Feb 08, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Leicester space scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mechanism fuelling huge planetary aurorae at Saturn. Saturn is unique among planets observed to date in that some of its aurorae are generated by swirling winds within its own atmosphere, and not just from the planet’s surrounding magnetosphere....
Insulation with aerogel: Building lean pays off
Feb 08, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Super-insulating materials such as aerogels are expensive. At the same time, they offer a powerful advantage: the thinner the insulation of a building, the larger its usable area. An Empa research team shows when and where, even today, the use of aerogel is already economically...
Nano-Imaging, a project to develop safe, tissue-specific MRI contrast agents with no side effects
Feb 08, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Ikerbasque professor and scientific director of CIC biomaGUNE Aitziber López-Cortajarena has received one of the prestigious ERC Proof of Concept grants amounting to €150,000 to develop the Nano-imaging project. Professor Cortajarena's project is one of 166 European projects that have secured the support of the...
Scientists develop conceptually new chip of lensless optical traps for lab-on-a-chip
Feb 08, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with their colleagues from National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan) have proposed a concept of a new optical bottle-beam trap. The scientists showed that two dielectric micro-bricks could be applied instead of the lens. Unlike its alternatives, in the long...
Columns designed from nanographenes
Feb 07, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Graphene is a carbon material that forms extremely thin layers. Because of its unusual properties, it is interesting for many technical applications. This also applies to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can be regarded as cut-outs of graphene. They are considered promising materials for organic...
Nanowires under tension create the basis for ultrafast transistors
Feb 07, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Smaller chips, faster computers, less energy consumption. Novel concepts based on semiconductor nanowires are expected to make transistors in microelectronic circuits better and more efficient. Electron mobility plays a key role in this: The faster electrons can accelerate in these tiny wires, the faster a...
On route to 3D printing with atomic resolution (w/video)
Feb 07, 2022 (Nanowerk Spotlight) When two or more 2D materials are placed on top of each other their properties change and a material with novel hybrid properties emerges. These materials are called van der Waals heterostructures because the atomically thin layers are not mixed through a chemical reaction but...
Biologists investigate smallest propeller on earth
Feb 07, 2022 (Nanowerk News) University of Exeter scientists have discovered new information about the tiny propellers used by single-cell organisms called archaea. Like bacteria, archaea are found in a vast range of habitats – including inside human bodies – but unlike bacteria they are not known to cause disease....
Manipulating liquid metals without contact
Feb 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In a landmark discovery, FLEET University of Wollongong (UOW) researchers have realised the non-contact manipulation of liquid metal. The metals can be controlled to move in any direction, and manipulated into unique, levitated shapes such as loops and squares by using a small voltage and...
Focus on organic transistors for health sensors within living organisms
Feb 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The currently available bioelectronic devices, such as pacemakers, that can be embedded with the human body are mostly based on rigid components However, the next-generation devices – which are researched and developed by bioelectronic engineers, organic chemists, and materials scientists – will use soft organic...