilities
By Miranda Marquit
As technology becomes smaller and smaller, scientists work to find solutions to a variety of problems in many different fields. It is known that light could be used for studying molecules and atoms, as well as for solving problems of quantum information processing and even for lab-on-chip applications in biology. The problem is how to reduce size of such optical devices to the level compatible with modern nanotechnology.
No commentsSheet of carbon atoms acts like a billiard table, physicists find
A game of billiards may never get smaller than this. Physicists at UC Riverside have demonstrated that graphene – a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings – can act as an atomic-scale billiard table, with electric charges acting as billiard balls.
he finding underscores graphene’s potential for serving as an excellent electronic material, such as silicon, that can be used to develop new kinds of transistors based on quantum physics. Because they encounter no obstacles, the electrons in graphene roam freely across the sheet of carbon, conducting electric charge with extremely low resistance.
Study results appear in today’s issue of Science.
No commentsScientists carve 3D microstructures in carbon nanotube forests
Using a focused laser beam to selectively burn regions of a dense forest of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), researchers have demonstrated a method that may enable rapid prototyping of nanotube microstructures.
The researchers, from the University of Southern California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have published their results in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. They fabricated patterns in the nanotubes such as a staircase structure, cylindrical structures, and square arrays with the laser burning method, which might be used for creating gas and liquid transport channels for various applications.
Method Safely Deposits Novel Metal Oxide Thin Films on Substrates
University at Buffalo chemists have developed a novel way to grow chemically pure, zinc oxide thin films characterized by dense, bristle-like nanostructures and a new method for depositing them on temperature-sensitive substrates, including polymers, plastics and tapes.
The research, published online last month in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, may make possible the deposition of versatile zinc oxide films onto flexible surfaces, enabling the development of more efficient solar cells, liquid-crystal displays, chemical sensors and optoelectronic devices.
The issue of the journal commemorates the career of Richard E. Smalley, a pioneer of nanotechnology, with whom the lead UB author, James F. Garvey, Ph.D., professor of chemistry, worked while on sabbatical in 1995.
No commentsNanofluids not so super-cool after all
Published: 13:50 EST, August 30, 2007
MIT engineers have shown that nanofluids, which once held promise as a super-coolant, do not have the theoretical cooling capabilities many scientists believed they had.
Nanofluids are suspensions of tiny particles on the nanometer, or billionth of a meter, scale. When nanofluids were first engineered in the early 1990s, experiments showed that their thermal conductivity–a measure of their heat-removing capability–was much higher than expected.
Several new theories were offered in recent years to explain this anomalous behavior. Among them, the “microconvection” theory predicted an astonishing increase of several orders in the thermal conductivity of the fluid just by adding light nanoparticles less than ten nanometers in size.
No commentsNanotubes Enable New Approach to Cancer Radiotherapy
Published: 16:26 EST, August 22, 2007
Radioactive elements, or radionuclides, are well-established anticancer agents whose main limitation is that they kill healthy cells almost as easily as they do tumors. But because nanoparticles can be targeted to tumors, researchers have seized on the idea of using nanoparticles to deliver radionuclides to tumors, thus sparing healthy tissues from radiation-induced damage.
In an important step toward realizing the potential of radionuclide-loaded nanoparticles as radiotherapeutic agents, Lon Wilson, Ph.D., and colleagues at Rice University have demonstrated that ultrashort carbon nanotubes will permanently entrap the potent alpha particle emitting element astatine-211 (211At), which has a half-life of 7.2 hours.
No commentsSee-through transistor fabricated for future e-displays
Published: 12:34 EST, July 27, 2007
By Lisa Zyga
Scientists have recently taken an important step toward the development of “see-through” flexible electronic displays by fabricating fully transparent, high-speed nanowire transistors. This piece of circuitry, the first transistor to demonstrate full transparency, could help turn ideas such as e-paper, displays on sunglasses, and maps on car windshields into a reality.
The collaboration of scientists from Purdue University, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California, led by David Janes and Tobin Marks, reported their results in a recent issue of Nature Nanotechnology. The group explained that the transparent transistors could be incorporated with active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes (AMOLED), which have already proven to be good transparent pixels.
