Graphene has dazzled scientists, ever since its discovery more than a decade ago, with its unequalled electronic properties, its strength and its light weight. But one long-sought goal has proved elusive: how to engineer into graphene a property called a band gap, which would be necessary to use the material to make transistors and other electronic devices.
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In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved.
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"Spring is like a perhaps hand," wrote the poet E. E. Cummings: "carefully / moving a perhaps / fraction of flower here placing / an inch of air there... / without breaking anything."
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Inspired by the structure of moth eyes, researchers at North Carolina State University have developed nanostructures that limit reflection at the interfaces where two thin films meet, suppressing the "thin-film interference" phenomenon commonly observed in nature. This can potentially improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells and other optoelectronic devices.
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Nanomaterials exhibit unique properties that can only unfold when the structures of the material are very small – that is, at the nanoscale. In order to exploit these special properties such as, for example, specific quantum effects it is very important to produce predefined nanostructures in a controlled way and interpret the formation of their shape.
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Axcelis Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of enabling ion implantation solutions for the semiconductor industry, announced today that it has received a multiple system upgrade order from a leading semiconductor manufacturer based in Asia for Axcelis' new GSD Series High Performance End Station upgrade, designed to significantly enhance system productivity and process performance.
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Nano Labs Corp. is pleased to announce today the development of a new nanotechnology to convert eggshells into hydroxyapatite, which is a material employed for endodontics, restorative dentistry and other applications in orthopedics and prosthesis.
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U of T Engineering researchers, working with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, have published new insights into how materials transfer heat, which could lead eventually to smaller, more powerful electronic devices.
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LAST POWER1, the European Union-sponsored program aimed at developing a cost-effective and reliable technology for power electronics, today announced its three-year program achievements that place Europe at the forefront of research and the commercialization of energy-efficient devices for industrial and automotive applications, consumer electronics, renewable-energy conversion systems, and telecommunications.
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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that DNA "linker" strands coax nano-sized rods to line up in way unlike any other spontaneous arrangement of rod-shaped objects.
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Fledgling spin-out company Drop-Tech has turned to microfluidics specialist Dolomite for its product development and fabrication skills to help productize the advanced and innovative Robo-Drop™ technology into the Mitos Dropix, a droplet-on-demand sampler that is set to make it easy to produce extremely miniaturized droplet compartments with excellent control over their contents.
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Injectable nanoparticles developed at MIT may someday eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin.
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Friction is an omnipresent but often annoying physical phänomenon: It causes wear and energy loss in machines as well as in our joints. In search of low-friction components for ever smaller components, a team of physicists led by the professors Thorsten Hugel and Alexander Holleitner now discovered a previously unknown type of friction that they call “desorption stick.”
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Among its many talents, silver is an antibiotic. Titanium dioxide is known to glom on to certain heavy metals and pollutants. Yet other materials do the same for salt. In recent years, environmental engineers have sought to disinfect, depollute, and desalinate contaminated water using nanoscale particles of these active materials.
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Two research teams at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) broke through a nearly 40-year barrier recently when they observed a never-before-seen energy pattern.
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