Category Technology/Electronics

This is an atomic force microscopy image of a graphene sheet draped over a Bacillus bacterium (left). The bacterium is about 1 micron or 1/25,000 of an inch wide. After applying vacuum and heat treatment, regular wrinkles form in the graphene (right, at twice the magnification). Credit: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO/Vikas Berry

New nanomaterial conducts differently at right angles. Now University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have used rod-shaped bacteria – precisely aligned in an electric field, then vacuum-shrunk under a graphene sheet – to introduce nanoscale ripples in the material, causing it to conduct electrons differently in perpendicular directions...

SANDIA BIOENGINEERS Marlene and George Bachand show off their new method for encrypting and storing sensitive information in DNA. Digital data storage degrades and can become obsolete and old-school books and paper require lots of space. (Photo by Lonnie Anderson)

Experiments at CERN’s LHC generate 15 million Gb of data per year. That is a lot of digital data to inscribe on hard drives or beam up to the “cloud.” George Bachand, a Sandia National Laboratories bioengineer is exploring a better, more permanent method for encrypting and storing sensitive data: DNA. Compared to digital and analog information storage, DNA is more compact and durable and never becomes obsolete. Tape- and disk-based data storage degrades and can become obsolete, requiring rewriting every decade or so...

Optically imaging of on-surface and suspended carbon nanotube devices.

Technion researchers have developed a method for growing carbon nanotubes that could lead to the day when molecular electronics replace silicon chip as the building block of electronics.Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long fascinated scientists because of their unprecedented electrical, optical, thermal and mechanical properties, and chemical sensitivity. But significant challenges remain before CNTs can be implemented on a wide scale, including the need to produce them in specific locations on a smooth substrate, in conditions that will lead to the formation of a circuit around them.

Prof. Yuval Yaish et al have developed a technology that addresses these challenges...

Three types of large-area solar cells made out of two-dimensional perovskites. At left, a room-temperature cast film; upper middle is a sample with the problematic band gap, and at right is the hot-cast sample with the best energy performance. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

In a step that could bring perovskite crystals closer to use in the burgeoning solar power industry, researchers have tweaked their crystal production method and developed a new type of 2D layered perovskite with outstanding stability and more than triple the material’s previous power conversion efficiency.

“Crystal orientation has been a puzzle for more than two decades, and this is the first time we’ve been able to flip the crystal in the actual casting process,” said Hsinhan Tsai, a Rice graduate student at L...