Lifeboat Foundation

Is this thing on? That’s likely what Hong Kong University of Science and Technology scientists thought, shortly after they’d developed a new system that absorbs 99.7 percent of all the sound that hits it.

Many systems use sonic insulators to deaden sound: materials which absorb sound, typically over a small range of frequencies. By combining different insulators into a composite, it’s possible to absorb a large range of sounds — but it’s difficult to create such a material that absorbs all the the frequencies. It would just be too big and complex. That means that there’s a limit to the amount of sound they can absorb.

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Rice University researchers discovered that putting nanotube pillars between sheets of graphene could create hybrid structures with a unique balance of strength, toughness and ductility throughout all three dimensions.

Carbon nanomaterials are common now as flat sheets, nanotubes and spheres, and they’re being eyed for use as building blocks in hybrid structures with unique properties for electronics, heat transport and strength. The Rice team is laying a theoretical foundation for such structures by analyzing how the blocks’ junctions influence the properties of the desired materials.

Rice materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and alumnus Navid Sakhavand calculated how various links, particularly between carbon nanotubes and graphene, would affect the final hybrid’s properties in all directions. They found that introducing junctions would add extra flexibility while maintaining almost the same strength when compared with materials made of layered graphene.

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Scientists have designed a novel type of nanoscale solar cell. Initial studies and computer modelling predict these cells will outperform traditional solar panels, reach power conversion levels by over 40 percent.

Solar power cells work through the conversion of sunlight into electricity using photovoltaics. Here solar energy is converted into direct current. A photovoltaic system uses several solar panels; with each panel composed of a number of solar cells. This combines to create a system for the supply usable solar power.

To investigate what is possible in terms of solar power, the researchers have examined the Shockley-Queisser limit for different materials. This equation describes the maximum solar energy conversion efficiency achievable for a particular material, allowing different materials to be compared as candidates for power generation.

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Synthetics startup Ras Labs is working with the International Space Station to test “smart materials” that contract like living tissue. These “electroactive” materials can expand, contract and conform to our limbs just like human muscles when a current moves through them – and they could be used to make robots move and feel more human to the touch.

Ras Labs co-founder Lenore Rasmussen accidentally stumbled upon the synthetic muscle material years ago while mixing chemicals in the lab at Virginia Tech. The experiment turned out to be with the wrong amount of ingredients, but it produced a blob of wobbly jelly that Rasmussen noticed contracted and expanded like muscles when she applied an electrical current.

It would be years later when Rasmussen’s cousin nearly lost his foot in a farming accident that she would start to employ that discovery to robotic limbs and space travel. The co-founder thought her cousin might lose his foot and started researching prosthetics.

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This illustration shows a prototype device comprising bare nanospring photodetectors placed on a glass substrate, with metal contacts to collect charges (credit: Tural Khudiyev and Mehmet Bayindir/Applied Optics)

Researchers from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, have shown that twisting straight nanowires into springs can increase the amount of light the wires absorb by up to 23 percent. Absorbing more light is important because one application of nanowires is turning light into electricity, for example, to power tiny sensors instead of requiring batteries.

If nanowires are made from a semiconductor like silicon, light striking the wire will dislodge electrons from the crystal lattice, leaving positively charged “holes” behind. Both the electrons and the holes move through the material to generate electricity. The more light the wire absorbs; the more electricity it generates. (A device that converts light into electricity can function as either a solar cell or a photosensor.)

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Using a double layer of lipids facilitates assembly of DNA origami nanostructures, bringing us one step closer to future DNA nanomachines, as in this artist’s impression (credit: Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences)

Kyoto University scientists in Japan have developed a method for creating larger 2-D self-assembling DNA origami nanostructures.

Current DNA origami methods can create extremely small two- and three-dimensional shapes that could be used as construction material to build nanodevices, such as nanomotors, in the future for targeted drug delivery inside the body, for example. KurzweilAI recently covered advanced methods developed by Brookhaven National Laboratory and Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute.

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“Beyond implementation of quantum communication technologies, nanotube-based single photon sources could enable transformative quantum technologies including ultra-sensitive absorption measurements, sub-diffraction imaging, and linear quantum computing. The material has potential for photonic, plasmonic, optoelectronic, and quantum information science applications…”

In optical communication, critical information ranging from a credit card number to national security data is transmitted in streams of laser pulses. However, the information transmitted in this manner can be stolen by splitting out a few photons (the quantum of light) of the laser pulse. This type of eavesdropping could be prevented by encoding bits of information on quantum mechanical states (e.g. polarization state) of single photons. The ability to generate single photons on demand holds the key to realization of such a communication scheme.

By demonstrating that incorporation of pristine single-walled carbon nanotubes into a silicon dioxide (SiO2) matrix could lead to creation of solitary oxygen dopant state capable of fluctuation-free, room-temperature single photon emission, Los Alamos researchers revealed a new path toward on-demand single photon generation. Nature Nanotechnology published their findings.

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It could save the lives of tomorrow’s astronauts.

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Lithium-doped graphene turns out to be a conventional superconductor with a transition temperature of 5.9 K.

Depositing lithium on 2D material generates Cooper pairs.

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