Nanotechnology and Emerging Technologies

Nanotechnology Spotlights

A nanotechnology use for hemp

Researchers have come up with various electrode materials to improve the performance of supercapacitors, focussing mostly on porous carbon due to its high surface areas, tunable structures, good conductivities, and low cost. Graphene and carbon nanotubes show great potential but are costly. Researchers in Canada have now reported the successful hydrothermal-based synthesis of two-dimensional, yet interconnected, carbon nanosheets...

Posted: May 15th, 2013

Probing the behavior of single nanomagnets

Ferromagnetic materials exhibit the so-called anomalous Hall effect (AHE), whereby the electrons flowing through the material experience a lateral force pushing them to one side as a result of the material's intrinsic magnetization. Although the AHE has been used in the field on nanotechnology to measure the magnetic behavior of nanoparticles (with sizes larger than 50 nm), nobody so far had tried to separate the signals of...

Posted: May 14th, 2013

Unusual behavior of graphene under irradiation: More damage - less noise

The low-frequency 1/f noise is a ubiquitous phenomenon found everywhere from fluctuations of human heart rates to fluctuations of electrical currents in semiconductor devices. An acceptable level of flicker 1/f noise is one of the key metrics that each new material has to pass before it can be used for practical devices. Graphene has shown a great potential for applications in high-frequency communications, analog circuits...

Posted: May 10th, 2013

Single-molecule nanopore research made easy

Nanopores are an exciting class of single molecule nanosensors. For several years now, nanopore technology has been developed as a biosensor at the single-molecule resolution to detect an array of biomedical molecules, such as DNA, RNA, protein, biotoxin, and various nanopore projects have been funded to develop the next generation of DNA sequencing technology. The sensing principle is based on the resistive pulse technique...

Posted: May 9th, 2013

Nanoelectronic modeling for noninvasive spatial metrology

For a transistor to work properly, it must contain impurity atoms - called dopants - replacing the silicon atoms at certain places in the device. Given that modern transistor are approaching the atomic scale, the exact location of a single dopant atom becomes critical in determining the device functionality. In a different context, single dopant atoms in semiconductors have now proved to be an excellent platform to encode...

Posted: May 8th, 2013

Artificial organelles decontaminate polluted waters

Every year, large quantities of antibiotics are released into lakes and rivers as a byproduct of their use in farming and medicine. Antibiotics in the environment can select for antibiotic-resistant bacterial populations, which can cause severe infections if they come into contact with humans or animals. In addition, antibiotics can disrupt the natural bacterial flora that plays a vital role in maintaining the balance of ecosystems....

Posted: May 7th, 2013

Improving AFM probe performance with a coat of graphene

Most of the research efforts on developing synthesis methods for graphene has focused on flat substrates. However, direct growth of graphene layers on prepatterned substrates has remained elusive. In new work, resarchers have grown graphene in prepatterned copper-coated substrates, and they apply this protocol for the fabrication of MEMS devices, in particular, atomic force microscope probes. This layer of graphene improves...

Posted: May 6th, 2013

Novel strategy to fabricate large-area graphene films and patterns

Integration of graphene and its functional derivatives into three-dimensional macroscopic structures is an essential step to exploit the advanced properties of graphene sheets for practical applications, such as chemical filters and electrodes for energy storage devices. In new work, researchers in Singapore report a facile, scalable, and solution-processable strategy to synchronously reduce and assemble graphene oxide sheets...

Posted: Apr 30th, 2013