Month: August 2002

from the bridging-small-gaps dept.
Nanotubes grown in place, an article by Eric Smalley in Technology Research News, reports the accomplishment of Stanford University researchers in growing individual carbon nanotubes directly between pairs of electrodes formed on a silicon wafer using photolithography. "The resulting nanotubes were 2.5 nanometers in diameter and spanned electrode gaps ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 nanometers." Anticipated applications include use in sensors, electromechanical transducers, and high frequency mechanical resonators. The research was published in the July 29, 2002 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

from the place-your-bets dept.
Enthusiasm of investors for nanotechnology is evidenced by the warm reception given a recent offering of stock by a company that invests in nanotechnology companies that are not themselves publicly traded. Harris & Harris Group Receives Subscriptions For 2,634,614 Shares Of Stock In Rights Offering, available at Stockhouse.com, quotes Harris & Harris CEO Charles E. Harris, "… we can only interpret this successful Rights Offering as strong testimony to our shareholders' desire to put money to work through the Company in tiny-technology enabled investments. We certainly thank our fellow shareholders for their support."

from the more-bucks-for-bricks-and-mortar dept.
From SmallTimes, New Building to House Nanotechnology Research at UCLA reports that "The University of California, Los Angeles, is getting a new state-of-the-art 180,000-square-foot Nanosystems building." The $70 million institute was funded through private corporate partners and the state of California and is targeted for completion in winter 2004. It will be "part of a larger Nanosystems Institute project with UCSB to build about 280,000 square feet of lab and office space between the two campuses."

from the clean-them-up-and-they-will-shine dept.
Gina Miller writes "An article on Small Times features work by Rice University's Richard Smalley and group and the photophysics research team of chemist R. Bruce Weisman. The research [Band Gap Fluorescence from Individual Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes, Science 297, 26 July 2002, pp. 593-596] details how individual carbon nanotubes, disaggregated by sonication and kept separated by coating with the detergent molecule sodium dodecylsulfate, absorb light and then fluoresce (give off light) in the near-infrared spectrum. Because human tissue is nearly transparent in this spectral region, this work may one day be useful for inexpensive bioimaging, optical biosensors to diagnose abnormal cells within the body, and nanoelectronics."

from the confining-electrons-for-fun-and-profit dept.
Gina Miller writes "A Wired News article Honey, Who Shrank the Circuits? reports on a conference, Physics of Semiconductors, in Edinburgh, Scotland. A Swedish team (for earlier mention, see Nanodot post of March 5, 2002) reported the construction of a 'double-barrier resonant tunneling device' in nanowires 20 to 50 nm in diameter in which wire segments composed of different semiconductors form devices by creating different types of barriers to electron movement along the wires. Other teams reported progress with fabricating nanostructures like quantum dots and quantum confined atoms (atoms confined in nanocrystal cages) with controlled electronic, optical, and magnetic properties."

from the bucks-for-bricks-and-mortar dept.
waynerad writes "Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories will jointly receive $75.8 million from the DOE for the design and construction of buildings to house the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). The article says they will pursue the possibility for 'atoms-up engineering' in the long term, but the short-term goals are 'new ways to develop sensors, satellites, and security measures to support our nuclear deterrent'. Also have a look at the fact sheet."

from the imaging-atoms dept.
RobVirkus writes "A new I.B.M electron microscope has a resolving power 'less than the radius of a single hydrogen atom'. The beam is 'only three-billionth of an inch wide' which converted is about 0.0762 NM. The image is also three dimensional imaging up to 10 NM depth. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/08/technology/08BLU E.html"

from the spin-dots dept.
waynerad writes "Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison claim to have created the world's first successful simulation of a quantum-computer architecture that uses existing silicon fabrication techniques. By harnessing both vertical and horizontal tunneling through dual top and bottom gates, the architecture lays out interacting, 50-nanometer-square, single-electron quantum dots across a chip. The group of researchers has concluded that existing silicon fabrication equipment can be used to create quantum computers, albeit at only megahertz speeds today due to the stringent requirements of its pulse generators."

from the learning-from-biology dept.
2012Rocky writes "I recently completed an interview with George Bachand at Sandia regarding his work with molecular motors."

George Bachand: "We are interested in mimicking Nature's ability to actively assemble, reconfigure, and disassemble nanoscale materials and structures. As an example, we are interested in mimicking the mechanism by which organisms such as chameleons change color. This involves rearrangement of pigmented nanoparticles by linear translation using biological motors."

from the courageously-extended-necks dept.
pedro writes "I caught at /. a reference to a cnet article summarizing the report by the national science foundation and the department of commerce entitled 'Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science'. It's an interesting read, and I hope it prepares me to the report itself (405 pages)."