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While on the macro-scale conventional scales make us of gravity to measure mass, on the microscale there are a myriad of factors that interfere with measurements. Scientists at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have successfully created a scale made out of a single carbon nanotube which can accurately measure the smallest unit of mass, a yoctogram (one […]
A team of researchers at Vienna University of Technology constructed various nanoscale models of incredible precision (St. Stephen’s Cathedral, London’s Tower Bridge or a F1 race car), using a technique called two-photon lithography. The device which the researchers used for their high precision 3D printing is an order of magnitude faster than others such similar, and opens a […]
Part of a the recent slew of revolutionary technological and scientific novelties coming off IBM‘s research and development lab, the company has just announced that it has successfully managed to measure and image for the first time how charge is distributed within a single molecule. The achievement was made possible after a new technique, called Kelvin probe force microscopy […]
A team of researchers comprised of scientists at the NanoScience Center of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at Harvard University, US, have shown through computer simulations a novel technique for generation nanomaterials. The whole process revolves around the extremely simple idea of twisting narrow graphene nanoribbons until they become rolled up into carbon nanotubes, […]
Implantable medical devices, capable of delivering drugs or performing micro-surgery from inside the body, have been the subject of scientific research for decades now. A number of exciting prototypes have been developed in the past few years, as miniaturization allowed it, however reliability flaws rendered them unpractical. A new tiny device developed by Stanford electrical engineers, was presented […]
Butterflies are one of the most enchanting beings in the animal kingdom, a symbol of grace and beauty encountered in every art form. From a crawling larva to a majestic winged creature, it’s difficult not to take notice of the similarities between the butterfly’s metamorphosis process and the ups and downs life serves before one […]
If you’re reading this post via e-mail or RSS, please visit the post’s page on the website to view the video interview. MIT researchers, guided by Andreas Mershin’s vision of a world fueled by cheap and renewable electricity, have recently published a paper in which they explain how photovoltaic panels made from plants can be […]
Moore’s law states that the level of technology and computing power should double every two years, and so far the postulate hasn’t been wrong in more than 50 years. A group of IBM scientists have now managed to develop a data storage technique which allows for information to be stored with as little as 12 […]
Cloaking used to be one of my favorite SciFi themes. James Bond supercars that would show up or disappear instantly at the flick of an alarm key, the hallow man, objects rendered completely invisible to the human eye and lost in the surroundings. I say used to be because spatial cloaking has transcended for some […]
A team of researchers from led by Guillaume Gervais from McGill’s Physics Department and Mike Lilly from Sandia National Laboratories, have managed to develop one of the smallest electronic circuits in the world using nanowires spaced across each other by a distance so small, it has to be measured at an atomic level. Miniaturization has been […]
Ross Technology Corp, a company that focuses on steel products has created a new product based on the spray known as NeverWet – which aside from being useful, is also pretty cool. Now, this might not seem particularly interesting, but it has a myriad of applications; it is built from nanoparticles and it is hydrophobic […]
In the new mobile information age where smartphones have become an ever common part of our lives, there seems to be a dominant trend which tends to incorporate interactive touch screen capabilities to more and more consumer electronics. It’s pretty clear that our electronics are getting smarter day by day – I, for one, am […]
At the nano scale, even the slightest of motions can be harnessed and transformed into useful work. Material science researchers at the University of Wisconsin, for instance, have developed a very thin plastic belt capable of vibrating from low velocity fluid flow, such as one’s breath. Made out of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), the microbelt not only […]
You’ve seen James Bond’s vanishing Aston Martin or Frodo’s Elven cloak, and probably always wished for your own means of becoming totally invisible. The are a lot of perks to such a technology (who here remembers Invisible Man movies?), and scientists from University of Dallas in Texas have managed to devise an invisibility cloak inspired by […]
Diamonds are for a nano-second – in the glitter of a candle light, that is. In a stroke of brilliance, Professor Wuzong Zhou, Professor of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, has found millions of diamond nano-particles in the flickering light of a simple candle. Since its invention in China thousands of years ago, […]
Dubbed MBE, after the intricate molecular beam epitaxy process, this device developed by scientists at Sharp Laboratories in Oxford, England, can actually grow electrical components at a dazzling precision atom by atom. This is where razor sharp technology is at, as far as manufacturing goes, and this monstrous-looking device is capable of transferring atoms from […]
Whether its filling the space between oranges in a box or squeezing molecules between cells, wasted storage space is a problem to which people, and especially companies, have been trying to find a solution for a long time. A recently published research might lead to dramatic improvements of storage capabilities and in the field of […]
What if you could power regularly used consumer electronics, like for say a laptop, just by using them? It’s an incredible prospect, one which Australian scientists from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) hope to turn into reality in the near future. Harnessing the power of piezoelectric technology, researchers successfully embedded a piezoelectric thin […]
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s super sand! *tadam Researchers from Rice University have managed to develop a new kind of filtering sand, dubbed “super sand”, which has five times the filtering properties of regular sand. The advancement could provide an indispensable, cost-effective solution for the current water crisis in developing countries where […]
According to a recently published study, computer processor chips made out of nano-scale magnets could yield an efficiency close to the limit imposed by physics. A 100% efficiency is impossible in practice, since any mechanical or electrical process requires more energy than it theoretically needs because of dissipation, be it heat (most of the time) […]
In its most simple form, a memristor can be defined as a two-terminal electronic device whose conductance can be precisely modulated by charge or flux through it. What sets it apart from other electrical components is the property that its resistance can be programmed and subsequently remains stored (memory). Basically, memristors resist the passage of […]
DNA nanotechnology is one of the most exciting branches of nanotechnologies, especially because it uses the ability of natural DNA strains to self assembly. Prof. Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt of Goethe University set out with exactly that thought in mind when they created two DNA rings with the size of only […]
Neuroscientists are always looking for new and interesting ways to manipulate individual neurons and neural networks-- shooting magnetic waves at our brains may be the best route yet.
Robotics is developing faster and faster, partially thanks to the technological growth of Japan, which has quite some awesome plans for the not so distant future. This time however, it’s a team of researchers from University of California, Berkeley, led by Ali Javey that is in the spotlight. You see, it’s not the strength that […]
Nanotechnology is perhaps the field with the most spectacular development over the past years, but it can be really hard to understand what’s going on at that scale, mostly because we can’t see it (doh!), but also because the laws that apply there are slightly different. No small matter: Science on the nanoscale is the […]
The craziest futuristic ideas from movies seem to become reality one after another even though the cineastes from 1966 would have never believed it…and neither would most of us. Thanks to researchers at Tel Aviv University in just three years we may benefit from the creation of a mini-submarine able to destroy faulty cells, including […]
Meet the world’s tiniest portraits of an elected president ever; meet the nanobamas. Each ‘Obama’ is made up of about 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes, which is about how many Americans voted in this year’s presidential election. An assistant professor professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, John Hart, along […]
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon. Their strength and flexibility makes them useful in controlling other nanoscale structures, which suggests they will have an important role in nanotechnology engineering. They are also used in concrete where they increase the tensile strength, and halt crack propagation in elevators, bridges, circuits, magnets, transistors, and they […]
