Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed a technique to harvest 2-inch diameter wafers of 2-D material within just a few minutes.
Credit: Peng Lin

Efficient method for making single-atom-thick, wafer-scale materials opens up opportunities in flexible electronics. Researchers have developed a technique to harvest 2-inch diameter wafers of 2-D material within just a few minutes. They can then be stacked together to form an electronic device within an hour.

Since the 2003 discovery of graphene, there has been significant interest in other types of 2-D materials as well. These materials could be stacked together like Lego bricks to form a range of devices with different functions, including operating as semiconductors...

The novel topological insulator built in the Würzburg Institute of Physics: a controllable flow of hybrid optoelectronic particles (red) travels along its edges. (Picture: Karol Winkler)

For the first time, physicists have built a unique topological insulator in which optical and electronic excitations hybridize and flow together. Topological insulators are materials with very special properties. They conduct electricity or light particles on their surface or edges only but not on the inside. This unusual behaviour could eventually lead to technical innovations which is why topological insulators have been the subject of intense global research for several years.

Physicists of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, with colleagues from the Technion in Haifa, Is...

A single nanocluster of 22 gold atoms — Au22 — is only 1 nanometer in diameter, allowing it to easily slip through the bacterial cell wall.
Credit: Peidong Yang, UC Berkeley

Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium’s unusual appetite for gold. Scientists have placed light-absorbing gold nanoclusters inside a bacterium, creating a biohybrid system that produces a higher yield of chemical products, such as biofuels, than previously demonstrated. The biohybrid captures sunlight and carbon dioxide to make chemicals useful not only on Earth but also in the exotic environment of space.

Moorella thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry...

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed 3D printed assistive technology that can track and store their use — without using batteries or electronics. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

Engineers have developed 3D printed devices that can track and store their own use – without using batteries or electronics. Instead, this system uses a method called backscatter, through which a device can share information by reflecting signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.

Cheap and easily customizable, 3D printed devices are perfect for assistive technology, like prosthetics or “smart” pill bottles that can help patients remember to take their daily medications...