Nanoelectronics News

Nanomachinery Lights Up

by Lewis Brindley

A light-activated switch to turn nanomachines on and off has been developed by Japanese researchers. The team showed how tiny tweezers made with DNA could be triggered to open and close in response to UV and visible light. The clever mechanism is hoped to find useful roles in designing future nano-robots.

DNA is a versatile building block to construct nanomachinery that is small enough to interact with single molecules. But these nanomachines usually require a source of 'fuel' to trigger activity: typically small DNA fragments that are added each cycle. The problems associated with this process are delays in activating and deactivating systems, and the build up of waste products that can inhibit movement.

Energy-harvesting Rubber Sheets Could Power Pacemakers, Mobile Phones

Nanotechnology - Nanoelectronics

by Chris Emery

Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.

The material, composed of ceramic nanoribbons embedded onto silicone rubber sheets, generates electricity when flexed and is highly efficient at converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. Shoes made of the material may one day harvest the pounding of walking and running to power mobile electrical devices. Placed against the lungs, sheets of the material could use breathing motions to power pacemakers, obviating the current need for surgical replacement of the batteries that power the devices.

Better Batteries with Nano-cables

Nanotechnology - Nanoelectronics

Nano-sized cables made with titanium dioxide (TiO₂)-coated carbon nanotubes could hold the key to developing new high-capacity batteries, report chemists in Germany and China.

Lithium-ion batteries are in great demand for applications from laptops to hybrid cars - but the list of requirements is long. They need to be lightweight, cheap and environmentally friendly, but also store enormous charge.

Paper Battery May Power Electronics in Clothing and Packaging Material

Nanotechnology - Nanoelectronics

Imagine a gift wrapped in paper you really do treasure and want to carefully fold and save. That's because the wrapping paper lights up with words like "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Holidays," thanks to a built in battery — an amazing battery made out of paper. That's one potential application of a new battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper, being described in the October 14 issue of ACS' Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Albert Mihranyan and colleagues note in the report that scientists are trying to develop light, ecofriendly, inexpensive batteries consisting entirely of nonmetal parts. The most promising materials include so-called conductive polymers or "plastic electronics." One conductive polymer, polypyrrole (PPy), shows promise, but was often regarded as too inefficient for commercial batteries. The scientists realized, however, that by coating PPy on a large surface area substrate and carefully tailoring the thickness of the PPy coating, both the charging capacity and the charging (discharging) rates can be drastically improved.

Using Carbon Nanotubes to Detect Nitric Oxide

Nanotechnology - Nanoelectronics

New sensor could reveal nitric oxide's role in living cells

Source: "The rational design of nitric oxide selectivity in single-walled carbon nanotube near infrared fluorescence sensors for biological detection"
Jong-Ho Kim et al
Nature Chemistry

Results: A new carbon nanotube sensor developed at MIT is the first sensor that can reversibly detect nitric oxide, a gas that cells commonly use to communicate with each other. Because the nitric oxide-carbon nanotube binding is reversible, the sensor can be used multiple times.

Folded Nanoboxes Could Open Door to Nano-circuits

Nanotechnology - Nanoelectronics

DO YOU remember as a child producing paper cubes by folding up a flat cross shape? Now two researchers have applied the same technique to the nanoscale, in the process creating the first nanoparticles with precisely patterned surfaces. These patterns could form the basis of electronic nano-circuits or provide docking stations on targeted drug-delivery particles.

"At the macroscale, everything can easily be patterned in three dimensions," lead researcher David Gracias at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, Maryland, told New Scientist. "However, nanoparticles with precisely patterned 3D surfaces simply do not exist."