Posts Tagged «nano»
New flexible micro-supercapacitor paves way for tiny electronics August 8, 2013 at 10:30 am
Before the age of the smartphone, mobile phone manufacturers were locked in an arms race to see who could create a smaller, but still usable device. Smartphones came along, and now the arms race is more or less focused on how big a screen can be while still being accepted by consumers. During this arms race, the way to keep phones from being unwieldy is to make them thin. Researchers have created a new supercapacitor so small that if it were used in smartphones, could make the devices even thinner and lighter than they are now.
How to write with single atoms, on the cheap July 5, 2013 at 11:51 am
Boston University researchers say they’ve taken nano-scale lithography to the a new level of usefulness, creating a machine that can lay down previously impossible patterns at the atomic scale, and do it without hassle or expense.
Harvard creates beautiful, self-assembled nanoflowers to better understand nature May 23, 2013 at 8:36 am
The beautiful flowers that you see above, and dotted throughout the rest of this story, are around 25 micrometers tall and 10 micrometers wide. Even more impressively, these flowers self-assembled from three fairly normal chemical compounds. Rather than just an exercise in aesthetics, though, scientists hope these nanoflowers can improve our scientific understanding of how immensely complex structures in nature, such as human embryos, self-assemble.
Teenage girl creates tiny device that could charge a smartphone in 20 seconds May 21, 2013 at 1:20 pm
When you’re out all day, it’s a huge pain to charge your mobile devices. Even if you remember to bring a charger and get lucky enough to find a free electrical outlet at a coffee shop, you still have to sit there for around an hour or so to get a full charge. 18-year-old high school student Eesha Khare invented a tiny device that could potentially charge a phone in around 20 to 30 seconds.
Smart dust: A complete computer that’s smaller than a grain of sand May 15, 2013 at 11:58 am
Called the Michigan Micro Mote, or M3, this tiny computer features processing, data storage, and wireless communication. Researcher Pabral Dutta thinks it will be the next revolution in computing.
Aging, cryonics, and the quest for immortality May 8, 2013 at 10:36 am
There are a few themes that have dogged the visionaries of speculative fiction more than the quest to cheat death, and today we may actually be within sight of completing that goal.
Researchers create transistors out of nanowire forests, for ‘ultimate scaling’ beyond 10nm May 1, 2013 at 2:00 pm
As transistor size decreases, the limits of planar technologies have been partially alleviated by stepping into the third dimension. Researchers in France have come up with a 3D transistor design based on silicon nanowires that promises to extend lithographic techniques down to ever smaller scales.
IBM creates world’s smallest movie with a handful of precisely placed atoms May 1, 2013 at 7:14 am
IBM’s bleeding-edge nanophysicists have created the world’s smallest movie (embedded below), by moving single carbon atoms around a copper surface. The film, called A Boy and His Atom, is 60 seconds long and made of 242 individual stop-motion frames, with each frame being roughly 50 atoms wide. So you have some idea of this truly minute scale, a human hair is about 1,000,000 atoms wide. If IBM so wished, it could convert A Boy And His Atom into a feature film, and still fit the frames within the width of a human hair.
World’s toughest material created by tying slip knots into weak, commercial thread April 29, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Nicola Pugno, at the University of Trento in Italy, has succeeded in making by far the toughest material in the world — by taking a conventional piece of fiber… and tying it in a slip knot. This method seems (and is) so simple that the inventor is calling it the Egg of Columbus, which refers to a discovery that has eluded mankind forever — but seems incredibly obvious and easy after the fact.
Graphene-based nanosheets give lithium-ion batteries more energy storage April 29, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Modern lives are ruled by mobile devices, from smartphones and tablets, to portable gaming systems and e-readers. Considering these devices need some kind of power source, this means that batteries are what actually have dominion over our daily activities. Battery tech hasn’t improved at the rate of the hardware it powers, but the industry has been taking baby steps. Now, Chinese scientists have taken a new baby step that could help batteries store more power.