In an ideal world, energy would be cleaner and the fuels we use would be readily available.
23 February, 2010
A technique that enables replicas of biological structures, such as butterfly wings, to be made on a nanometric scale has been developed by a team of researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain.
22 February, 2010
Possibly the smallest Valentine's card in the world.
20 February, 2010
Researchers have been able to view in detail, and for the first time, the previously unexplained process by which long chains of a protein called ubiquitin are added to proteins that control the cell cycle.
09 February, 2010
You're looking at the tiniest snowman ever built, 10 microns across.
09 February, 2010
Valuable paintings travel long distances when they are shipped from one place to another. To minimize damage, they are packed in special picture cases.
09 February, 2010
Electronic devices can't work well unless all of the transistors, or switches, within them allow electrical current to flow easily when they are turned on.
09 February, 2010
Nanotechnology has now produced a coating for windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt.
09 February, 2010
Researchers at Delft University of Technology, [Juan-Alcañiz et al., Journal of Catalysis (2010), 269, 221] have reported the synthesis of a new class of porous solids with outstanding bi-functional catalytic activity.
09 February, 2010
Single-walled carbon nanotubes, SWNTs are the focus of much research aimed at building sophisticated nanoscopic structures for future electronic and spintronic devices. However, several conundrums surround their bizarre electrical conductivity behaviour, not least the issue of bandgap measurements and how these relate to the size and structure of semiconducting SWNTs.
09 February, 2010
The way a material behaves is commonly dependent on the characteristics of its surface. An international team based in France and the USA [Chabal et al., Nature Mater (2010) DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2611] has now used a process to allow "snap-on" chemistry on silicon substrates by nanopatterning their surfaces.
09 February, 2010
A fundamental laboratory advance has made it possible to break, at room temperature and pressure, two of the strongest types of chemical bonds in order to make common industrial compounds. In doing so, researchers at Cornell University have taken an important first step toward less-energy-intensive processes for making nitrogen-containing organic compounds. [Knobloch et al., Nature Chem., (2009) doi:10.1038/nchem.477]
09 February, 2010
Electric batteries take a long time to re-charge but have large capacities, while capacitors can be charged very rapidly, but suffer from low-power densities. Researchers in the US and Germany [ Brezesinski et al., Nature Mater. (2010) DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2612] are developing new materials that could be used in pseudocapacitors that charge rapidly and have high power densities.
09 February, 2010
Researchers from Duke University, North Carolina have created a lens which has a field of view close to 180° and a zero f-number [Kundtz et al., Nat. Mater. (2009) doi: 10.1038/NMAT2610].
09 February, 2010
Graphene can be turned into complex structures by simply placing nanodroplets of water on its surface, say researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago [Patra et al., Nano Lett. (2009) 9, 3767].
09 February, 2010
The importance of growing, functional and stable blood vessels at the site of an injury is crucial to regenerative medicine therapies. A new study has shown that synthetic polymers, called hydrogels, have been able to induce significant vasculature growth in areas of damaged tissue.
09 February, 2010
A new study has shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements, which could help the development of cheaper materials as new sources of energy, in pollution reduction and in catalysts for chemical processing.
09 February, 2010
An optical effect first predicted by Isaac Newton has been shown to occur when neutrons interact with matter.
01 February, 2010