Technut News

Chemical brain controls nanobots

A tiny chemical “brain” which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.

The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.

Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

“If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there,” explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan.

“But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place.”

Wiperless windshield created, powered by nanotech

Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (of Pininfarina fame) has developed a prototype car with a windshield that doesn’t need wipers. It can brush away water and dirt all by itself.

The car, dubbed Hidra, uses a special aerodynamic design along with four sophisticated surface treatments to the windshield to keep the driver’s view clear. The first treatment filters the sun and repels water. The second is made of nano-dust which is able to push dirt to the edges of the glass. This dust is activated by the third layer, which senses dirt and activates the second layer as necessary. Finally, it’s all topped off by the fourth layer which is a conductor of electricity to power the whole mechanism.

Fioravanti claims that this technology could go into mass production within 5 years, but it already works and has been installed on the Hidra concept car.

Scientists Scan Striking Nanoscale Images

For the first time, late last year, a team of British scientists filmed the nanoscale interaction of an attacking virus with an enzyme and a DNA strand in real time.

This was the latest breakthrough in the advancement of scanning probe microscopes — the family of nonoptical microscopes researchers use to create striking images through raster scans of individual atoms.

The granddaddy of them all is the scanning tunneling microscope, a 1986 invention that won its creators the Nobel Prize. STMs pass an electrical probe over a substance, allowing scientists to visualize regions of high electron density and infer the position of individual atoms and molecules.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the development of STMs, an international contest — SPMage07 — showcasing the best STM images was founded.

Nanowires Could Turn Your T-Shirts Into Nano-Power Stations

A nanotech invention by a US research team offers an intriguing glimpse of the future: slip on some nanowire-embedded clothes, plug your MP3 player or cellphone into them, and as you dance or walk around, your outfit generates enough power to run the gadget. More details on how the fabric works, and some nano-imagery after the jump.

Professor Zhong Lin Wang and team of the Georgia Institute of Technology coated kevlar strands with zinc oxide nanowires, protecting the bushy wires with a polymer and adding gold to other fibers to act as a conductor. The piezoelectric power-generating action comes when the nanowires bend as two fibers rub together, translating bending of the material into electricity which flows along the gold fibers.

Professor Wang says that across several square feet of fabric the nanowire fibers can generate power adding up to tens of milliwatts, which is not a huge amount, but is certainly enough for a dribble top-up charge for your portable devices.

‘Holy Grail’ Of Nanoscience: DNA Technique Yields 3-D Crystalline Organization Of Nanoparticles

In an achievement some see as the “holy grail” of nanoscience, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have for the first time used DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles (particles with dimensions measured in billionths of a meter). The ability to engineer such 3-D structures is essential to producing functional materials that take advantage of the unique properties that may exist at the nanoscale - for example, enhanced magnetism, improved catalytic activity, or new optical properties.

“From previous research, we know that highly selective DNA binding can be used to program nanoparticle interactions,” said Oleg Gang, a scientist at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), who led the interdisciplinary research team, which includes Dmytro Nykypanchuk and Mathew Maye of the CFN, and Daniel van der Lelie of the Biology Department. “But while theory has intriguingly predicted that DNA can guide nanoparticles to form ordered, 3-D phases, no one has accomplished this experimentally, until now.”

As with the group’s previous work, the new assembly method relies on the attractive forces between complementary strands of DNA - the molecule made of pairing bases known by the letters A, T, G, and C that carries the genetic code of living things. First, the scientists attach to nanoparticles hair-like extensions of DNA with specific “recognition sequences” of complementary bases. Then they mix the DNA-covered particles in solution. When the recognition sequences find one another in solution, they bind together to link the nanoparticles.

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“This work is the first step to demonstrate that it is possible to obtain ordered structures. But it opens so many avenues for researchers, and this is why it is so exciting,” Gang says.

Nano-Prospecting

Could nanotechnology help squeeze more oil and gas out of the ground? That’s the hope of a consortium of energy companies that is putting millions of dollars into the development of new micro- and nanosensor technologies.

The seven companies that make up the Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC), which includes Halliburton Energy Services, BP America, and ConocoPhilips, will put up $21 million in total to fund the research. The aim is to develop subsurface sensors that can be used to improve both the discovery and the recovery of hydrocarbons.

“It’s been a long time coming,” says Wade Adams, director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University, in Houston, a technical partner to the consortium. “It’s the first time the energy companies have got together to fund this kind of research, so it really is a big deal,” he says.

Currently, even with the most advanced recovery techniques, only about 40 percent of the oil and gas in reservoirs can be recovered. The hope is that by injecting novel sensors into these reservoirs, it will be possible to more accurately map them in 3-D, increase the amount of fuel extracted, and minimize the environmental impact.

Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing.

The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany.

While many photovoltaic start-up companies are concentrating on increasing the efficiency with which their systems convert sunlight, Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost. Its process is akin to a large printing press, rather than the usual semiconductor manufacturing techniques that deposit thin films on silicon wafers.

Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.

“With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said.

Super Water Repellent Could Cause Big Wave In Market

A water repellent developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory outperforms nature at its best and could open a floodgate of commercial possibilities.

The super-water repellent (superhydrophobic) material, developed by John Simpson, is easy to fabricate and uses inexpensive base materials. The patent-pending process could lead to the creation of a new class of water repellant products, including windshields, eyewear, clothing, building materials, road surfaces, ship hulls and self-cleaning coatings. The list of likely applications is virtually endless.

“My goal was to make the best possible water repellent surface,” Simpson said. “What I developed is a glass powder coating material with remarkable properties that cause water-based solutions to bounce off virtually any coated surface.”