Aug 28, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A team of researchers is designing novel systems to capture water vapour in the air and turn it into liquid. University of Waterloo professor Michael Tam and his PhD students Yi Wang and Weinan Zhao have developed sponges or membranes with a large surface area...
Plant-based hydrogels use sunlight for sustainable carbon capture
Aug 28, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) The escalating climate crisis has intensified the global search for sustainable solutions to counteract the adverse effects of greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), a method that involves selectively capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, has emerged as a promising strategy. However,...
Multiwavelength high speed quantum well nanowire array micro-LED for next-generation on-chip optical communication
Aug 28, 2023 (Nanowerk News) As the number of cores in a processor continues to grow, so too does the challenge of connecting them all together. Traditional electrical networks fall short due to latency, limited bandwidth, and high-power consumption. Researchers have long sought for a better alternative, and on-chip nanophotonic...
using DNA to create a new family of 3-dimensional nanotransistors
Aug 24, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Using DNA technologies to create a new generation of tiny electronics components at low production costs: this is the main goal of the European-funded project 3D-BRICKS, coordinated by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa (Italy), and involving an interdisciplinary team of...
Improving food safety with Lab-in-a-Package technology
Aug 24, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) In today's interconnected world, food supply chains have grown increasingly complex, spanning multiple countries and involving numerous intermediaries. This complexity has led to a heightened risk of foodborne illnesses due to contamination. Traditional methods for detecting pathogens in food are often labor-intensive and time-consuming, requiring...
AtomAI brings deep learning to microscopy data analysis software
Aug 24, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have developed a new software package for analyzing images from electron and scanning probe microscopy. The package, AtomAI, uses deep learning. This is a type of machine learning that allows a program to train itself to accurately identify the contents of an image or...
What challenges need to be overcome to make DNA chips more applicable as storage media
Aug 24, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The hereditary molecule DNA can store a great deal of information over long periods of time in a very small space. For a good ten years, scientists have therefore been pursuing the goal of developing DNA chips for computer technology, for example for the long-term...
Graphene discovery could help generate cheaper and more sustainable hydrogen
Aug 23, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from The University of Manchester and the University of Warwick finally solved the long-standing puzzle of why graphene is so much more permeable to protons than expected by theory. A decade ago, scientists at The University of Manchester demonstrated that graphene is permeable to...
Guiding the design of silicon devices with improved efficiency
Aug 23, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Silicon is one of the most pervasive functional materials of the modern age, underpinning semiconductor technologies ranging from microelectronics to solar cells. Indeed, silicon transistors enable computing applications from cell phones to supercomputers, while silicon photovoltaics are the most widely deployed solar-cell technology to date....
Closing the loop between artificial intelligence and robotic experiments
Aug 23, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The powers of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic experiment systems have come together in pioneering proof-of-concept work at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Japan. The researchers describe the development and demonstration of their “closed loop” automation software in the journal Science and...