nanotimes 12-01 :: January 2012

01 / 2012

nanotimes January 2012

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Greetings!

Our edition of nanotimes is live now at:

 

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Dear Readers,

the material graphene again plays an important role in this edition. The number of press releases und research papers on this subject have increased considerably and we want to continuously mirror that. Meanwhile, graphene has become as important as nanotubes in research and industry.

 

Therefore, it is not surprising that nanotechnology yet plays and will play a huge solution role in various areas incl. water filtration, food, harvesting and material technologies. Today, our most demanding and crucial problems are of course energy demand, shortages of metals and fresh water.

 

Now, Paul B. Farrell* wrote in MarketWatch a very insightful article about agriculture as "world's No. 1 time bomb". I really recommend reading his thoughts and remarks, especially his quotes on Jeremy Grantham of global investment management firm GMO and our problems with the focus only on short-term growth. In order to survive we will need more long-term views and cooperation between government and non-government institutions.

 

Last year, referring to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I commented on our incapability to develop the right technologies. We need more ground-breaking innovations like the ones in the railroad era or such patents like these of Thomas Alva Edison. It means that latest innovations in the field of water filtrations and cheap re-movement of salt from sea water on an industrial scale are crucial. All these are industrial solutions; we do not need more mobile app developing companies.

 

As Paul B. Farrell writes, "Agriculture will decide the Earth's fate in 2050, not 'Peak Oil'," because we have to feed 10 billion in 2050.

 

And nanotechnology will be one of our solutions.

 

* Paul B. Farrell: Global suicide 2020: We can't feed 10 billion, Create a new agriculture or capitalism self-destructs, In: MarketWatch, Feb. 14, 2012.

 

 

Thomas Ilfrich

 

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EVENT: 

8. Thinfilm User Forum

 

February 27-28,2012 

 

Bad Staffelstein, Kloster Banz

 

www.otti.de/veranstaltung/id/achtes-anwenderforum-grundlagen-duennschicht-photovoltaik.html

 

 

3-D Image of an Individual Protein [10]


Researcher Gang Ren and his colleague Lei Zhang at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are reporting the first 3-D images of an individual protein ever obtained with enough clarity to determine its structure. Scientists routinely create models of proteins using X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, and conventional cryo-electron microscope (cryoEM) imaging. But these models require computer "averaging" of data from analysis of thousands, or even millions of like molecules, because it is so difficult to resolve the features of a single particle. Ren and Zhang have done just that, generating detailed models using electron microscopic images of a single protein with a technique called "individual-particle electron tomography," or IPET. 

The 3-D images reported in a research paper include those of a single IgG antibody and apolipoprotein A-1 (ApoA-1), a protein involved Researcher Gang Ren and his colleague Lei Zhang at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are reporting the first 3-D images of an individual protein ever obtained with enough clarity to determine its structure. Scientists routinely create models of proteins using X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, and conventional cryo-electron microscope (cryoEM) imaging. But these models require computer "averaging" of data from analysis of thousands, or even millions of like molecules, because it is so difficult to resolve the features of a single particle.
Ren and Zhang have done just that, generating detailed models using electron microscopic images of a single protein with a technique called "individual-particle electron tomography," or IPET. The 3-D images reported in a research paper.


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3M New Ventures [12]


3M New Ventures, the corporate venture organization of 3M, also announced an investment in HydroNovation Inc. of California, U.S., a developer of next- generation water conditioning systems for residential and food service industry applications. The Series B round financing included a second investment by Clean Pacific Ventures. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.


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Companies -  [12-43]

e.g. Blue Spark Technologies has opened a new highvolume printing and production facility located in West Bend, Wisconsin (U.S). The new facility extends Blue Spark's capability to produce large volumes of its line of disposable, flexible carbon zinc batteries to meet growing demand for printed electronics that power innovations.

 

Eight19 (U.K.) and the IndiGo pay-as-you-go solar power technology for emerging markets, has announced the launch of a GBP5M ($8M) Series B funding round. The funding will be used for the further development of the company's low cost printed plastic solar film and for accelerating the deployment of Eight19's IndiGo pay as you go solar power products, which are already attracting strong customer demand in emerging markets. Eight19 received GBP4.5M of funding in September 2010 from the Carbon Trust and Rhodia SA and it is expected that the new round will be taken up by a combination of existing and new investors.

 

HzO, Inc., was named an International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree in the embedded technologies category. HzO's proprietary Water-Block(TM) is cutting-edge technology that protects valuable electronics from water, humidity, and other liquids. Powerful and invisible, WaterBlock(TM) protects on the molecular scale.

 

Scientists from IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) have successfully demonstrated the ability to store information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms. This is significantly less than today's disk drives, which use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information. The ability to manipulate matter by its most basic components - atom by atom - could lead to the vital understanding necessary to build smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices.

 

LLC Sapporo Nano-Ball Technology (Sapporo NBT) and Hokkaido University have collectively developed a mass-production method of silicon nanoparticle which is considered as a hopeful cathodematerial of lithium-ion battery.

 

Established in 2002, NeoEnBiz (Korea) has developed the well-known ultra-dispersed nano-diamond "Neomon" (Nano diamond Ultra Dispersed Liquid) for application in a wide range of industries like electroplating, lubrication additives, paint additives, drug delivery, wafer polishing, industrial products for the radiation heat industry, polymer and resin composite. The Nanodiamond dispersion particle size is between 4 to 30nm, the dispersion stability time is 0.5 to 1 year.

 

Researchers at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors have succeeded in manufacturing high-performance prototypes of blue and white LEDs, in which the light-emitting gallium-nitride layers are grown on silicon wafers with a diameter of 150mm. Already in the pilot stage, the new LED chips are to be tested under practical conditions. The first LEDs on silicon from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors could hit the market in just two years.

 

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Graphene Foam Detects Explosives, Emissions Better Than Today's Gas Sensors [44]

A new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute demonstrates how graphene foam can outperform leading commercial gas sensors in detecting potentially dangerous and explosive chemicals. The discovery opens the door for a new generation of gas sensors to be used by bomb squads, law enforcement officials, defense organizations, and in various industrial settings.
 
The new sensor successfully and repeatedly measured ammonia (NH3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at concentrations as small as 20 parts-per-million. Made from continuous graphene nanosheets that grow into a foam-like structure about the size of a postage stamp and thickness of felt, the sensor is flexible, rugged, and finally overcomes the shortcomings that have prevented nanostructure-based gas detectors from reaching the marketplace.
 

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NIST Theorists Quantify the Friction of Graphene [47]
 
Similar to the way pavement, softened by a hot sun, will slow down a car, graphene - a oneatom-thick sheet of carbon with wondrous properties - slows down an object sliding across its surface. But stack the sheets and graphene gets more slippery, say theorists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who developed new software to quantify the material's friction.

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A New Kind of High-Temperature Photonic Crystal [48]
 
A team of MIT researchers has developed a way of making a high-temperature version of a kind of materials called photonic crystals, using metals such as tungsten or tantalum. The new materials can operate at temperatures up to 1200° C (2192° F). NASA has taken an interest in the research because of its potential to provide long-term power for deepspace missions that cannot rely on solar power.

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HIRIKO [49]
 
The European Commission's President, José Manuel Durao Barroso, has presented the electric vehicle HIRIKO, which has been developed by a Basque enterprise consortium. Urban, with four-wheel traction and direction, a haptic steering wheel and foldable when parking, HIRIKO is a giant step ahead in urban mobility thanks to its management system, as per demand, that complements the public transport.
 

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Breast Cancer Cells Burned by Gold-filled Silicon Wafers [50]
 
Scientists at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (US) have successfully targeted and burned breast cancer cells. "Hollow gold nanoparticles can generate heat if they are hit with a near-infrared laser," said Research Institute Assistant Member Haifa Shen, M.D., Ph.D., the report's lead author. "Multiple investigators have tried to use gold nanoparticles for cancer treatment, but the efficiency has not been very good - they'd need a lot of gold nanoparticles to treat a tumor.".
 

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Graphene Moves into Computer Chips [55]
 
A research team at University of Manchester (UK)has literally opened a third dimension in graphene research. Individual transistors with very high frequencies (up to 300 GHz) have already been demonstrated by several groups worldwide, but those transistors cannot be packed densely in a computer chip because they leak too much current, even in the most insulating state of graphene. This electric current would cause chips to melt within a fraction of a second. This problem has been around since 2004.
 
The University of Manchester scientists now suggest using graphene not laterally (in plane) - as all the previous studies did - but in the vertical direction. They used graphene as an electrode from which electrons tunnelled through a dielectric into another metal. This is called a tunnelling diode. Then they exploited a truly unique feature of graphene - that an external voltage can strongly change the energy of tunnelling electrons. As a result they got a new type of a device - vertical field-effect tunnelling transistor in which graphene is a critical ingredient.
 

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Repair-and-Go Approach [65]
 
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass, USA) propose a "repair-and-go" approach to fixing malfunctions caused by small-surface cracks on any digital device or part before it hits store shelves. "Anything that's a machine with a surface is affected by these small-scale cracks," said Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering and coinvestigator on the project. "These are surfaces that play a role in almost anything, especially functionality."
 

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Water Purification Reactor [70]
 
New research demonstrates that a prototype water purification reactor containing a thin film of titanium dioxide (TiO2) is able to enhance the sun's natural disinfection properties This device could reduce the need for expensive antibiotics or poisonous chemicals.
 

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New Composite Aerogel [75]
 
The researchers at Wuhan University (China) and the University of Tokyo (Japan) have now developed a special composite aerogel from cellulose and silicon dioxide. They begin by producing a cellulose gel from an alkaline urea solution. This causes the cellulose to dissolve, and to regenerate to form a nanofibrillar gel. The cellulose gel then acts as a scaffold for the silica gel prepared by a standard sol-gel process, in which a dissolved organosilicate precursor is cross-linked, gelled, and deposited onto the cellulose nanofibers. The resulting liquid-containing composite gel is then dried with supercritical carbon dioxide to make an aerogel.
 

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Graphene-based Membranes [76]
 
In a report published in Science, a team led by Professor Sir Andre Geim shows that graphene-based membranes are impermeable to all gases and liquids. However, water evaporates through them as quickly as if the membranes were not there at all. Professor Geim: "The properties are so unusual that it is hard to imagine that they cannot find some use in the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes and for selective removal of water."
 

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New Class of Optoplasmonic Materials [77]
 
Researchers at Boston University (US) investigate photonic-plasmonic mode coupling in a new class of optoplasmonic materials that comprise dielectric microspheres and noble metal nanostructures in a morphologically well-defined on-chip platform.
 

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New Pretreatment Process for Gold Nanorods [80]
 
Eugene R. Zubarev and his team at Rice University in Houston (Texas, USA) introduced a new pretreatment process for gold nanorods that could accelerate their use in medical applications.
 
Gold nanorods are normally produced in a concentrated solution of cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and are thus coated in a double layer of CTAB. The CTAB is only deposited onto the surface, not chemically bound. In an aqueous environment, the CTAB molecules slowly dissolve. This is problematic because CTAB is highly toxic. Simply leaving out the CTAB is no solution because without this coating the nanorods would clump together. In order to make the rods stable as well as biocompatible, various more or less complex methods of pretreatment have been developed. However, for many of these processes, it is not known how much of the toxic CTAB remains on the nanorods. Another problem is that the pretreatment can disrupt the uptake of the nanorods in to cells, which drastically reduces the success of photothermal cancer treatment.
 

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New Solar Concentrators [83]
 
A team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, has redesigned luminescent solar concentrators to be more efficient at sending sunlight to solar cells. "We tweaked the traditional flat design for luminescent solar concentrators and made them into cylinders," Ghosh said. "The results of this architectural redesign surprised us, as it significantly improves their efficiency."
 
The main problem preventing luminescent concentrators from being used commercially is that they have high rates of self-absorption, Ghosh said, meaning they absorb a significant amount of the light they produce instead of transporting it to the solar cells.
 
The research team showed the problem can be addressed by changing the shape of the concentrator. They discovered a hollow cylindrical solar concentrator is a better design compared with a flat concentrator or a solid cylinder concentrator.
 

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EU-Projects [84-85]
 
E.g., IND 07 Thin Films Metrology for the Manufacturing of Thin Films
The aim of this project is to establish a pan-European metrology capability with the goal of providing validated and/or traceable metrology for: thin film materials properties; composition and structure; and for controlling large area homogeneity and consistency of properties. This JRP will develop the necessary metrology to control consistency of thin film processing and improve production quality in order to reduce costs and time-to-market for new products.
 

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Reports [86-87]
 
Thin Film and Organic Photovoltaics 2012
 
BIPV Glass Markets 2012
 
A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials
 

 

Flash:

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nanotimes 2010 - 2012

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1vo3s/Nanotimes01-2012/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_01.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1v0eq/Nanotimes11-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_11.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1uq58/Nanotimes10-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_10.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1uc5z/Nanotimes09-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_09.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1tyfc/Nanotimes08-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_08.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1tef6/Nanotimes07-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_07.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1so7f/Nanotimes05-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_05.pdf 

 

 

http://content.yudu.com/A1s8lz/Nanotimes04-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_04.pdf 


http://content.yudu.com/A1rtjl/Nanotimes03-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_03.pdf 


http://content.yudu.com/A1r38m/Nanotimes01-2011/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_11_01.pdf 


http://content.yudu.com/A1q7iq/Nanotimes11-2010/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_11.pdf 


http://content.yudu.com/A1pft8/Nanotimes09-2010/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_09.pdf 


http://content.yudu.com/A1owv0/Nanotimes08-2010/

PDF:  http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_08.pdf


http://content.yudu.com/A1oa1i/Nantimes05-2010/

PDF:  http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_05.pdf





http://content.yudu.com/A1n2ls/Nanotimes03-2010/

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_03.pdf


http://content.yudu.com/A1jcgv/Nanotimes02-2010

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_02.pdf


http://content.yudu.com/A1kl8a/Nanotimes01-2010/ 

PDF: http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_10_01.pdf

Best Regards  


IVCON-Team  
  

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