Category: Research

from the dilated-to-meet-you dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "From Eureka Alert: Key to the pore size changes are photoacid molecules that self-assemble and uniformly incorporate into a periodic nanostructure. A light shone on these molecules breaks them apart to form an acid that causes silica to solidify locally. The amount of solidification, which necessarily shrinks pore sizes to create the denser material, is proportional to the amount of light shone on the membrane." The paper itself is in Science (registration required).

from the can-I-get-in-convenient-spray-can-form? dept.
JohnPierce writes "A EurekAlert! news release describes how Virginia Tech researchers from physics, chemistry, and chemical engineering are working with a local company to create self-assembled thin film solar cells. 'This photovoltaic device is created without the use of toxic solvents or expensive instruments and under ambient conditions.'"

from the this-trick-is-done-with-wires dept.
GinaMiller alerted us to a Georgia Tech press release describing a study of the electronic properties of silicon nanowires. [Full article requires PRL subscription.] "Large-scale simulations of silicon nanowires just several atoms in diameter have given device designers new clues about how these nanometer-scale devices will one day perform. The work provides a basis for anticipating how the quantum mechanical effects that dominate behavior of materials at this size scale will alter the operation of future generations of electronic devices."

from the poke-n-prod dept.
Will Ware pointed out on slashdot that two phenyl (C₆H₅) radicals have now been pushed together to form a molecule of biphenyl.

Saw-Wai Hla, Ludwig Bartels, Gerhard Meyer, and Karl-Heinz Rieder, writing in [Phys.Rev.Lett. 85:2777-2780 25Sep2000] describe forming phenyl radicals from iodobenzene, pushing two radicals together mechanically, and forming a bond between them to yield a biphenyl molecule. All of this was done with an STM.

from the keeping-the-little-ones-in-line dept.
alison writes "Scientists at the University of Bielefeld in Germany have come up with a new electromagnetic method of controlling the motion and orientation of polar molecules simultaneously. Control of the motion of Bose-Einstein condensates along wires had already been demonstrated by a group in Austria. Ewan Wright of the University of Arizona tells me that arbitrary hard-to-condense atoms can now be B-E condensed by placing them in a trap with an easy-condensing species to which they transfer energy. This is not unlike a common scheme in lasers where an easy-to-pump molecule transfers energy to another molecule with a desirable transition, e.g. N₂ gas in with CO₂ in a CO₂ laser.

I'm convinced now more than ever that a potential 'assembler' will be a vacuum system with interwoven laser beams, electric and magnetic fields that energy-select species, orient them and transport them to a surface."

from the how-many-bits-on-the-head-of-an-electron dept.
Michael Dale noticed this in EETimes. "Interesting development in the quantum computer realm. '…Bucksbaum used a laser to encode parallel phase reversals along the waveform of an atom's electrons – a pulsating stream of 8-bit phase reversals. A second reference stream enabled the researchers to read back out the original bits by decoding the phase reversals, thereby recovering the stored information like a data register…'

Bucksbaum claims there is no 'theoretic limit to how long a string of 1s and 0s you can store in one'. "