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Nanopores store extra charge
Researchers at Drexel University, US, and Paul Sabatier University, France, have found that the capacitance of carbon supercapacitors increased with decreasing pore size for pores less than 1 nm across. The finding could have implications for tailoring supercapacitor structure for specific applications.
Scientists at the University of Washington, US, have demonstrated a microscopy technique that could help developers to improve the efficiency of organic solar cells. The new technique, which is based on electrostatic force microscopy (EFM), reveals the relationship between the surface morphology of the photovoltaic film and the cell performance.
Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New Millennium Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Florida State University, and NuQuest Research, all in the US, have come up with an optical imaging technique that can pinpoint proteins in cells with nanometre resolution. The method, dubbed photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) attaches fluorescent protein molecules to the proteins of interest and photoactivates, and images just a few of the fluorescent molecules at a time.
Researchers at Purdue University, US, have grown arrays of vertical single-walled and double-walled carbon nanotubes from a porous anodic alumina (PAA) template with iron catalyst embedded within the pore walls. While PAA templates have been the basis of multiwalled nanotube growth, the team believes that this is the first time their use has resulted in single-walled nanotubes.
Researchers at Wake Forest University, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, all in the US, have used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to test the mechanical properties of individual fibres of fibrin, one of the main constituents of blood clots. Their findings could have implications for research into wound healing, strokes and heart attacks.
Porous materials can have unusual properties such as large surface areas, making them ideal as catalysts and sensors. Silicon containing nanoscale pores can emit light, even though ordinary silicon cannot. Now two independent groups of researchers in the US have developed techniques to make porous versions of germanium - another semiconductor widely used in microelectronics. The material could be used to make more efficient solar cells and chemical sensors.
Researchers from Rice University, US, say they have come up with the first way of sorting semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes by size. The dielectrophoresis field flow fractionation (DEP-FFF) technique could be a valuable first step in preparing nanotubes for applications from nanoelectronics to drug delivery.
Rice University Scientists have developed the first method to sort semiconductor carbon nanotubes by size. It separates metallic nanotubes from semiconducting ones and sorts the semiconducting tubes according to their diameters. The ability to separate and sort nanotubes like this will be essential for high-speed nanoscale electronics....
Nanosolar to build world's largest solar cell factory
Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley start-up founded in 2001 to commercialize low-cost solar cells, has won $100 m in funding to build a manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay area that will produce 200 million solar cells per year.
Physicists in Japan have made a device that can detect individual electrons that are flowing either forwards or backwards. The device - the most sensitive ammeter to date - allows currents to be measured in the attoampere range for the first time. Dubbed a bi-directional single-electron ammeter, the device could be used for a wide variety of applications, including nanoelectronics, calibration devices, quantum computation and biology.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry have used scattering near-field microscopy (s-SNOM) to determine infrared spectra of nanoparticles and viruses. The technique has a resolution of around 30 nm and could become a powerful tool for chemical and protein secondary structure identification.
Scientists have long recognized that metals would make wonderful building blocks for a variety of electro-mechanical devices, since they are electrically conductive, optically reflective, mechanically tough and in some cases bioactive.
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