Author: Foresight Editor

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)."

from the ways-to-pick-an-atom dept.
Quantum net for atom angling, an article by Philip Ball online at nature science update (July 30, 2002) describes recently published calculations indicating that "Physicists should be able to land exact numbers of atoms from a quantum cloud." A quantum dot dipped into a Bose-Einstein Condensate for a specified time interval should withdraw one atom from the BEC; for a longer period two atoms, etc.

from the smaller-cooler-sooner? dept.
DARPA researcher pursues 'nanomemory' (a UPI Science News article by Scott R. Burnell, published 8/4/2002) reports that DARPA program manager Kwan Kwok "plans to have a working nanoscale computer memory by 2004. If so, one square centimeter's worth of the device Kwok envisions could hold more than 10 gigabytes of data, enough for several full-length movies." The report provides no details on the arrays of molecular wires that are planned. Although only a factor of 30 or so beyond the storage density of current state-of-the-art hard drives, 'nanomemory' would also be superior to current dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in terms of much lower heat production and power use.