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...in Academic Research Setting. The California Nanosafety Consortium of Higher Education has published Nanotoolkit – Working Safely with Engineered Nanomaterials in Academic Research Settings (pdf), a compendium of best practices, standards, and guidelines to using engineered nanomaterials...

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Researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany have made new contrast agents for tumour imaging based on functionalized semiconductor quantum dots and iron oxide nanocrystals. An added plus is that the nanoparticles are non-toxic, even at very high concentrations... [Source]

Plate-shaped silver nanomaterials could be more toxic to fish cells than other shapes, such as spheres and wires. So say researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who have studied the effects of different-shaped silver nanomaterials on rainbow trout cells and zebrafish embryos. However, the nanoplates only appear to be toxic when in direct contact with the cells... [Source]

... of antibiotics directly to bacteria. Over the past several decades, scientists have faced challenges in developing new antibiotics even as bacteria have become increasingly resistant to existing drugs. One strategy that might combat such resistance would be to overwhelm bacterial defenses by using highly targeted nanoparticles to deliver large doses of existing antibiotics...

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... signs and communicate with smart phone.  An interdisciplinary team of engineers at the University of Arkansas has developed a wireless health-monitoring system that gathers critical patient information, regardless of the patient's location, and communicates that information in real time to a physician, hospital or the patient herself...

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People use electromagnetic energy every day … watching television, listening to the radio, popping corn with a microwave, taking an X-ray or using a cellphone. This energy travels in the form of waves, which are widely used in electronic and wireless devices. [Source]

At drupa print media fair, the world's largest fair on print media technology, which takes place from 3 to 16 May 2012 in Düsseldorf, the Institute for Print and Media Technology of Chemnitz University of Technology (pmTUC) presents new research results, which truly make you prick up your ears: Loudspeakers that have been printed with flexography on standard paper. The R&D group of Prof. Dr. Arved Hübler, head of pmTUC, is co-exhibitor of press manufacturer Windmöller & Hölscher KG (Lengerich) and can be found in hall 15, booth A41/1. [Source]

In a significant step forward for all-optical computing, physicists build a silicon transistor that works with pure light.[Source]

The most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity has been invented by a team from the University of Exeter.[Source]

One in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, the second leading cause of death among men in the United States. It's a serious problem and current diagnostic tests aren't very specific. But a research team at the University of Central Florida NanoScience Technology Center has found a more accurate test that not only determines whether a patient has prostate cancer, but also how aggressive it is... [Source]

A clinical trial has demonstrated that Oncoprex® (TUSC2 nanoparticles) can be safely administered in advanced lung cancer patients to halt cancer or shrink primary and metastatic tumors in some patients. The clinical trial results were published April 26, 2012 in a paper entitled "Phase I Clinical Trial of Systemically Administered TUSC2 (FUS1)-Nanoparticles Mediating Functional Gene Transfer in Humans" in the journal PLoS One, an international, peer-reviewed publication of the Public Library of Science...

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Physicists in the US have discovered yet another useful property of the wonder material graphene – it can function much like a laser when excited with very short femtosecond light pulses. The team has shown that the material has two technologically important properties – population inversion of electrons and optical gain. The findings suggest that graphene could be used to make a variety of optoelectronics devices, including broadband optical amplifiers, high-speed modulators, and absorbers for telecommunications and ultrafast lasers. [Source]

At this year’s Spring Conference of the Europäische Akademie Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, which took place at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities from 19 to 20 April with about 50 participants, experts from different involved fields of research presented several aspects of the development in nanomedicine: recent trends in the progress of nanotechnological methods in medical applications, risk and other ethical issues as well as the social impact of nanomedicine in the context of science, industry and the public. Additionally, the conference included a poster session with 14 posters from different research fields such as lab research on nanoparticles, technology assessment and bioethics... [Source]

The three-dimensional transistors of Intel's new generation of chips continue the 50-year trend of faster, more tightly packed chips. [Source]

Despite its superlative properties, graphene has not been used to make electronic devices because electrons travel so well though it that they cannot be easily controlled. Now physicists have discovered that placing graphene sheets on boron nitride at the proper angle creates a superlattice that controls the movement of graphene electrons. [Source]

Graphene has been courted as the miracle material of the future, since different formulations have been fabricated into conductors, semiconductors and insulators. Now IBM has added photonic to the list by demonstrating a graphene/insulator superlattice that achieves a terahertz frequency notch filter and a linear polarizer, devices which could be useful in future mid- and far-infrared photonic devices, including detectors, modulators and three-dimensional metamaterials.

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While quantum dot-based light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) are not made of organic materials, they share many of the same advantages as organic LEDs (OLEDs). For instance, both QLEDs and OLEDs outshine semiconductor-based LEDs in terms of their greater flexibility, better color quality, and potential for lower cost since they can be fabricated using a simple process on a large-area substrate. But ever since the first QLEDs were demonstrated in the mid-'90s, about a decade after OLEDs, their performance has lagged behind OLEDs despite ongoing improvements. Now in a new study, a team of researchers from South Korea has designed and demonstrated QLEDs with an improved efficiency and unprecedented brightness that matches the brightness of today's best fluorescent OLEDs.[Source]

This week in Science Translational Medicine, researchers describe a treatment that restores nearly normal movement to rabbits with an induced form of cerebral palsy when given a few hours after birth. The therapy consists of an injection of an anti-inflammatory drug bound to nanoparticles that ferry the drug into the brain and deliver it to specific cells. The treatment's developers acknowledge it's not ready for clinical trials in humans, but they and others say the findings raise the possibility of a preventive treatment that could be given to high-risk infants soon after they're born...

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A team of researchers from Taiwan and the University of California, Berkeley, has harnessed nanodots to create a new electronic memory technology that can write and erase data 10-100 times faster than today's mainstream charge-storage memory products. The new system uses a layer of non-conducting material embedded with discrete (non-overlapping) silicon nanodots, each approximately 3 nanometers across. Each nanodot functions as a single memory bit. To control the memory operation, this layer is then covered with a thin metallic layer, which functions as a "metal gate." The metal gate controls the "on" and "off" states of the transistor. The results are published in the American Institute of Physics' (AIP) journal Applied Physics Letters ("Fast Programming Metal-Gate Si Quantum Dot Nonvolatile Memory Using Green Nanosecond Laser Spike Annealing"). [Source]

An 'organic' revolution is unfolding in the electronics industry. From flat-screen TVs and flexible displays to windows, lighting and solar panels, organic electronic components are offering unprecedented features, design flexibility and versatility at relatively low financial and environmental cost. EU funding is helping Europe strengthen its R&D lead in this fast-developing field by encouraging greater cooperation and coordination across national and commercial research efforts. [Source]

Targeted therapeutic nanoparticles that accumulate in tumors while bypassing healthy cells have shown promising results in an ongoing clinical trial, according to a new paper... [Source]

Trois laboratoires de physique, nanotechnologie et biologie du cancer de l’Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 organisent le 11 juin 2012 sur le campus Rockfeller de la faculté de médecine Lyon Est (métro D, station Grange-Blanche) le workshop Cancer Cells on-chip: State of the Art and Future Developments...

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(...) Using nanoparticles made of pure gold, Dr. Dan Peer, head of Tel Aviv University's Laboratory of Nanomedicine at the Department of Cell Research and Immunology and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, with a team including Drs. Meir Goldsmith and Dalit Landesman-Milo and in collaboration with Prof. Vincent Rotello and Dr. Daniel Moyano from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has developed a new method of introducing chemical residues into the immune system, allowing them to note the properties that incur the wrath of immune cells. Because the gold flecks are too small to be detected by the immune system, the immune system only responds when they are coated with different chemical residues... [Source]

In the not-too-distant future, plastic chips the size of flash cards may quickly and accurately diagnose diseases such as AIDS and cancer, as well as detect toxins and pathogens in the environment. Such lab-on-a-chip technology — known as microfluidics — works by flowing fluid such as blood through microscopic channels etched into a polymer's surface. Scientists have devised ways to manipulate the flow at micro- and nanoscales to detect certain molecules or markers that signal disease... [Source]

(...) In a paper in the March 6, 2012 online edition of Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine ("Nitric oxide-releasing nanoparticles accelerate wound healing in NOD-SCID mice"), Friedman and his team introduce a nanoparticle platform comprised of silane based sol-gel and sugar-derived glasses that can generate, store, and deliver NO in a controlled and sustained manner is utilized to enhance wound healing in immunodeficient mice...

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Since its discovery in 2004, graphene -- sheets of carbon an atom thick -- has sparked a flurry of research into the nanomaterial's potential applications for blazing fast, tiny electronics. Now, several research groups claim to have created analogous thin sheets of silicon called silicene, igniting a controversy over who won the race to synthesize this promising new material. [Source]

If you want to speed up computers much more, you will need a faster messenger. That is the idea behind silicon photonics, which whizzes data around a silicon chip using light instead of sluggish old electrons. Photons already carry data in fibre-optic cables for telecommunications. But using light in computing means carving transistors and lasers out of the same wafer of silicon, which needs an advanced manufacturing ‘foundry’. Only large companies and a few research institutions with deep pockets have these facilities, and some researchers worry that lack of access is slowing progress in photonics. A project called Optoelectronic Systems Integration in Silicon (OpSIS) now promises a solution. Based at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of Delaware in Newark, OpSIS provides design support for researchers in silicon photonics; organizes shared production runs; and arranges low-cost access to advanced foundries so that academics and start-up companies can create prototype devices. The US Air Force is the project’s biggest funder, with more support coming from Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, and design-automation company Mentor Graphics in Wilsonville, Oregon.[Source]

Future prospects for superior new organic electronic devices are brighter now thanks to a new study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Working at the Lab's Molecular Foundry, a DOE nanoscience center, the team has provided the first experimental determination of the pathways by which electrical charge is transported from molecule-to-molecule in an organic thin film. Their results also show how such organic films can be chemically modified to improve conductance. [Source]

Making electronic components using graphene, a material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms, is one of today's major technological challenges. Researchers hope to harness the outstanding electron mobility of graphene and also use the material to design low-cost, flexible electronics. Research teams from CEA, CNRS, Université de Lille 1 and Northwestern University have come up with a novel process for manufacturing transistors that combine flexibility and electron mobility and are capable of working at very high frequencies in the GHz range. The process uses a form of graphene in solution that is compatible with printing techniques. Electronic components such as these should lead to the development of high-performance electronic circuits built into everyday objects. [Source]

The emerging market for Gallium Nitride (GaN) power semiconductors is forecast to grow from almost zero in 2011 to over $1 billion in 2021, according to a new report from IMS Research. The research firm analyzed all of the key end markets for the products found that power supplies, PV inverters and industrial motor drives would be the three main drivers of growth.[Source]

Safe Work Australia Chair, Mr Tom Phillips AM, today announced the release of a new publication on the Safe Handling and Use of Carbon Nanotubes...

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Researchers at Oregon State University have tapped into the extraordinary power of carbon “nanotubes” to increase the speed of biological sensors, a technology that might one day allow a doctor to routinely perform lab tests in minutes, speeding diagnosis and treatment while reducing costs... [Source]

Inspired by nature's ability to shape a petal, and building on simple techniques used in photolithography and printing, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a new tool for manufacturing three-dimensional shapes easily and cheaply, to aid advances in biomedicine, robotics and tunable micro-optics. Ryan Hayward, Christian Santangelo and colleagues describe their new method of halftone gel lithography for photo-patterning polymer gel sheets in the current issue of Science ("Designing Responsive Buckled Surfaces by Halftone Gel Lithography"). They say the technique, among other applications, may someday help biomedical researchers to direct cells cultured in a laboratory to grow into the correct shape to form a blood vessel or a particular organ. [Source]

Researchers in applied physics have cleared an important hurdle in the development of advanced materials, called metamaterials, that bend light in unusual ways. Working at a scale applicable to infrared light, the Harvard team has used extremely short and powerful laser pulses to create three-dimensional patterns of tiny silver dots within a material. Those suspended metal dots are essential for building futuristic devices like invisibility cloaks. The new fabrication process, described in the journal Applied Physics Letters ("Fabrication of disconnected three-dimensional silver nanostructures in a polymer matrix"), advances nanoscale metal lithography into[Source]

A light-emitting diode (LED) that emits more light energy than it consumes in electrical energy has been unveiled by researchers in the US. The device – which has a conventional efficiency of greater than 200% – behaves as a kind of optical heat pump that converts lattice vibrations into infrared photons, cooling its surroundings in the process. The possibility of such a device was first predicted in 1957, but a practical version had proved impossible to create until now. Potential applications of the phenomenon include energy-efficient lighting and cryogenic refrigeration. [Source]

Researchers at Helmholtz Center in Berlin, Germany, have developed a magnetic valve that could be an enabling technology for spintronics. It is suitable as a kind of magnetic valve for data-storage units of the most recent generation and makes use of the effects spintronics, with which, in addition to the charging and recharging process, magnetic characteristics of the electrons can also be used for information-processing and storage. The advantage of the new structure: Data remains intact even after the electric current has been switched off and the memory can be re-written more or less indefinitely. Everything began with basic academic curiosity.[Source]

An international research team has succeeded in manufacturing on a polymeric film the world’s first flexible organic transistor that is robust enough under high temperature medical sterilization process. The study is to be published online in Nature Communications on March 6, 2012.[Source]

A growing number of scientists recognises how graphene, an allotrope of carbon, is the next silicon. But they also know graphene is too conductive to be used in computer chips. Now a research team from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom may have found a way to address this problem. Presented in the journal Science ("Field-Effect Tunneling Transistor Based on Vertical Graphene Heterostructures"), the study demonstrates how a transistor could indeed be the missing link for graphene to become the next silicon. Their discovery opens a third dimension in graphene research. [Source]

Bio Nano Consulting (BNC), specialists in bio and nanotechnology partnerships between the academic and industrial sectors, announces the start of a multinational project funded by the European Commission under the FP7 NMP Programme: V-SMMART Nano (Volumetric Scanning Microwave Microscopy Analytical and Research Tool for Nanotechnology)... [Source]

An international team of materials researchers including Drexel University's Dr. Yury Gogotsi has given the engineering world a better look at the inner functions of the electrodes of supercapacitors – the low-cost, lightweight energy storage devices used in many electronics, transportation and many other applications. In a piece published in the March 4 edition of Nature Materials, Gogotsi, and his collaborators from universities in France and England, take another step toward finding a solution to the world's demand for sustainable energy sources...

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The technological world of the 21st century owes a tremendous amount to advances in electrical engineering, specifically, the ability to finely control the flow of electrical charges using increasingly small and complicated circuits. And while those electrical advances continue to race ahead, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are pushing circuitry forward in a different way, by replacing electricity with light. [Source]

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have made high-performance integrated circuits on flexible substrates from thin-film transistors containing semiconductor-enriched carbon nanotubes. The platforms might find a wide range of applications – in displays, electronic skin, wearable devices and medical prostheses to name but a few.[Source]

Thanks to the flexible yet robust properties of carbon nanotubes, researchers have previously fabricated transistors that can be rolled, folded, and stretched. Now a team from Japan has made an all-carbon-nanotube transistor that can be crumpled like a piece of paper without degradation of its electrical properties. The new transistor is the most bendable reported to date that doesn’t experience a loss in performance. [Source]

Graphene, a layer of graphite just one atom thick, isn't called a wonder material for nothing. The subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, it is famed for its superlative mechanical and electronic properties. Yet new computer simulations suggest that the electronic properties of a little-known sister material of graphene—graphyne—may in some ways be better.[Source]

Hammond and her colleagues have now come up with a novel delivery vehicle in which RNA is packed into microspheres so dense that they withstand degradation until they reach their destinations... [Source]

The last major engineering hurdle to quantum computers—millisecond coherence times—has been surmounted by researchers at IBM Research, making commercialization of the technology possible "within our lifetimes," according to Matthias Steffen, manager of IBM's Experimental Quantum Computing group.

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A long-standing controversy regarding the semiconductor gallium manganese arsenide, one of the most promising materials for spintronic technology, looks to have been resolved. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)in collaboration with scientist from University of Notre Dame have determined the origin of the charge-carriers responsible for the ferromagnetic properties that make gallium manganese arsenide such a hot commodity for spintronic devices. Such devices utilize electron spin rather than charge to read and write data, resulting in smaller, faster and much cheaper data storage and processing. [Source]

Hybrid structures containing semiconductor quantum dots and metal nanoparticles could lead to better light-emitting diodes and new nonlinear photonic devices. That is according to researchers in China, who have studied hybrids made of cadmium–telluride quantum dots and gold nanoparticle arrays. The amount of light emitted by these structures can be increased dramatically by simply tuning the plasma oscillations on the gold particles to resonate with transitions in the quantum dots. [Source]

The French government published its response to the public nano-debate organised from 15 October 2009 until 24 February 2010. The response was sent to the President of the Committee for National Public Debate CNDP on 13 February...

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To address occupational risks of nanomaterials, WHO is developing Guidelines on "Protecting Workers from Potential Risks of Manufactured Nanomaterials" (WHO/NANOH). These Guidelines aim to facilitate improvements in occupational health and safety of workers potentially exposed to nanomaterials in a broad range of manufacturing and social environments... [Source]

In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, UNSW physicists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal. [Source]

Nanotechnologists from the University of Twente's MESA+ and MIRA research institutes have developed a method for incorporating magnetic elements into non-magnetic materials in a highly controlled way. Using this technique, it is possible to drastically change the electrical behaviour of metals and even to give semiconductors magnetic properties. The results have been published in leading scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.[Source]

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste. [Source]

The FP7 project NanoDiaRA organises in collaboration with the Swiss NanoConvention a workshop entitled 'Nanoparticles in medicine: toxicity methods and standards" on May 23 in Lausanne, Switzerland. [Source]

Graphene could be ideal for replacing transparent anodes made of expensive indium tin oxide (ITO) in applications like organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). However, even the best graphene anode OLEDs made today are incapable of emitting light very efficiently because graphene has a low work function and high sheet resistance. Now, researchers in Korea are saying that they may have overcome these problems by fabricating graphene anode OLEDs with luminous efficiencies of 37.2 lmW–1 in fluorescent devices and 102.7 lm W–1 in phosphorescent ones – figures that are significantly greater than those of equivalent OLEDs containing an ITO anode. The result confirms that graphene anodes could be used to make a wide range of high-performance and flexible organic optoelectronics devices. [Source]

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing US semiconductor manufacturing and design, released the 2011 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), a roadmap of near-term and long-term challenges and innovations for the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry through 2026.[Source]

At the nano level, researchers at Stanford have discovered a new way to weld together meshes of tiny wires. Their work could lead to innovative electronics and solar applications. To succeed, they called upon plasmonics.[Source]

Graphene is highly conducting and thus ideal for electronic applications. However, its extreme conductivity can also be a problem because devices made from the material remain conducting even when switched off. Researchers at the University of Manchester have now taken a step forward in overcoming this problem by making a new type of transistor from graphene that contains layers of boron nitride or molybdenum disulphide sandwiched between graphene sheets. The layers act as vertical tunnelling barriers that minimize current leakage – even at room temperature.[Source]

Astonishing conductivity helped the discoverers of graphene win the Nobel prize in physics in 2010. Now a way to switch off the easy flow of electrons in this wonder form of carbon is bringing superfast graphene computers closer. A sheet-like molecule just one carbon atom thick, graphene offers much less resistance to the flow of electrons than silicon. It has been hailed for its potential as the basis for computer circuits that operate at unprecedented speed. "It's an extremely promising material," says Konstantin Novoselov, who shared the Nobel prize with his co-discoverer, Andre Geim, both at the University of Manchester, UK. [Source]

Engineers have built the first carbon nanotube (CNT) transistor with a channel length below 10 nm, a size that is considered a requirement for computing technology in the next decade. Not only can the tiny transistor sufficiently control current, it does so significantly better than predicted by theory. It even outperforms the best competing silicon transistors at this scale, demonstrating a superior current density at a very low operating voltage. [Source]

Solid-state memory is seeing an increase in demand due to the emergence of portable devices such as tablet computers and smart phones. Spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random-access memory (STT-MRAM) is a new type of solid-state memory that uses electrical currents to read and write data that are stored on magnetic moment of electrons. Rachid Sbiaa and co-workers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute have now enhanced the storage density of STT-MRAM by packing multiple bits of information into each of its memory cells (see paper in Applied Physics Letters: "Spin transfer torque switching for multi-bit per cell magnetic memory with perpendicular anisotropy". [Source]

To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries – gravity, penicillin, the New World – add this: Scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem. [Source]

Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems. [Source]

Effort aims to merge technology from four companies to create the first sticker with all-printed electronics. [Source]

Molybdenite could have a crucial advantage over graphene for making smaller, faster electronics. [Source]

Le rapport scientifique 2010-2011 de l'Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques (INERIS) est disponible ici. Le chapitre dédié aux Nanotechnologies présente les avancées des recherches de l'Institut dans le domaine des risques les aux nanoparticules et nanomatériaux.

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Materia nova: formation nanomatériaux et nanoparticules - aspects HSE: Centrée sur les problématiques sanitaire, environnementale et sécuritaire, cette formation, assurée par la société Pylote, propose des réponses utiles ainsi que des outils simples et accessibles afin de s'adapter aux nouvelles normes et réglementations liées à l'industrie des nanomatériaux...

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NRC Report: A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials - Despite extensive investment in nanotechnology and increasing commercialization over the last decade, insufficient understanding remains about the environmental, health, and safety aspects of nanomaterials.  Without a coordinated research plan to help guide efforts to manage and avoid potential risks, the future of safe and sustainable nanotechnology is uncertain, says a new report from the National Research Council (NRC)...

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OLEDs – organic light-emitting diodes – are full of promise for a range of practical applications. OLED technology is based on the phenomenon that certain organic materials emit light when fed by an electric current and it is already used in small electronic device displays in mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, and also some TV screens. OLEDs in fiber form could lead to revolutionary applications by integrating optical and optoelectronic devices into textile. Combined with nanoelectronic devices, we might one day see flexible optical sensors and display screens woven into shirts and other garments. You could literally wear your next-generation smart phone or iPad on your sleeves; including the solar panels to power them. [Source]

Physicists in Spain and the UK have calculated that graphene – a layer of carbon just one atom thick – could be used to create a perfect absorber of light if it is doped and patterned into a periodic array. The work could lead to improved light-detection devices, particularly in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, where current technologies struggle to function. [Source]

An electric field can displace the cloud of electrons surrounding each atom of a solid. In an effect known as polarization, the cloud centers move away slightly from the positively charged nuclei, which radically changes the optical properties of the solid. Materials that can maintain this polarization, even when the external electric field is removed, are known as ferroelectrics and they could provide a novel route to higher-density memory devices. [Source]

A nine-nanometer device shows that nanotubes could be a viable alternative to silicon as electronics get even tinier. [Source]

Scientists claim to have cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, making it invisible from all angles.[Source]

Tiny components with the ability to emit single particles of light are important for various technological innovations. Physicists of the Universities of Würzburg, Stuttgart and Ulm have made significant progress in the fabrication of such structures. [Source]

A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics. [Source]

A material that promises to stick to smooth surfaces and then release on demand has been designed by scientists in the UK. The plasmonic metamaterial has yet to be built and tested in the lab, but if successful, it could be used to create artificial "gecko toes" that mimic those used by the lizards to walk up smooth walls. [Source]

IBM Research (NYSE:IBM) demonstrated the ability to store information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms, 100-10,000x less than today's information storage technologies. [Source]

A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones. [Source]

Not everything is weird at the nanoscale. Wires so small you'd expect them to obey the strange laws of quantum mechanics have instead displayed the same electrical properties as ordinary electrical interconnects. [Source]

Arrays of tiny “plasmonic nanoantennas” have been developed that can precisely manipulate light in new ways, potentially enabling optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, computers and telecommunications. Researchers at Purdue University have used the nanoantennas to abruptly change the phase of light. Their findings were published online Dec. 22 in Science.

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Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have for the first time demonstrated a novel subharmonic graphene FET mixer at microwave frequencies. The mixer provides new opportunities in future electronics, as it enables compact circuit technology, potential to reach high frequencies and integration with silicon technology. [Source]

Hitching a ride into the retina on nanoparticles called dendrimers offers a new way to treat age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. A collaborative research study among investigators at Wayne State University, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine shows that steroids attached to the dendrimers targeted the damage-causing cells associated with neuroinflammation, leaving the rest of the eye unaffected and preserving vision

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Bacteria that contaminate systems ranging from medical implants to industrial pipelines are tough to eradicate once they attach to such surfaces as slimy "biofilms". The conventional countermeasure of surface chemistry treatments only works for a number of hours, as secreted proteins and small molecules quickly mask the treated surface and re-enable colonization. Taking a radically different approach, researchers at Harvard University, US, have designed biofilm-inhibiting surfaces that rely only on nanoscale geometric and mechanical factors to reduce bacterial attachment. [Source]

Philips has called for a worldwide switch to LED lighting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. The company is stating that a tipping point has been reached in the development of LED lighting so that it can now be used for general high-quality lighting in almost all applications. A switch to LED lighting will help combat climate change, save energy and improve people's lives through increased well-being, safety and productivity where they live and work, the company said. [Source]

Researchers at Chalmers have demonstrated that two stacked chips can be vertically interconnected with carbon nanotube vias through the chips. This new method improves possibilities for 3D integration of circuits, one of the most promising approaches for miniaturization and performance promotion of electronics. [Source]

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have invented a new ink based on graphene and have used it to print high-performance thin-film transistors. The work could lead to printed electronics, including flexible displays, solar cells and electronic paper, made from the wonder material. [Source]

Researchers from Purdue and Harvard universities have created a new type of transistor made from a material that could replace silicon and have a 3-D structure instead of conventional flat computer chips. [Source]

IBM has shown that a revolutionary new type of computer memory—one that combines the large capacity of traditional hard disks with the speed and robustness of flash memory—can be made with standard chip-making tools. [Source]

Graphene is growing up (or, rather, out). When physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated the speedy two-dimensional material in 2004 using sticky tape, they were lucky to create flakes of the stuff that spanned a few micrometers. Now, IBM has demonstrated the ability to make integrated circuits on 200-mm wafers coated with a continuous layer of the atom-thick material. The results were reported on Monday at the 2011 International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, D.C. According to a paper submitted to the conference by Shu-Jen Han of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York and colleagues, the demonstration is a major step in transitioning this promising material from a scientific curiosity into a real technology [Source]

Exotic materials called topological insulators, discovered just a few years ago, have yielded some of their secrets to a team of MIT researchers. For the first time, the team showed that light can be used to obtain information about the spin of electrons flowing over the material’s surface, and has even found a way to control these electron movements by varying the polarization of a light source. [Source]

...de présentation de la déclaration annuelle des substances à l’état nanoparticulaire, pris en application des article R. 523-12 et R. 523-13 du code de l’environnement. L’article 185 de la loi n° 2010-788 du 12 juillet 2010 portant engagement national pour l’environnement, dite loi Grenelle II, prévoit la mise en place d’un dispositif de déclaration obligatoire des quantités et des usages des substances nanoparticulaires ou des nanomatériaux produits, importés ou distribués en France...

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At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference next February IBM, Intel, NEC and other leading semiconductor companies and researchers plan to discuss ideas how to make mainstream products with optical chip-to-chip interconnects. [Source]

A research team at the London Centre for Nanotechnology has for the first time found electronic stripes dubbed as ‘charge density waves,’ on the graphene sheet surface that produce a graphitic superconductor. [Source]

Since the invention of liquid crystal displays in the mid-1960s, display electronics have undergone rapid transformation. Recently developed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have shown several advantages over LCDs, including their light weight, flexibility, wide viewing angles, improved brightness, high power efficiency and quick response. [Source]

The gallium nitride nanowires grown by PML scientists may only be a few tenths of a micrometer in diameter, but they promise a very wide range of applications, from new light-emitting diodes and diode lasers to ultra-small resonators, chemical sensors, and highly sensitive atomic probe tips. [Source]

Graphene has remarkable optical properties and can absorb more than 2% of incoming visible light – an astonishing fact since the material is only one atom thick. Now, researchers at IBM have discovered that graphene can also absorb up to 40% of light in the far infrared and microwave frequency ranges. The finding confirms that the material could be ideal for terahertz and photonics applications. [Source]

The 'wonder material' of modern science now promises all-printed, fexible and transparent graphene devices on more or less any surface. [Source]

Over twenty new multi-year European photonics projects with total aggregate funding of more than €110 million have officially started in the past two months, with organic photonics and electronics projects featuring prominently. [Source]

...primary particles in lungs. The German Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (BAUA) has released a report presenting the investigations of the institute on the dispersion and retention behavior of nanoparticles in the lungs... [Source]

There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips — devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their computational tasks. Now, researchers at MIT have filled in a crucial piece of the puzzle that could enable the creation of photonic chips on the standard silicon material that forms the basis for most of today’s electronics. [Source]