Volume 5 Issue 7, July 2010

Can the nanotech community learn anything from biotechnology? Chris Toumey reports.

Electric charges on the boundaries of certain insulators are programmed by topology to keep moving forward when they encounter an obstacle, rather than scattering backwards and increasing the resistance of the system. This is just one reason why topological insulators are one of the hottest topics in physics right now.

A combination of electron microscopy and electron energy-loss spectroscopy can be used to chemically map complex hybrid nanoparticles.

The ability of 'electric tweezers' to guide nanowires coated with biomolecules to specific locations on the surface of individual cells will allow biological processes to be studied in greater detail.

Combining nanostructured magnetic media with nanoplasmonic antennas has propelled commercially viable data-storage densities beyond one terabit per square inch.

Single nanowires have been self-assembled onto thousands of electrode pairs across large areas with high precision.

A high degree of control over plasmons can be achieved at the nanoscale by engineering the properties of adjacent dielectric layers.

Graphene is being investigated as a candidate material for post-silicon electronics. This article reviews the properties of graphene that are relevant to transistors, and discusses the trade-offs between them.

Infrared radiation from biased graphene transistors can be used to extract the temperature distribution, carrier densities and spatial location of the Dirac point in the graphene channel.

By controlling the density of phosphorus dopant atoms in single-crystal silicon it is possible to fabricate quantum dots that do not contain interfaces between different materials.

Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy can image the active sites of iridium catalysts anchored in zeolite crystals, determining their locations and approximate distance from the surface of the crystals.

Colour mixing and other optical effects displayed by the wings of the Papilio blumei butterfly have now been replicated by a combination of colloid self-assembly and other standard layer-deposition techniques.

The resistance of a network of nanoscale loops of La_2−xSr_xCuO₄ oscillates as a function of the magnetic flux through the loops in a way that cannot be explained by the classic Little–Parks effect, but also rules out some theoretical predictions about these systems.

DNA can self-assemble into prestressed tensegrity nanostructures composed of compressed bundles of double helices and tense linking segments of single-stranded DNA.

Single silicon nanowires are assembled onto patterned electrodes with a 98.5% yield and submicrometre precision using dielectrophoresis under constant fluid flow.

A lithium battery whose positive electrode consists of functionalized carbon nanotubes can achieve higher energy densities than electrochemical capacitors while delivering higher power than conventional lithium-ion batteries.

High-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy, combined with electron energy-loss spectroscopy, can analyse both the organic and inorganic components of a hybrid nanoparticle.

Gold nanowires conjugated with a cytokine can be transported to specific cells with high precision using electrophoretic and dielectrophoretic forces.