Carbon nanotubes with the proper imperfections were found to replace more problematic and expensive materials in dye-sensitized solar cells.
Two different types of nanostructures have been reported as nanotech methods to clean up oil spills and other organic pollutants.
Very precise measurements confirmed many of the unusual effects theoretically predicted for graphene, but they also revealed effects of unanticipated additional interactions, which are not yet understood.
Researchers have developed a method of producing titanium oxide crystals with more reactive surfaces.
Two researchers were rewarded with the 2008 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for their pioneering discoveries of quantum dots and carbon nanotubes.
In yet another step toward making nanotech transistors from graphene nanoribbons, chemically-prepared graphene nanoribbons less than 10 nm wide were found to be uniformly room-temperature, field-effect transistors.
Nanotech materials useful for a wide variety of applications may result from the discovery that adding very small amounts of graphene to polymers greatly increases the desirable properties of the polymers.
The safe commercialization of nanotech will require special attention to the manufacture and disposal of materials using carbon nanotubes.
Nanowires of indium phosphide grown directly on an electrode greatly increase the flow of electrons through a polymer film to the electrode.
Nanotechnology can use catalytic motors to convert chemical to mechanical energy, using fuels that are chemically simpler than ATP and catalysts that are simpler than enzymes.
