World News

GEIC signs NERD as Tier 1 partner

Nationwide Engineering Research & Development (NERD) has signed a Tier 1 agreement with The University of Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC), extending the ecosystem of key industrial partners working collaborativel...

Jan 26, 2023

Special microscope shows different anti-icing strategies of plant leaves

Phys.org - Scientific News Websites

When environmental temperatures go below zero, ice crystals are formed on many leaves of evergreen plants. Nevertheless, they usually survive frost phases unharmed. Using a special cryo-scanning electron microscope, researchers from the Zoological...

Jan 26, 2023

Researchers demo new type of carbon nanotube yarn that harvests mechanical energy

ScienceDaily - General News Websites

Nanotechnology researchers have made novel carbon nanotube yarns that convert mechanical movement into electricity more effectively than other material-based energy harvesters.

Jan 26, 2023

Using bottlebrush-shaped nanoparticles, researchers can identify and deliver synergistic combinations of cancer drugs

Phys.org - Scientific News Websites

Treating cancer with combinations of drugs can be more effective than using a single drug. However, figuring out the optimal combination of drugs, and making sure that all of the drugs reach the right place, can be challenging.

Jan 26, 2023

Graphene researchers discover long-term memory in 2D nanofluidic channels

Phys.org - Scientific News Websites

A collaboration between teams from the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester, and the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris, demonstrated Hebbian learning in artificial nanochannels, where the channels showed short and ...

Jan 26, 2023

Rust-removing sound waves could breathe new life into MXene batteries ",plain_text=" For some time now, a nanomaterial known as MXene has been touted as a faster-charging alternative to the lithium used in batteries. It could soon be an even more viable choice, as scientists have devised a method of making it last much longer.Currently, one of MXene's big drawbacks is the fact that it rusts quite easily in humid environments, inhibiting its electrical conductivity. If that rust can't be removed, then MXene batteries can't be refurbished and put back into use.And unfortunately, removing the rust has proven to be quite difficult, as MXene membranes are considerably thinner than the width of a human hair. Adding chemical coatings to the material does help keep rust from forming, although doing so also limits MXene's uses.All of that having been said, a team at Australia's RMIT University has now discovered that sound waves seem to do the rust-removal trick.More specifically, the scientists found that when an oxidized (rusted) MXene membrane was exposed to high-frequency sounds waves, that membrane vibrated in such a manner that all the rust fell off of it within approximately one minute. Once that rust was gone, the MXene was restored to close to its original state.It is now hoped that if MXene batteries do become widely used, they could periodically receive the sound-wave treatment, keeping them out of the landfill."Materials used in electronics, including batteries, generally suffer deterioration after two or three years of use due to rust forming," said Assoc. Prof. Amgad Rezk, one of the lead senior researchers. "With our method, we can potentially extend the lifetime of battery components by up to three times."The research is described in a paper that was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.Source: RMIT University

New Atlas - Scientific News Websites

For some time now, a nanomaterial known as MXene has been touted as a faster-charging alternative to the lithium used in batteries. It could soon be an even more viable choice, as scientists have devised a method of making it last much longer.Cont...

Jan 25, 2023

Helpful disturbance: how non-linear dynamics can augment edge sensor time series

Tokyo Institute of Technology - Organizations and Universities Websites

Engineers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have demonstrated a simple computational approach for supporting the classification performance of neural networks operating on sensor time series. The proposed technique involves feeding th...

Jan 25, 2023

Stacking Turns Organic Transistors Up ",plain_text=" Organic electronics appear to be, as the name might imply, quite good at interacting with a biological body and brain. Now scientists have created record-breaking, high-performance organic electronic devices using a potentially cheap, easy, and scalable approach that adopts a vertical architecture instead of a flat one, according to a new study.Modern electronics rely on transistors, which are essentially switches that flick on and off to encode data as ones and zeros. Most transistors are made of inorganic semiconductors, but organic electronics depend on organic compounds. Whereas organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have ions that accumulate only on the surface of the organic material, organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) rely on ions flowing in and out of organic semiconductors. This feature helps make OECTs efficient switches and powerful amplifiers.“Our vertically stacked electrochemical transistor takes performance to a totally new level.”—Tobin Marks, Northwestern UniversityOrganic electronics have a number of advantages over their standard counterparts, such as flexibility, low weight, and easy, cheap fabrication. The way in which OECTs communicate—using ions, just as biology does—may also open up applications such as biomedical sensing, body-machine interfaces, and brain-imitating neuromorphic technology. In addition, previous research found that OECTs can possess exceptionally low driving voltages of less than 1 volt, low power consumption of less than 1 microwatt, and high transconductances—a measure of how well they can amplify signals—of more than 10 millisiemens.However, previous research into OECTs was hindered by problems such as slow speeds and poor stability during operation. Until now, the best OECTs could achieve switching speeds of roughly 1 kilohertz and a stability on the order of 5,000 cycles of switching. In addition, manufacturing these devices often required complex, expensive fabrication techniques as well as channel lengths—the distance between the source and the drain electrodes—that were at least 10 micrometers long.Now scientists have developed OECTs with switching speeds greater than 1 kHz, a stability across more than 50,000 cycles, channel lengths of less than 100 nanometers, as well as transconductances of 200 to 400 mS—figures that are the highest seen yet in OECTs. The key to this advance is a vertical architecture in which these devices are built like sandwiches, instead of the flat architecture seen with most previous OECTs and conventional transistors (in which they are laid out like street maps).“Our vertically stacked electrochemical transistor takes performance to a totally new level,” says study cosenior author Tobin Marks, a materials chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.OECTs have three electrodes—a source and drain electrode connected by a thin film, or channel, of an organic semiconductor, plus a gate electrode connected to an electrolyte material that covers the channel. Applying a voltage to the gate electrode causes ions in the electrolyte to flow into the channel, altering the current passing between the source and drain electrodes.In the new study, the researchers sandwiched the channel between two gold electrodes—the source on the bottom and the drain on top, with neither electrode completely covering the channel. The channel was made of a semiconducting ion-permeable compound mixed with another polymer that helped make the channel structurally robust and more stable during operation. The electrolyte lay on top of both the channel and the drain electrode.The scientists noted they could fabricate these vertical OECTs in a simple and scalable way using standard manufacturing techniques. The vertical architecture also means these devices can be stacked on top of each other to achieve high circuit density, they say. The gate can also readily be modified—say, with biomolecules designed to latch onto specific molecules—to help serve as a sensor, says study coauthor Jonathan Rivnay, a materials scientist and biomedical engineer at Northwestern University.In addition, the scientists could make the channel using either an n-type semiconductor, which carries negative charges in the form of electrons, or a p-type semiconductor, which carries positive charges in the form of holes. Previously, high-performance n-type OECTs, which are crucial for sensors and logic circuits, have proven difficult to build. In the new study, the research team’s vertical n-type OECTs outperformed any previous n- and p-type OECTs when used in complementary logic circuits that use both n- and p-type OECTs. (This work also marked the first vertically stacked complementary OECT logic circuits.)The researchers are now exploring how to modify the materials and fabrication techniques used to make the vertical OECTs to further boost their speed and stability, Marks says.The scientists detailed their findings in the 19 January issue of the journal Nature.

IEEE Spectrum - Scientific and Educational Websites

Organic electronics appear to be, as the name might imply, quite good at interacting with a biological body and brain. Now scientists have created record-breaking, high-performance organic electronic devices using a potentially cheap, easy, and s...

Jan 25, 2023

Study links nano and macro aspects of everyday force

Phys.org - Scientific News Websites

Without the force called friction, cars would skid off the roadway, humans couldn't stride down the sidewalk, and objects would tumble off your kitchen counter and onto the floor. Even so, how friction works at a molecular scale remains poorl...

Jan 24, 2023

GHz burst mode femtosecond laser pulses can create unique two-dimensional periodic surface nanostructures

Phys.org - Scientific News Websites

Scientists working on laser application at the RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics (RAP) have demonstrated that GHz burst mode femtosecond laser pulses can create unique two-dimensional (2D) laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on sil...

Jan 24, 2023