Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) How do you integrate the advantages of a benchtop laser that fills a room onto a semiconductor chip the size of a fingernail? A research team co-led by Qiang Lin, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester, has set new...
Topological defects may hold the key to nanotechnology’s future as well as the universe’s origins
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A team of researchers led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Edwin Fohtung, associate professor of materials science and engineering, has combined expertise in mathematics and condensed matter physics with technological advances to discover new properties of magnetic ferroelectric materials. In research recently published in MRS Advances...
Penguin feathers may be secret to effective, nanostructured anti-icing technology
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Ice buildup on powerlines and electric towers brought the northern US and southern Canada to a standstill during the Great Ice Storm of 1998, leaving many in the cold and dark for days and even weeks. Whether it is on wind turbines, electric towers, drones,...
Even good gene edits can go bad
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A Rice University lab is leading the effort to reveal potential threats to the efficacy and safety of therapies based on CRISPR-Cas9, the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing technique, even when it appears to be working as planned. Bioengineer Gang Bao of Rice’s George R. Brown...
nanostructures help in many ways
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Tandem solar cells made of perovskite and silicon enable significantly higher efficiencies than silicon solar cells alone. Tandem cells from HZB have already achieved several world records. Most recently, in November 2021, HZB research teams achieved a certified efficiency of 29.8 % with a tandem...
Scientists manufacture ‘living blood vessel’
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) An international consortium of researchers led by the University of Sydney, has developed technology to enable the manufacturing of materials that mimic the structure of living blood vessels, with significant implications for the future of surgery (Advanced Materials, "Rapid Regeneration of a Neoartery with Elastic...
Trapping polaritons in an engineered quantum box
Oct 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Australian researchers have engineered a quantum box for polaritons in a two-dimensional material, achieving large polariton densities and a partially ‘coherent’ quantum state (Physical Review Letters, "Enhancing ground-state population and macroscopic coherence of room-temperature WS2 polaritons through engineered confinement"). New insights coming from the novel...
Speeding up DNA computation with liquid droplets
Oct 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Recent studies have shown that liquid-liquid phase separation – akin to how oil droplets form in water – leads to formation of diverse types of membraneless organelles, such as stress granules and nucleoli, in living cells. These organelles, also called biomolecular condensates, are liquid droplets...
Now with double the spookiness
Oct 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) JILA and NIST Fellow James K. Thompson’s team of researchers have for the first time successfully combined two of the “spookiest” features of quantum mechanics to make a better quantum sensor: entanglement between atoms and delocalization of atoms. Einstein originally referred to entanglement as creating...
Tentacle robot can gently grasp fragile objects (w/video)
Oct 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) If you’ve ever played the claw game at an arcade, you know how hard it is to grab and hold onto objects using robotics grippers. Imagine how much more nerve-wracking that game would be if, instead of plush stuffed animals, you were trying to grab...