To measure in-plane piezoelectric stress, an MoS2 film was suspended on HSQ posts and clamped by two Au electrodes. When the film was indented with a scanning AFM probe, the induced stress changed the load on the cantilever, which was observed by the deflection of a laser beam. Credit: Berkeley Lab
Archive for the 'MEMS' Category
A possible top-down path to atomically precise manufacturing that passes through microscale machinery might be rendered easier because of recent progress in suppressing the Casimir force, which contributes to the ‘stiction’ problem often encountered with microelectromechanical systems.
The conceptual history of nanotechnology is usually traced to a classic talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” that Richard Feynman gave on December 29th 1959 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which was first published in Caltech Engineering and Science, Volume 23:5, February [...]
Calculations using density functional theory have demonstrated that graphene can be made piezoelectric by adsorbing atoms or molecules on one surface, or by adsorbing different atoms or molecules on each surface.
A new two-photon polymerization process enables fast printing of arbitrarily complex three dimensional objects with 100-nanometer resolution.
Will the integration of a single-crystal material with “giant” piezoelectric properties onto silicon make possible scanning probe microscopes on a chip?
Yarn woven from carbon nanotubes provides a thousand times more rotation than is obtained from other artificial muscles, and could be made into motors to provide propulsion for micrometer-sized medical nanorobots.
The interactions of xenon atoms with a nanoelectromechanical system have now been measured to characterize the statistical noise caused by atomic fluctuations.
Nanofabrication methods were used to observe a rare state of matter known as a ‘half-quantum vortex’, which may bring a solution to the decoherence hurdle to quantum computing.
An energy cell containing a lead zirconate titanate cantilever coated with a carbon nanotube film uses nanotechnology to produce electricity from scavenged light and thermal energy.
The worlds smallest snowman. from nanowerk The snowman is 10 µm across, 1/5th the width of a human hair. The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide, [...]
IEEE Spectrum: Radios With Micromachined Resonators. It’s likely that better mechanical components, and the cognitive-radio techniques they enable, will usher in the next wave of mobile telephony by giving our cellphones access to much more spectrum. These phones will operate in multiple bands, provide greater data throughput, and minimize if not eliminate the [...]
Koreans Show Feasibility of Room Temperature Version of IBM Millipede Super High Density Memory.
One of the major problems for micromachines, much less nanomachines, is wear. The phenomenon of stiction combines the two worst aspects of surface-to-surface interaction — a high coefficient of friction and a locally-generated high applied force — to cause enormous problems. At the very smallest scale, once we gain complete control over atomic configuration, superlubricity [...]
A newly discovered repulsive quantum mechanical force could be useful for nanotech applications by enabling a type of quantum levitation.
Arrays of atomic force probe tips are promising nanotech approaches to denser, faster, cheaper memories.
Swedish scientists have developed a computer program to calculate Casimir forces between various types of nanostructured materials, which may help to determine whether significant friction problems exist in specific designs.
Nanotech contributions to the development of medical science now include devices that can decipher the chemical communications among individual cells. A new microfluidic device called a multi-trap nanophysiometer promises to be particularly useful in elucidating the communications among individual cells of the immune system, and perhaps eventually revealing what goes wrong during the immune system’s [...]
Add to graphene’s record-breaking strength the discovery that graphene beams are unexpectedly stiff.
A double-walled carbon nanotube forms a device able to weigh a single atom of gold.