Latest and Breaking Nanotechnology News

Edible nanostructures
2 September 2010, 4:00 am
(Northwestern University) Sugar, salt, alcohol and a little serendipity led Northwestern University researchers to discover a new class of nanostructures that could be used for gas storage and food and medical technologies. And the compounds are edible. The porous crystals are the first known all-natural metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are simple to make. Most other MOFs are made from petroleum-based ingredients, but the Northwestern MOFs you can pop into your mouth and eat, and the researchers have.

UCLA chemists, engineers achieve world record with high-speed graphene transistors
2 September 2010, 4:00 am
(University of California - Los Angeles) A UCLA team led by Xiangfeng Duan has developed a new fabrication process for high-speed graphene transistors using a nanowire as the self-aligned gate. This new technique does not produce any appreciable defects in the graphene during fabrication, so the carrier mobility is retained. Also, by using a self-aligned approach with a nanowire as the gate, the group was able to overcome alignment difficulties previously encountered and fabricate short channel devices with unprecedented performance.

Micro rheometer is latest Lab On a Chip device
1 September 2010, 4:00 am
(National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) Researchers at NIST have demonstrated a micro-miniaturized device that can make complex viscosity measurements -- critical data for a wide variety of fields dealing with things that have to flow -- on sample sizes as small as a few nanoliters.

New process promises to revolutionize manufacturing of products
1 September 2010, 4:00 am
(University of Waterloo) A new "smart materials" process -- Multiple Memory Material Technology -- developed by University of Waterloo engineering researchers promises to revolutionize the manufacture of diverse products such as medical devices, microelectromechanical systems, printers, hard drives, automotive components, valves and actuators. The breakthrough technology will provide engineers with much more freedom and creativity by enabling far greater functionality to be incorporated into medical devices such as stents, braces and hearing aids than is currently possible.

A model system for group behavior of nanomachines
1 September 2010, 4:00 am
(Technische Universitaet Muenchen) As reported in the journal Nature, a team of physicists from Technische Universitaet Muenchen and LMU Muenchen has developed a versatile biophysical model system that opens the door to studying phenomena such as the seemingly choreographed motion of hundreds or thousands of fish, birds or insects, and probing their underlying principles. Using a combination of an experimental platform and theoretical models, more complex systems can now be described and their properties investigated.

The perfect nanocube: Precise control of size, shape and composition
1 September 2010, 4:00 am
(National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) Researchers at NIST have developed a simple process for producing near-perfect nanocrystals that will enable studies of physical and chemical properties that affect how nanoparticles interact with the world around them.

Researchers create new class of piezoelectric logic devices using zinc oxide nanowires
1 September 2010, 4:00 am
(Georgia Institute of Technology Research News) Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new class of electronic logic device in which current is switched by an electric field generated by the application of mechanical strain to zinc oxide nanowires.

Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research
31 August 2010, 4:00 am
(University of California - Los Angeles) A multidisciplinary group of researchers at UCLA have produced a 3.6 angstrom resolution structure of the human adenovirus. Their findings were published in the journal Science, and featured in both a perspective and This Week in Science. Pharmacologist Lily Wu and her group are working with adenovirus as a vector for gene therapy, but needed better structural information. She sought assistance from microbiologist Hong Zhou, whose group used cryo-EM microscopy to produce the virus structure.

Silicon oxide circuits break barrier
31 August 2010, 4:00 am
(Rice University) Rice University scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips that use only silicon, one of the most common substances on the planet, in a way that should be easily adaptable to nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques and promises to extend the limits of miniaturization subject to Moore's Law.

High-speed filter uses electrified nanostructures to purify water at low cost
30 August 2010, 4:00 am
(Stanford University) Stanford researchers have developed a water-purifying filter that makes the process more than 80,000 times faster than existing filters. The key is coating the filter fabric -- ordinary cotton -- with nanotubes and silver nanowires, then electrifying it. The filter uses very little power, has no moving parts and could be used throughout the developing world.