Researchers at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have joined forces to create a stretchable nano-scale device to manipulate light.

The device manipulates light to such an extent that it can filter specific colours while still being transparent and could be used in the future to make smart contact lenses.

                                                             

 nanoscale glass structures that filter or manipulate light
credit: RMIT/The University of Adelaide

Using the technology, high-tech lenses could one day filter harmful optical radiation without interfering with vision – or in a more advanced version, transmit data and gather live vital information or even show information like a head-up display.

The light manipulation relies on creating tiny artificial crystals termed  “dielectric resonators”, which are a fraction of the wavelength of light – 100-200 nanometers, or over 500 times thinner than a human hair.

The research combined the University of Adelaide researchers’ expertise in interaction of light with artificial materials with the materials science and nanofabrication expertise at RMIT University.

Dr Withawat Withayachumnankul, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, said: “Manipulation of light using these artificial crystals uses precise engineering.

“With advanced techniques to control the properties of surfaces, we can dynamically control their filter properties, which allow us to potentially create devices for high data-rate optical communication or smart contact lenses.

“The current challenge is that dielectric resonators only work for specific colours, but with our flexible surface we can adjust the operation range simply by stretching it.”

Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Co-Leader of the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT, said the devices were made on a rubber-like material used for contact lenses.

“We embed precisely-controlled crystals of titanium oxide, a material that is usually found in sunscreen, in these soft and pliable materials,” she said.

“Both materials are proven to be bio-compatible, forming an ideal platform for wearable optical devices.

“By engineering the shape of these common materials, we can create a device that changes properties when stretched. This modifies the way the light interacts with and travels through the device, which holds promise of making smart contact lenses and stretchable colour changing surfaces.”

Lead author and RMIT researcher Dr. Philipp Gutruf said the major scientific hurdle overcome by the team was combining high temperature processed titanium dioxide with the rubber-like material, and achieving nanoscale features.

“With this technology, we now have the ability to develop light weight wearable optical components which also allow for the creation of futuristic devices such as smart contact lenses or flexible ultrathin smartphone cameras,” Gutruf said.

source ; RMIT news release link : click here

This post is copied from the materials in the RMIT website(news)

New solar nanoparticle-based power material converts 90 percent of captured light into heat

Graduate student Bryan VanSaders measures how much simulated sunlight a novel material can absorb using a unique set of instruments that takes spectral measurements from visible to infrared. This testing is led by electrical engineering professor Zhaowei Liu.

Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures. The new material can also withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius and survive many years outdoors in spite of exposure to air and humidity. Their work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot program, was published recently in two separate articles in the journal Nano Energy.

By contrast, current solar absorber material functions at lower temperatures and needs to be overhauled almost every year for high temperature operations.
      "We wanted to create a material that absorbs sunlight that doesn't let any of it escape. We want the black hole of sunlight," said Sungho Jin, a professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Jin, along with professor Zhaowei Liu of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering professor Renkun Chen, developed the Silicon boride-coated nanoshell material. They are all experts in functional materials engineering.
The novel material features a "multiscale" surface created by using particles of many sizes ranging from 10 nanometers to 10 micrometers. The multiscale structures can trap and absorb light which contributes to the material's high efficiency when operated at higher temperatures.
              
Concentrating solar power (CSP) is an emerging alternative clean energy market that produces approximately 3.5 gigawatts worth of power at power plants around the globe—enough to power more than 2 million homes, with additional construction in progress to provide as much as 20 gigawatts of power in coming years. One of the technology's attractions is that it can be used to retrofit existing power plants that use coal or fossil fuels because it uses the same process to generate electricity from steam.
Traditional power plants burn coal or fossil fuels to create heat that evaporates water into steam. The steam turns a giant turbine that generates electricity from spinning magnets and conductor wire coils. CSP power plants create the steam needed to turn the turbine by using sunlight to heat molten salt. The molten salt can also be stored in thermal storage tanks overnight where it can continue to generate steam and electricity, 24 hours a day if desired, a significant advantage over photovoltaic systems that stop producing energy with the sunset.

The UC San Diego team's combined expertise was used to develop, optimize and characterize a new material for this type of system over the past three years. Researchers included a group of UC San Diego graduate students in materials science and engineering, Justin Taekyoung Kim, Bryan VanSaders, and Jaeyun Moon, who recently joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The synthesized nanoshell material is spray-painted in Chen's lab onto a metal substrate for thermal and mechanical testing. The material's ability to absorb sunlight is measured in Liu's optics laboratory using a unique set of instruments that takes spectral measurements from visible light to infrared.

Current CSP plants are shut down about once a year to chip off the degraded sunlight absorbing material and reapply a new coating, which means no power generation while a replacement coating is applied and cured. That is why DOE's SunShot program challenged and supported UC San Diego research teams to come up with a material with a substantially longer life cycle, in addition to the higher operating temperature for enhanced energy conversion efficiency. The UC San Diego research team is aiming for many years of usage life, a feat they believe they are close to achieving.
Modeled after President Kennedy's moon landing program that inspired widespread interest in science and space exploration, then-Energy Secretary Steven P. Chu launched the Sunshot Initiative in 2010 with the goal of making solar power cost competitive with other means of producing electricity by 2020.


source :   University of California - San Diego. , eurekalert.org

A 'Nano Vaccine' That Combats Dust Mite Allergies

Scientists at the University of Iowa have developed a vaccine that combats dust mite allergies by naturally switching off the body's immune response. It's welcome news for the millions of people who suffer from mite-induced breathing difficulties.

Nearly 84% of households in the United States contain dust mites — microscopic organisms that feed on organic leftovers like flakes of human skin. 

       

They're a common cause of asthma and allergic symptoms; their guts contain potent digestive enzymes that hang-out in their feces — a major contributor to allergic reactions such as wheezing.

But in animal tests, researchers demonstrated that a nano-sized vaccine package can lower lung inflammation by 83% despite repeated exposure to the allergens. The response happens because the vaccine package contains a booster that alters the body's inflammatory response to dust-mite allergens.

"Our research explores a novel approach to treating mite allergy in which specially-encapsulated miniscule particles are administered with sequences of bacterial DNA that direct the immune system to suppress allergic immune responses," noted co-author Peter Thorne in a statement. "This work suggests a way forward to alleviate mite-induced asthma in allergy sufferers."

                                               

                                                       

The UI-developed vaccine takes advantage of the body's natural inclination to defend itself against foreign bodies. A key to the formula lies in the use of an adjuvant—which boosts the potency of the vaccine—called CpG. The booster has been used successfully in cancer vaccines but never had been tested as a vaccine for dust-mite allergies. Put broadly, CpG sets off a fire alarm within the body, springing immune cells into action. Those immune cells absorb the CpG and dispose of it.

This is important, because as the immune cells absorb CpG, they're also taking in the vaccine, which has been added to the package, much like your mother may have wrapped a bitter pill around something tasty to get you to swallow it. In another twist, combining the antigen (the vaccine) and CpG causes the body to change its immune response, producing antibodies that dampen the damaging health effects dust-mite allergens generally cause.

In lab tests, the CpG-antigen package, at 300 nanometers in size, was absorbed 90 percent of the time by immune cells, the UI-led team reports. The researchers followed up those experiments by giving the package to mice and exposing the animals to dust-mite allergens every other day for nine days total. In analyses conducted at the UI College of Public Health, packages with CpG yielded greater production of the desirable antibodies, while lung inflammation was lower than particles that did not contain CpG, the researchers report.

 Read the entire study at AAPS Journal: "Development of a Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) Particle Vaccine to Protect Against House Dust Mite Induced Allergy".

Self-assembly of magnetite nanocubes into helical superstructures.............

Dr. Rafal Klajn and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Gurvinder Singh of the Institute's Organic Chemistry Department used nanocubes of an iron oxide material called magnetite. As the name implies, this material is naturally magnetic: It is found all over the place, including inside bacteria that use it to sense the Earth's magnetic field.

Magnetism is just one of the forces acting on the nanoparticles. Together with the research group of Prof. Petr Král of the University of Illinois, Chicago, Klajn and Singh developed theoretical models to understand how the various forces could push and pull the tiny bits of magnetite into different formations. "Different types of forces compel the nanoparticles to align in different ways," says Klajn. "These can compete with one another; so the idea is to find the balance of competing forces that can induce the self-assembly of the particles into novel materials." The models suggested that the shape of the nanoparticles is important -- only cubes would provide a proper balance of forces required for pulling together into helical formations.

                                                                   

SEM image of a well-defined double helix.

Credit: Image courtesy of Weizmann Institute of Science

 

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The researchers found that the two main competing forces are magnetism and the van der Waals force. Magnetism causes the magnetic particles to both attract and repel one another, prompting the cubic particles to align at their corners. Van der Waals forces, on the other hand, pull the sides of the cubes closer together, coaxing them to line up in a row. When these forces act together on the tiny cubes, the result is the step-like alignment that produces helical structures.

In their experiments, the scientists exposed relatively high concentrations of magnetite nanocubes placed in a solution to a magnetic field. The long, rope-like helical chains they obtained after the solution was evaporated were surprisingly uniform. They repeated the experiment with nanoparticles of other shapes but, as predicted, only cubes had just the right physical shape to align in a helix. Klajn and Singh also found that they could get chiral strands -- all wound in the same direction -- with very high particle concentrations in which a number of strands assembled closely together. Apparently the competing forces can "take into consideration" the most efficient way to pack the strands into the space.

Although the nanocube strands look nice enough to knit, Klajn says it is too soon to begin thinking of commercial applications. The immediate value of the work, he says, is that it has proven a fundamental principle of nanoscale self-assembly. "Although magnetite has been well-studied -- also its nanoparticle form -- for many decades, no one has observed these structures before," says Klajn. "Only once we understand how the various physical forces act on nanoparticles can we begin to apply the insights to such goals as the fabrication of previously unknown, self-assembled materials."

source:  Weizmann Institute of Science.

Nano-sized chip picks up scent of explosives molecules

The groundbreaking nanotechnology-inspired sensor, devised by Prof. Fernando Patolsky of Tel Aviv University's School of Chemistry and Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and developed by the Herzliya company Tracense, picks up the scent of explosives molecules better than a detection dog's nose. Research on the sensor was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

Existing explosives sensors are expensive, bulky and require expert interpretation of the findings. In contrast, the new sensor is mobile, inexpensive, and identifies in real time -- and with great accuracy -- explosives in the air at concentrations as low as a few molecules per 1,000 trillion.

                                                                 

nanosensor

A nano-nose to compete with a dog's

"Using a single tiny chip that consists of hundreds of supersensitive sensors, we can detect ultra low traces of extremely volatile explosives in air samples, and clearly fingerprint and differentiate them from other non-hazardous materials," said Prof. Patolsky, a top researcher in the field of nanotechnology. "In real time, it detects small molecular species in air down to concentrations of parts-per-quadrillion, which is four to five orders of magnitude more sensitive than any existing technological method, and two to three orders of magnitude more sensitive than a dog's nose.

"This chip can also detect improvised explosives, such as TATP (triacetone triperoxide), used in suicide bombing attacks in Israel and abroad," Prof. Patolsky added.

The clusters of nano-sized transistors used in the prototype are extremely sensitive to chemicals, which cause changes in the electrical conductance of the sensors upon surface contact. When just a single molecule of an explosive comes into contact with the sensors, it binds with them, triggering a rapid and accurate mathematical analysis of the material.

"Animals are influenced by mood, weather, state of health and working hours, the oversaturation of olfactory system, and much more," said Prof. Patolsky. "They also cannot tell us what they smell. Automatic sensing systems are superior candidates to dogs, working at least as well or better than nature. This is not an easy task, but was achieved through the development of novel technologies such as our sensor."

A technology for a safer world

The trace detector, still in prototype, identifies several different types of explosives several meters from the source in real time. It has been tested on the explosives TNT, RDX, and HMX, used in commercial blasting and military applications, as well as peroxide-based explosives like TATP and HMTD. The latter are commonly used in homemade bombs and are very difficult to detect using existing technology.

"Our breakthrough has the potential to change the way hazardous materials are detected, and of course should provide populations with more security," said Prof. Patolsky. "The faster, more sensitive detection of tiny amounts of explosives in the air will provide for a better and safer world."

Tracense has invested over $10M in research and development of the device since 2007, and expects to go to market next year. Prof.Patolsky and his team of researchers are currently performing multiple and extensive field tests of prototype devices of the sensor.

Source: science daily, www.aftau.org/nano

"Nanocamera" takes pictures at distances smaller than light's own wavelength

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated that an array of novel gold, pillar-bowtie nanoantennas (pBNAs) can be used like traditional photographic film to record light for distances that are much smaller than the wavelength of light (for example, distances less than ~600 nm for red light). A standard optical microscope acts as a “nanocamera” whereas the pBNAs are the analogous film.
         “Unlike conventional photographic film, the effect (writing and curing) is seen in real time,” explained Kimani Toussaint, an associate professor of mechanical science and engineering, who led the research. “We have demonstrated that this multifunctional plasmonic film can be used to create optofluidic channels without walls. Because simple diode lasers and low-input power densities are sufficient to record near-field optical information in the pBNAs, this increases the potential for optical data storage applications using off-the-shelf, low-cost, read-write laser systems."

“Particle manipulation is the proof-of-principle application,” stated Brian Roxworthy, first author of the group’s paper, "Multifunctional Plasmonic Film for Recording Near-Field Optical Intensity," published in the journal, Nano Letters. “Specifically, the trajectory of trapped particles in solution is controlled by the pattern written into the pBNAs. This is equivalent to creating channels on the surface for particle guiding except that these channels do not have physical walls (in contrast to those optofluidics systems where physical channels are fabricated in materials such as PDMS).”

To prove their findings, the team demonstrated various written patterns—including the University’s “Block I” logo and brief animation of a stick figure walking—that were either holographically transferred to the pBNAs or laser-written using steering mirrors (see video).

Image of the Illinois “I” logo recorded by the plasmonic film; each bar in the letter is approximately 6 micrometers.

“We wanted to show the analogy between what we have made and traditional photographic film,” Toussaint added. “There’s a certain cool factor with this. However, we know that we’re just scratching the surface since the use of plasmonic film for data storage at very small scales is just one application. Our pBNAs allow us to do so much more, which we’re currently exploring.”

The researchers noted that the fundamental bit size is currently set by the spacing of the antennas at 425-nm. However, the pixel density of the film can be straightforwardly reduced by fabricating smaller array spacing and a smaller antenna size, as well as using a more tightly focusing lens for recording.

“For a standard Blu-ray/DVD disc size, that amounts to a total of 28.6 gigabites per disk,” Roxworthy added. “With modifications to array spacing and antenna features, it’s feasible that this value can be scaled to greater than 75 gigabites per disk. Not to mention, it can be used for other exciting photonic applications, such as lab-on-chip nanotweezers or sensing.”

“In our new technique, we use controlled heating via laser illumination of the nanoantennas to change the plasmonic response instantaneously, which shows an innovative but easy way to fabricate spatially changing plasmonic structures and thus opens a new avenue in the field of nanotech-based biomedical technologies and nano optics,”  said Abdul Bhuiya, a co-author and member of the research team.

source : University of Illinois College of Engineering.

silicon oxide technology for high-density, next-generation computer memory Read more: Breakthrough silicon oxide technology for high-density, next-generation computer memory

Oxide-based two-terminal resistive random access memory (RRAM) is considered one of the most promising candidates for next-generation nonvolatile memory. Rice university introduce here a new RRAM memory structure employing a nanoporous (NP) silicon oxide (SiO_x) material which enables unipolar switching through its internal vertical nanogap. Through the control of the stochastic filament formation at low voltage, the NP SiO_x memory exhibited an extremely low electroforming voltage (1.6 V) and outstanding performance metrics. These include multibit storage ability (up to 9-bits), a high ON–OFF ratio (up to 10⁷ A), a long high-temperature lifetime (≥10⁴ s at 100 °C), excellent cycling endurance (≥10⁵), sub-50 ns switching speeds, and low power consumption (6 × 10^–5 W/bit). Also provided is the room temperature processability for versatile fabrication without any compliance current being needed during electroforming or switching operations. Taken together, these metrics in NP SiO_x RRAM provide a route toward easily accessed nonvolatile memory applications.

      

                                     

“This memory is superior to all other two-terminal unipolar resistive memories by almost every metric,” Tour said. “And because our devices use silicon oxide — the most studied material on Earth — the underlying physics are both well-understood and easy to implement in existing fabrication facilities.” Tour is Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and nanoengineering and of computer science.

Tour and colleagues began work on their breakthrough RRAM technology more than five years ago. The basic concept behind resistive memory devices is the insertion of a dielectric material — one that won’t normally conduct electricity — between two wires. When a sufficiently high voltage is applied across the wires, a narrow conduction path can be formed through the dielectric material.

The presence or absence of these conduction pathways can be used to represent the binary 1s and 0s of digital data. Research with a number of dielectric materials over the past decade has shown that such conduction pathways can be formed, broken and reformed thousands of times, which means RRAM can be used as the basis of rewritable random-access memory.

RRAM is under development worldwide and expected to supplant flash memory technology in the marketplace within a few years because it is faster than flash and can pack far more information into less space. For example, manufacturers have announced plans for RRAM prototype chips that will be capable of storing about one terabyte of data on a device the size of a postage stamp — more than 50 times the data density of current flash memory technology.

The key ingredient of Rice’s RRAM is its dielectric component, silicon oxide. Silicon is the most abundant element on Earth and the basic ingredient in conventional microchips. Microelectronics fabrication technologies based on silicon are widespread and easily understood, but until the 2010 discovery of conductive filament pathways in silicon oxide in Tour’s lab, the material wasn’t considered an option for RRAM.

Since then, Tour’s team has raced to further develop its RRAM and even used it for exotic new devices like transparent flexible memory chips. At the same time, the researchers also conducted countless tests to compare the performance of silicon oxide memories with competing dielectric RRAM technologies. “Our technology is the only one that satisfies every market requirement, both from a production and a performance standpoint, for nonvolatile memory,” Tour said. “It can be manufactured at room temperature, has an extremely low forming voltage, high on-off ratio, low power consumption, nine-bit capacity per cell, exceptional switching speeds and excellent cycling endurance.” In the latest study, a team headed by lead author and Rice postdoctoral researcher Gunuk Wang showed that using a porous version of silicon oxide could dramatically improve Rice’s RRAM in several ways. First, the porous material reduced the forming voltage — the power needed to form conduction pathways — to less than two volts, a 13-fold improvement over the team’s previous best and a number that stacks up against competing RRAM technologies. In addition, the porous silicon oxide also allowed Tour’s team to eliminate the need for a “device edge structure.” “That means we can take a sheet of porous silicon oxide and just drop down electrodes without having to fabricate edges,” Tour said. “When we made our initial announcement about silicon oxide in 2010, one of the first questions I got from industry was whether we could do this without fabricating edges. At the time we could not, but the change to porous silicon oxide finally allows us to do that.”   Wang said, “We also demonstrated that the porous silicon oxide material increased the endurance cycles more than 100 times as compared with previous nonporous silicon oxide memories. Finally, the porous silicon oxide material has a capacity of up to nine bits per cell that is highest number among oxide-based memories, and the multiple capacity is unaffected by high temperatures.” Tour said the latest developments with porous silicon oxide — reduced forming voltage, elimination of need for edge fabrication, excellent endurance cycling and multi-bit capacity — are extremely appealing to memory companies.

source nanowerk,rice university nanoletters

A simple and inexpensive fabrication procedure boosts the light-capturing capabilities of tiny holes carved into silicon wafers

Increasing the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic devices is critical to making these renewable energy sources competitive with traditional fossil fuels. One possibility is to use hybrid solar cells that combine silicon nanowires with low-cost, photoresponsive polymers. The high surface area and confined nature of nanowires allows them to trap significant amounts of light for solar cell operations. Unfortunately, these thin, needle-like structures are very fragile and tend to stick together when the wires become too long.   

A straightforward procedure that transforms silver nanospheres (top) into silicon nanoholes (bottom) can overcome the shortcomings of nanowire-based solar cells

Now, findings by Xincai Wang from the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and co-workers from Nanyang Technological University could turn the tables on silicon nanowires by improving the manufacturing of silicon ‘nanoholes’ — narrow cavities carved into silicon wafers that have enhanced mechanical and light-harvesting capabilities1.

Nanoholes are particularly effective at capturing light because photons can ricochet many times inside these openings until absorption occurs. Yet a practical understanding of how to fabricate these tiny structures is still lacking. One significant problem, notes Wang, is control of the initial stages of nanohole formation — a crucial period that can often induce defects into the solar cell.

Instead of traditional time-consuming lithography, the researchers identified a rapid, ‘maskless’ approach to producing nanoholes using silver nanoparticles. First, they deposited a nanometer-thin layer of silver onto a silicon wafer which they toughened by annealing it using a rapid-burst ultraviolet laser. Careful optimization of this procedure yielded regular arrays of silver nanospheres on top of the silicon surface, with sphere size and distribution controlled by the laser annealing conditions.

Next, the nanosphere–silicon complex was immersed into a solution of hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid — a mixture that eats away at silicon atoms directly underneath the catalytic silver nanospheres. Subsequent removal of the silver particles with acid produced the final, nanohole-infused silicon surface (see image).

The team analyzed the solar cell activity of their nanohole interfaces by coating them with a semiconducting polymer and metal electrodes. Their experiments revealed a remarkable dependence on nanohole depth: cavities deeper than one micrometer showed sharp drops in power conversion efficiency from a maximum of 8.3 per cent due to light scattering off of rougher surfaces and higher series resistance effects.

“Our simple process for making hybrid silicon nanohole devices can successfully reduce the fabrication costs which impede the solar cell industry,” says Wang. “In addition, this approach can be easily transferred to silicon thin films to develop thin-film silicon–polymer hybrid solar cells with even higher efficiency.”

source:  The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).