 |
| Novaled |
|
 |
| NanoFocus |
|
 |
| TransMIT |
|
 |
Hessen-Nanotech
|
|
 |
Graphene Laboratories
|
|
 |
| Plasma-Therm |
|
 |
Nanostart
|
|
 |
ThermoShield
|
|
|
Greetings!
Our edition of nanotimes is live now at:
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
Dear Readers,
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong gave an interview to Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia. He spoke with Alex Malley, Chief Executive of Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia. I was never a big fan of huge public funding as they often lead to undisciplined and hence wasteful spending. But Armstrong's view on the current US space policy is very critical, and one of Armstrong's most astonishing statement is that "NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve."
Hereby Armstrong hit the bull's-eye. The name of the first space shuttle was Enterprise. The shuttle Enterprise took different flights, none of them in orbit. The name Enterprise was more than just recognition of the science fiction series Star Trek by the American space agency. NASA and Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek universe, have inspired each other. Gene Roddenberry was one of the first humans to have his ashes blasted into outer space. In this case, NASA complied with his widow's request, and money wasn't an issue at the time. I can remember the first start of the Columbia on April 12, 1981 (STS-1) very well, the first space-worthy Space Shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet. For an American, it was an event like the first moon landing. Let's look at the Big Bang Theory, a US sitcom, which by now has become the most watched show in Canada. It's the story about four science fiction nerds, all fans of Star Trek. Therefore, references to Star Trek in The Big Bang Theory are quite frequent. You can explain the big success of Big Bang Theory like Armstrong did in his interview: The success of NASA and of course their Russian equivalent the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, formerly the Soviet space program) and the programs in different other countries like France, China, India or Japan motivated thousands of employees, teachers or students to give their best for their country. In some cases, people were inspired and founded tech companies.
Without space aeronautics and research there would be no satellite-based navigation like GPS or Glonass, no Google Maps, no weather forecasts and a dozen of government agencies with their security related tasks would only partially be able to operate. It is always basic research that paves the way for a dozen of different applications in other research and business areas.
As always, we are happy to publish very interesting research stories on e.g. batteries and ceramics in this edition. A team led by materials scientist Yi Cui of Stanford University (US) has found a solution for improving lithium-based batteries: a cleverly designed double-walled nanostructure that lasts more than 6,000 cycles, far more than needed by electric vehicles or mobile electronics [page 44]! German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg and for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK in Berlin, have now found a way to straighten out distorted ceramics using shot peening [page 43].
Most importantly, the company Nanospire successfully completed its investigation on fusion produced by the phenomena of cavitation in water, providing profound implications for the utilities and energy industries [page 33].
Thomas Ilfrich
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
|
Nanospire [33]
Nanospire, Inc. successfully completed its investigation of fusion produced by the phenomena of cavitation in water, providing profound implications for the utilities and energy industries. Under the right conditions, cavitation, a form of boiling, can produce high speed jets as the cavitation bubbles collapse.
NanoSpire has pioneered the controlled formation and aiming of these (known as re-entrant) jets, resulting in four recently issued patents. The technology reaches across many markets, including many applications in nanotechnology and energy.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
Companies - [12-41, abstract]
e.g. 3M (NASDAQ: MMM) reported record first-quarter sales of $7.5 billion, up 2.4% year-on-year. Earnings were $1.59 per share, an increase of 6.7% versus the first quarter of 2011, and operating margins for the quarter were 21.8%.
e.g. Accelrys, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCL)reported financial results for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2012. Non-GAAP revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 increased $2.3 million to $41.8 million from $39.5 million for the same quarter of the previous year, or an increase of 6%.
e.g. Advantest Corporation (TSE: 6857, NYSE: ATE)announced the availability of its next-generation high-speed DRAM test system, the T5511.
e.g. Bayer MaterialScience has developed a wide range of energy-efficient polyurethane materials for the automotive sector. At UTECH 2012, it is going one step further with the presentation of the Bayflex(R) RIM Light Weight polyurethane system that can be used to further reducing the weight of finished components by up to 30%. With a density of just 0.9 kilograms per liter, this material is even lighter than water.
e.g. E Ink(R) Holdings, the leading developer and marketer of electronic paper display technology, announced that their segmented display product used by the prominent contract furniture maker Casala has won the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Award for 2012. E Ink's technology in the Zifra numbering system for chairs has helped Casala to continue to establish itself as a leader within the contract design furniture industry.
e.g. Infinite Power Solutions, Inc. (IPS) has successfully completed a $10M Series D financing. The funds will be used to expand IPS' manufacturing capacity in response to growing customer demand, to complete the build out of its global sales channels and to further support advanced research and development of its eco-friendly THINERGY(R) solid-state rechargeable Micro-Energy Cell (MEC) products.
e.g. The Nanostart holding ItN Nanovation (ISIN: DE000A0JL461, Germany) will combine its previous activities in the area of industrial coatings and contracted research into an independent business entity as part of its announced restructuring. This will enable ItN to better satisfy the requirements of its customers. This will also result in a clear separation of the activities in the water area. The new business entity will carry out all operational functions such as sales, product management, user and basic development as well as production independently. The new business entity will be allocated the expertise it requires in the form of staff and related patents.
e.g. Nanoco Group plc (AIM: NANO) has successfully produced a 1kg batch of green cadmium-free quantum dots for a major Japanese corporation, triggering a US$2 million payment to Nanoco. Nanoco supplied a 1kg batch of red quantum dots to the same Japanese corporation last year, also attracting a US$2 million payment. The production of the green dots marks another major technical achievement by Nanoco because green dots are significantly more challenging than red ones due to their smaller size. The green quantum dots were produced at Nanoco's production facility in Runcorn, Cheshire.
e.g. NanoInk announced the availability of High Density (HD) Tip Arrays for Polymer Pen Litho-graphy (PPL, image). These high-density elastomeric pen arrays are ideal for high-throughput deposition of ink materials. Similar to standard Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®) with regular silicon nitride pens, High Density Tip Arrays can be used for the deposition of molecules with well-controlled feature size.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
Scientists Generate Electricity from Viruses [42]
Scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.
"More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators fors use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics," says Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
Researchers are Able to Reshape the Surfaces of Malformed Ceramic Components by Bombarding them with Tiny Pellets [43]
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg and for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK in Berlin, both in Germany, have now found a way to straighten out distorted ceramics using shot peening, a process by which small pellets, known as shot, are fired at the surface of a component with a blasting gun. The shot strikes the surface and alters the shape of the thin, outermost layer of material. By moving the gun over the ceramic part along a precisely calculated path, scientists are able to counteract any undesired warping or create lightly curved mirrors out of thin, even ceramic plates.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
Anti-Fogging, Self-Cleaning and Free of Glare Glass [46]
Researchers at MIT (US) developed a way to make glass that's anti-fogging, self-cleaning and free of glare. It virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare - and whose surface causes water droplets to bounce right off, like tiny rubber balls.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
Novel Radiation Surveillance Technology [48]
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed the Nano-photonic Composite Scintillation Detector, a prototype that combines rare-earth elements and other materials at the nanoscale for improved sensitivity, accuracy and robustness. A scintillation detector commonly employs a single crystal of sodium iodide or a similar material, while a solid-state detector is based on semiconducting materials such as germanium. Both technologies are able to detect gamma rays and subatomic particles emitted by nuclear material.
When gamma rays or particles strike a scintillation detector, they create light flashes that are converted to electrical pulses to help identify the radiation at hand. In a solid-state detector, incoming gamma rays or particles register directly as electrical pulses.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
A New Paper Made of Graphene and Protein Fibrils [49]
Researchers led by Raffaele Mezzenga, a professor in Food and Soft Materials Science at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have created a new nanocomposite made of graphene and protein fibrils: a special paper, which combines the best features of both components. This new "paper" is made of alternating layers of protein and graphene. The two components can be mixed in varying compositions, brought into solution, and dried into thin sheets through a vacuum filter - "similarly as one usually does in the manufacture of normal paper from cellulose," says Mezzenga.
"This combination of different materials with uncommon properties produces a novel nano-composite with some major benefits," says the ETH professor. For example, the material is entirely biodegradable.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
A new Type of Magnetoelectric Sensor [50]
Research teams at Kiel University in Germany have jointly developed a new type ofmagneto-electric sensor, which is intended to allow the use of this important technology in the future. As opposed to conventional magnetoelectric measuring techniques, the new sensors operate at normal conditions. Neither cooling nor external magnetic bias fields are required.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
First "Microsubmarines" to Clean up Oil Spills [54]
Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of the first self-propelled "microsubmarines" designed to pick up droplets of oil from contaminated waters and transport them to collec-tion facilities. The report concludes that these tiny machines could play an important role in cleaning up oil spills, like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
News in Brief [55-71]
At the Analytica trade fair in Germany, Fraunhofer researchers, joined by the Hübner Company, are presenting a terahertz spectrometer that provides reliable, contact-free identification of substances. At the end of 2011, though, the scanner T-Cognition 1.0 from Hübner company of Kassel, Germany, went on the market. The device, developed with the assistance of Fraunhofer researchers, detects, without contact, substances such as drugs or explosives contained in unopened letters or flat packages.
A team of Michigan Technological University (US) materials scientists developed a comparably foolproof method for creating sheets of titanium dioxide embedded with graphene.
Researchers from CNRS and the Université de Strasbourg, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone and Bernard Doudin, have succeeded in making highly conductive plastic fibers that are only several nanometers thick. These nanowires, for which CNRS has filed a patent, "self-assemble" when triggered by a flash of light.
Scientists from Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Chalmers University of Technology (SE), and Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics (PDI), Germany, have demonstrated a new kind of detector for sound at the level of quietness of quantum mechanics. The result offers prospects of a new class of quantum hybrid circuits that mix acoustic elements with electrical ones, and may help illuminate new phenomena of quantum physics.
Xudong Fan and his research team at University of Michigan (US) developed a smart gas sensors for better chemical detection. The main advance of the sensor under development by Fan and his colleagues at University of Michigan and the University of Missouri, is a better approach to divvying up the chemicals. The researchers have demonstrated their concept on a table-top set-up, and they hope to produce a hand-held device in the future.
Researchers in China have developed a straightforward light-scattering technique to estimate the size of gold nanoparticles. They developed a facile and real-time method for estimating the diameter of single gold nanoparticles (GNPs) that range from 35 to 110nm in diameter; this technique uses the chrominance of the GNP's plasmon resonance scattering light that is captured by a dark-field microscope (DFM).
Researchers at Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program, The University of Texas at Austin (US), report in Nano Letters the use of free-standing, lightweight, and highly conductive ultrathin graphite foam (UGF), loaded with lithium iron phosphate (LFP), as a cathode in a lithium ion battery.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, US) have developed a prototype bioreactor - a device for culturing cells to create engineered tissues - that both stimulates and evaluates tissue as it grows, mimicking natural processes while eliminating the need to stop periodically to cut up samples for analysis. Tissue created this way might someday be used to replace, for example, damaged or diseased cartilage in the knee and hip.
Flash:
http://content.yudu.com/A1x0nu/Nanotimes04-2012/
PDF(85 pages, 17Mb):
http://www.nano-times.com/files/nanotimes_12_04.pdf
|
EU-Projects [72-73]
Development of High-Performance Organic Electronic Circuits
Research Project on Safety of Nanomaterials
Design Guide for Nanoparticles-based Consumer Products
|
|
|
|
|
|
Comments