Nano-enhanced perovskite solar cells last 10x longer by trapping iodine, paving the way for durable, affordable solar technology.
Category: nanotechnology – Page 27
Transparent stretchable substrate without image distortion shows potential for next-generation displays
Stretchable display materials, which are gaining traction in the next-generation display market, have the advantage of being able to stretch and bend freely, but the limitations of existing materials have resulted in distorted screens and poor fit.
General elastomeric substrates are prone to screen distortion due to the “Poisson’s ratio” phenomenon, in which stretching in one direction causes the screen to shrink in the vertical direction. In particular, electronics that are in close contact with the skin, such as wearable devices, are at risk of wrinkling or pulling on the skin during stretching and shrinking, resulting in poor fit and performance.
A research team led by Dr. Jeong Gon Son of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Professor Yongtaek Hong of Seoul National University have developed a nanostructure-aligned stretchable substrate that dramatically lowers the Poisson’s ratio. The work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Nanomanufacturing process slashes chip production costs by 99%
The current microelectronics manufacturing method is expensive, slow and energy and resource intensive.
But a Northeastern University professor has patented a new process and printer that not only can manufacture advanced electronics and chips more efficiently and cheaply, it can make them at the nanoscale.
“I thought that there must be an easier way to do this, there must be a cheaper way to do this,” says Ahmed A. Busnaina, the William Lincoln Smith professor and a distinguished university professor at Northeastern University. “We started, basically, with very simple physical chemistry with a very simple approach.”
Contamination detection tool merges synthetic biology and nanotech for ultrasensitive water testing
A platform developed nearly 20 years ago previously used to detect protein interactions with DNA and conduct accurate COVID-19 testing has been repurposed to create a highly sensitive water contamination detection tool.
The technology merges two exciting fields—synthetic biology and nanotechnology—to create a new platform for chemical monitoring. When tuned to detect different contaminants, the technology could detect the metals lead and cadmium at concentrations down to two and one parts per billion, respectively, in a matter of minutes.
The paper was published this week in the journal ACS Nano and represents research from multiple disciplines within Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.
Next-generation organic nanozymes offer safe, cost-effective solution for agricultural and food industries
Nanozymes are synthetic materials that have enzyme-like catalytic properties, and they are broadly used for biomedical purposes, such as disease diagnostics. However, inorganic nanozymes are generally toxic, expensive, and complicated to produce, making them unsuitable for the agricultural and food industries.
A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign research team has developed organic-material-based nanozymes that are non-toxic, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective. In two new studies, they introduce next-generation organic nanozymes and explore a point-of-use platform for molecule detection in agricultural products.
“The first generation of organic-compound-based (OC) nanozymes had some minor drawbacks, so our research group worked to make improvements. The previous OC nanozymes required the use of particle stabilizing polymers having repeatable functional groups, which assured stability of the nanozyme’s nanoscale framework, but didn’t achieve a sufficiently small particle size,” said lead author Dong Hoon Lee, who completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering at the U. of I.
Optimized approach enables super-resolution 3D direct laser writing with unprecedented speed and resolution
For the first time, researchers have used high-speed laser writing to create lines spaced just 100 nm apart on a glass substrate. The optimized printing approach could enable super-resolution 3D direct laser writing (DLW) of microlenses, photonics crystals, micro-optical devices, metamaterials and more.
DLW is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a focused laser beam to selectively solidify, or polymerize, a material with nanoscale precision. DLW typically uses multi-photon polymerization to polymerize materials in a precise, 3D manner.
“Increasing the resolution —the minimum distance between two adjacent features—is difficult because the intense laser light can cause unwanted exposure in nearby areas during DLW,” said Qiulan Liu, a member of the research team from Zhejiang Lab and Zhejiang University in China. “However, by using a unique dual-beam optical setup and a special photoresist, we were able to overcome this challenge and achieve super-resolution DLW.”
New Silicon Discovery Could Supercharge Quantum Computers
Scientists have unlocked a new understanding of mesoporous silicon, a nanostructured version of the well-known semiconductor. Unlike standard silicon, its countless tiny pores give it unique electrical and thermal properties, opening up potential applications in biosensors, thermal insulation, photovoltaics, and even quantum computing.
Performing computation using quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.
World’s smallest shooting video game uses nanoscale technology
A research team led by Professor Takayuki Hoshino of Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Engineering in Japan has demonstrated the world’s smallest shooting game by manipulating nanoparticles in real time, resulting in a game that is played with particles approximately 1 billionth of a meter in size.
This research is a significant step toward developing a computer interface system that seamlessly integrates virtual objects with real nanomaterials. They published their study in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics.
The game demonstrates what the researchers call “nano-mixed reality (MR),” which integrates digital technology with the physical nanoworld in real time using high-speed electron beams. These beams generate dynamic patterns of electric fields and optical images on a display surface, allowing researchers to control the force field acting on the nanoparticles in real time to move and manipulate them.