It could be used to make new 2D materials, but this one probably won’t go viral.
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Category: nanotechnology – Page 319
A Flexible Evolving Approach To Computing
To truly reach a fully connected world/ singularity we have to move tech into more and more bio-computing world. I do believe QC will assist us in getting the fundamental infrastructure we need for singularity.
We already must deal with computers too much rather than too little, and there is already lots of advanced computing done also for example in materials science and nanotechnology, for example molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo simulations.[2] The molecular biologist’s programs for predicting protein folding can also count as nanotechnology. Nevertheless, all of our previous articles concluded that we need more computing, and several mentioned statistics. This would sound predictable if coming from a statistical physicist with a background in computing, advertising his skills. However, we mean a more efficient computing rather than simply more.
We started the type of computing we do only recently and for reasons not yet mentioned: Given complex nano-micro compounds, materials’ characterization is difficult due to the three-dimensional complexity of the structures. We originally integrated image analysis with simulation in order to derive 3D structure from 2D images (SEM) and projections (TEM).[3,4] The most fruitful result was however the insight into how easy it is to create adaptable software that analyzes images and keeps track of all the data, calculating anything desired such as comparisons with numerical simulations, all in one integrated system.[5,6] Many of the previously discussed issues, for example error reporting, are thereby basically already automatically solved!
Adapting software sounds prohibitively difficult: Who in my lab can modify software? Nowadays everybody! Today, programming is done partially graphically, for example with LabView™, where no programming language appears anymore. We work with Mathematica and therefore with programming code, but we mostly just download parts of code and adapt them playfully until they behave as desired. To whomever such does not count as the ability to program, we cannot program!
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Researchers improve catalyst efficiency for clean industries: Method reduces use of expensive platinum
Nice.
Abstract: Researchers have developed a way to use less platinum in chemical reactions commonly used in the clean energy, green chemicals, and automotive industries, according to a paper in Science.
Led by the University of New Mexico in collaboration with Washington State University, the researchers developed a unique approach for trapping platinum atoms that improves the efficiency and stability of the reactions.
Platinum is used as a catalyst in many clean energy processes, including in catalytic converters and fuel cells. The precious metal facilitates chemical reactions for many commonly used products and processes, such as converting poisonous carbon monoxide to less harmful carbon dioxide in catalytic converters.
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New record in microwave detection
Aalto University scientists have broken the world record by fourteen fold in the energy resolution of thermal photodetection.
The record was made using a partially superconducting microwave detector. The discovery may lead to ultrasensitive cameras and accessories for the emerging quantum computer.
Figure 1: Artistic image of a hybrid superconductor-metal microwave detector. (Image: Ella Maru Sudio)
The first of the two key enabling developments is the new detector design consisting of tiny pieces of superconducting aluminum and a golden nanowire. This design guarantees both efficient absorption of incoming photons and very sensitive readout. The whole detector is smaller than a single human blood cell.
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Fantastic voyage to the nanoverse one step closer
Robots so small they can enter the bloodstream and perform surgeries are one step closer, a research team from Monash University has discovered.
Led by Dr Zhe Liu, the Monash Engineering team has focused on graphene oxide — which is a single atom thick — as an effective shape memory material.
Graphene has captured world scientific and industrial interest for its miracle properties, with potential applications across energy, medicine, and even biomedical nano-robots.
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Probing Quantum Phenomena in Tiny Transistors
Nearly 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, nanowires can only be understood with quantum mechanics. Using quantum models, physicists from Michigan Technological University have figured out what drives the efficiency of a silicon-germanium (Si-Ge) core-shell nanowire transistor.
Core-Shell Nanowires
The study, published last week in Nano Letters, focuses on the quantum tunneling in a core-shell nanowire structure. Ranjit Pati, a professor of physics at Michigan Tech, led the work along with his graduate students Kamal Dhungana and Meghnath Jaishi.
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Bowtie-shaped nanostructures may advance the development of quantum devices
Bowtie-shaped nanoparticles made of silver may help bring the dream of quantum computing and quantum information processing closer to reality. These nanostructures, created at the Weizmann Institute of Science and described recently in Nature Communications, greatly simplify the experimental conditions for studying quantum phenomena and may one day be developed into crucial components of quantum devices.
The research team led by Prof. Gilad Haran of Weizmann’s Chemical Physics Department — postdoctoral fellow Dr. Kotni Santhosh, Dr. Ora Bitton of Chemical Research Support and Prof. Lev Chuntonov of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology — manufactured two-dimensional bowtie-shaped silver nanoparticles with a minuscule gap of about 20 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in the center. The researchers then dipped the “bowties” in a solution containing quantum dots, tiny semiconductor particles that can absorb and emit light, each measuring six to eight nanometers across. In the course of the dipping, some of the quantum dots became trapped in the bowtie gaps.
Under exposure to light, the trapped dots became “coupled” with the bowties — a scientific term referring to the formation of a mixed state, in which a photon in the bowtie is shared, so to speak, with the quantum dot. The coupling was sufficiently strong to be observed even when the gaps contained a single quantum dot, as opposed to several. The bowtie nanoparticles could thus be prompted to switch from one state to another: from a state without coupling to quantum dots, before exposure to light, to the mixed state characterized by strong coupling, following such exposure.
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Discovery could dramatically boost efficiency of perovskite solar cells
Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a possible secret to dramatically boosting the efficiency of perovskite solar cells hidden in the nanoscale peaks and valleys of the crystalline material.
Solar cells made from compounds that have the crystal structure of the mineral perovskite have captured scientists’ imaginations. They’re inexpensive and easy to fabricate, like organic solar cells. Even more intriguing, the efficiency at which perovskite solar cells convert photons to electricity has increased more rapidly than any other material to date, starting at three percent in 2009 — when researchers first began exploring the material’s photovoltaic capabilities — to 22 percent today. This is in the ballpark of the efficiency of silicon solar cells.
Now, as reported online July 4, 2016 in the journal Nature Energy, a team of scientists from the Molecular Foundry and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, both at Berkeley Lab, found a surprising characteristic of a perovskite solar cell that could be exploited for even higher efficiencies, possibly up to 31 percent.
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Solar nano-grids light up homes and businesses in Kenya
First installations go live as INTASAVE Energy pursues $30M impact investment.
Villagers in Lemolo B and Echareria in Nakuru County, Kenya, are waking up today to a new future as new solar nano-grids installed over the last two weeks allows them to switch on lights and operate new agri-processing machinery. The two communities are the first to receive a revolutionary new model for clean, affordable and reliable energy where a central solar hub provides both commercial energy for new village enterprises and household energy using cutting-edge up-cycled laptop batteries. The hub allows energy to be shared between households, businesses and the community bringing economic, social and environmental benefits.
The installation is the start of a major INTASAVE Energy solar nano-grid initiative (SONG) that ultimately aims to bring the benefits now beginning for villagers in Lemolo B and Echareria to over 450,000 people across the globe. INTASAVE Energy has launched a $30M impact investment programme to make this goal a reality.
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New material switches from water-repelling to water-loving with electric current
Definitely makes sense when you consider how things work in nature.
Generally, water repellent objects and those that attract or absorb water have very different microscopic-level attributes that endow them with their behavior. For example, the myriad tiny hairs on a gecko’s body help it to efficiently repel water, whilst specially treated cotton designed for harvesting water from the air contains millions of tiny pores that draw in liquid. Now researchers have discovered a way to use a single type of material to perform both functions, switching between liquid attraction and liquid repulsion, simply through the application of an electric voltage.
Developed by a team of scientists from TU Wien, the University of Zurich, and KU Levin, the new material alters its water-handling behavior by changing its surface structure at the nanoscale to effect a change at the macroscale. Specifically, the behavior of liquid on the new material is as a result of altering the “stiction” (static friction) of the molecular surface. One with a high-level of stiction keeps moisture clinging to it, whilst one with a low-level allows the liquid to run right off.
To change the amount of stiction, a nanoscale mesh made of a single layer of boron nitride (or “white graphene”, as it is sometimes known) was grown on a bed of rhodium, to create a honeycomb structure with comb depths of around 0.1 nanometers and comb to comb distance of 3.2 nm. When a voltage is applied to the structure, the mesh flattens out, changing the contact angle between the water droplets and the molecules so greatly that surface tension can no longer be maintained, and the droplets lose their grip on the surface.
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