Science

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NASA's Jupiter-Bound Juno Changes its Orbit

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This artist's concept depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft during a burn of its main engine.

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New technique could mean super thin, strong graphene-based circuits

Integrated circuits, which are in everything from coffeemakers to computers and are patterned from perfectly crystalline silicon, are quite thin -- but Cornell researchers think they can push thin-film boundaries to the single-atom level.

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Schematic illustration of single-atom-thick films with patterned regions of conducting graphene (gray) and insulating boron nitride (purple-blue).

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'Nano machine shop' shapes nanowires, ultrathin films

One-dimensional nanomaterials have attracted a great deal of research interest in the past few decades due to their unique mechanical, electrical and optical properties. Changing the shape of nanowires (NWs) is both challenging and crucial to change the property and open wide functions of NWs, such as strain engineering, electronic transport, mechanical properties, band structure and quantum properties, etc. Here we report a scalable strategy to conduct cutting, bending and periodic straining of NWs by making use of laser shock pressure. Three-dimensional shaping of silver NWs is demonstrated, during which the Ag NWs exhibit very good ductility (strain-to-failure reaches 110%). Meanwhile, the high electrical conductivity of Ag NWs could retain well under controlled laser shock pressure. The microstructure observation indicates that the main deformation mechanism in Ag NWs under dynamic loading is formation of twinning and stacking fault, while dislocation motion and pile-up is less obvious. This method could be applied to semiconductor NWs as well.

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This illustration depicts a new nano machine shop's ability to shape tiny wires, an advance that represents a possible future manufacturing method for applications ranging from high-speed electronics to solar cells.

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LGC is using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis to characterize novel nanoscale reference materials

NanoSight, leading manufacturers of unique nanoparticle characterization technology, reports on the work of Principal Scientist Dr Damian Marshall and his colleagues at LGC as they develop new methods for characterizing new nanoscale reference materials.

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A new look at proteins in living cells

Proteins adorning the surfaces of human cells perform an array of essential functions, including cell signaling, communication and the transport of vital substances into and out of cells. They are critical targets for drug delivery and many proteins are now being identified as disease biomarkers—early warning beacons announcing the pre-symptomatic presence of cancers and other diseases.

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Figure 1a: Schematic illustration of the experimental set-up for surface plasmon resonance microscopy. A polarized laser beam is directed onto a gold-coated glass coverslip through an oil-immersion objective to create SPR on the gold surface, which is imaged with a CCD camera. 1b: From the bottom up, examples of bright-field, fluorescence (FL) and SPR images, respectively.

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A new look at proteins in living cells

Proteins adorning the surfaces of human cells perform an array of essential functions, including cell signaling, communication and the transport of vital substances into and out of cells. They are critical targets for drug delivery and many proteins are now being identified as disease biomarkers—early warning beacons announcing the pre-symptomatic presence of cancers and other diseases.

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Figure 1a: Schematic illustration of the experimental set-up for surface plasmon resonance microscopy. A polarized laser beam is directed onto a gold-coated glass coverslip through an oil-immersion objective to create SPR on the gold surface, which is imaged with a CCD camera. 1b: From the bottom up, examples of bright-field, fluorescence (FL) and SPR images, respectively.

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Molecular capsules: Glowing with promise

Fluorescence has widespread applications, helping researchers to understand issues in the fundamental sciences and develop practical materials and devices. Among the useful fluorescent compounds in development, capsule-shaped molecular architectures, which possess both strong fluorescent properties and a nanometer-sized cavity, are particularly promising.

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Crystal structure of the copper capsule

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New wave of technologies possible after ground-breaking analysis tool developed

A revolutionary tool created by scientists at the University of Sheffield has enabled researchers to analyse nanometer-sized devices without destroying them for the first time, opening the door to a new wave of technologies.

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The nuclear magnetic resonance apparatus - developed by the University's Department of Physics and Astronomy - will allow for further developments and new applications for nanotechnology which is increasingly used in harvesting solar energy, computing, communication developments and also in the medical field.

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New Satellite has begun taking the Earth's Temperature

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The image shows calibrated radiances produced by RAL Space for the shortwave (SW) channel which measures reflected sunlight and its total channel sensitive to all outgoing energy from thermal emissions by the earth and reflected sunlight. These observations allow reflected shortwave and emitted long-wave fluxes to be calculated that are then used by scientists for studying climate.

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Laser-Assisted Synthesis of Graphene in Low-Temperature Liquid Media

Researchers from Tehran's Amirkabir University of Technology in a collaboration with their colleagues from Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin succeeded in producing graphene by laser ablation in cold liquid media.

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Their proposed approach offers a better control over the type and quality of the resulting products as the involved laser processing is handled in a more facile manner.

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