New Graphene Making Technique Could Enable Display Screens and Solar Cells Markets

Graphene’s promise as a material for new kinds of electronic devices, among other uses, has led researchers around the world to study the material in search of new applications. But one of the biggest limitations to wider use of the strong, lightweight, highly conductive material has been the hurdle of fabrication on an industrial scale.

 

Initial work with the carbon material, which forms an atomic-scale mesh and is just a single atom thick, has relied on the use of tiny flakes, typically obtained by quickly removing a piece of sticky tape from a block of graphite — a low-tech system that does not lend itself to manufacturing. Since then, focus has shifted to making graphene films on metal foil, but researchers have faced difficulties in transferring the graphene from the foil to useful substrates.

Now researchers at MIT and the University of Michigan have come up with a way of producing graphene, in a process that lends itself to scaling up, by making graphene directly on materials such as large sheets of glass. The process is described, in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, by a team of nine researchers led by A. John Hart of MIT. Lead authors of the paper are Dan McNerny, a former Michigan postdoc, and Viswanath Balakrishnan, a former MIT postdoc who is now at the Indian Institute of Technology.

Currently, most methods of making graphene first grow the material on a film of metal, such as nickel or copper, says Hart, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “To make it useful, you have to get it off the metal and onto a substrate, such as a silicon wafer or a polymer sheet, or something larger like a sheet of glass,” he says. “But the process of transferring it has become much more frustrating than the process of growing the graphene itself, and can damage and contaminate the graphene.”

The new work, Hart says, still uses a metal film as the template — but instead of making graphene only on top of the metal film, it makes graphene on both the film’s top and bottom. The substrate in this case is silicon dioxide, a form of glass, with a film of nickel on top of it.

Using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to deposit a graphene layer on top of the nickel film, Hart says, yields “not only graphene on top [of the nickel layer], but also on the bottom.” The nickel film can then be peeled away, leaving just the graphene on top of the nonmetallic substrate.

This way, there’s no need for a separate process to attach the graphene to the intended substrate — whether it’s a large plate of glass for a display screen, or a thin, flexible material that could be used as the basis for a lightweight, portable solar cell, for example. “You do the CVD on the substrate, and, using our method, the graphene stays behind on the substrate,” Hart says.

In addition to the researchers at Michigan, where Hart previously taught, the work was done in collaboration with a large glass manufacturer, Guardian Industries. “To meet their manufacturing needs, it must be very scalable,” Hart says. The company currently uses a float process, where glass moves along at a speed of several meters per minute in facilities that produce hundreds of tons of glass every day. “We were inspired by the need to develop a scalable manufacturing process that could produce graphene directly on a glass substrate,” Hart says.

The work is still in an early stage; Hart cautions that “we still need to improve the uniformity and the quality of the graphene to make it useful.” But the potential is great, he suggests: “The ability to produce graphene directly on nonmetal substrates could be used for large-format displays and touch screens, and for ‘smart’ windows that have integrated devices like heaters and sensors.”

Hart adds that the approach could also be used for small-scale applications, such as integrated circuits on silicon wafers, if graphene can be synthesized at lower temperatures than were used in the present study.

“This new process is based on an understanding of graphene growth in concert with the mechanics of the nickel film,” he says. “We’ve shown this mechanism can work. Now it’s a matter of improving the attributes needed to produce a high-performance graphene coating.”

Christos Dimitrakopoulos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who was not involved in this work, says, “This is a very significant piece of work for very large-area applications of graphene on insulating substrates.” Compared to other methods, such as the use of a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate to grow graphene, he says, “The fact that the lateral size of graphene in the Hart group’s approach is limited only by the size of the [CVD] reactor, instead of the size of the SiC wafer, is a major advantage.”

“This is a high-quality and carefully executed work,” Dimitrakopoulos adds.

The work was supported by Guardian Industries, the National Science Foundation, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

New Chemistry Paves the way for Creating Higher-Quality Advanced Nano-Materials (Like Quantum Dots)

The New chemistry paves the way for creating higher-quality advanced nano-materials. Scientists and London’s Imperial  College Imperial have developed a new technique for carrying out multiple-step chemical reactions to improve production of advanced nano-materials.

 

The scientists used their new three-phase chemical reactor to create quantum dots, which are nanocrystals made of semiconductors most commonly used in solar cells and medical imaging.

The technique allows chemists to do multiple-step reactions inside tiny droplets in a flowing stream – a process known as droplet chemistry – and should make it possible to carry out more sophisticated chemical reactions than have previously been possible. The method will make it easier to create high-quality, high-performance advanced materials for new plastic electronics such as flexible computer screens and affordable solar panels. The Imperial researchers describe their new ‘three-phase multistep droplet reactor’ in a paper in the journal Nature Communications.

This three-phase droplet chemistry provides an incredibly controlled, straightforward and low cost method for carrying out the multistep chemical procedures needed to create robust and high-quality advanced materials.

– James Bannock

Study author

Droplet chemistry is a form of “flow chemistry” where reactive chemicals combine, mix, and react inside networks of narrow pipes or channels to create new materials. In conventional forms of flow chemistry the reaction solution moves through the pipes as a continuous stream, and over time residue may deposit on the channel walls, causing fouling.

In droplet chemistry, the reaction solution flows as discrete droplets inside a second liquid that it cannot mix with. This prevents channel-fouling as the droplets are kept away from the walls of the reactor by the other liquid. The small size of the droplets also improves the uniformity of the reaction, leading to a better quality product.

One of the lead researchers, Adrian Nightingale, then a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry, said: “When arteries become blocked the whole circulatory system can quickly fail, with fatal consequences. Similarly, when the tubes we use in flow chemistry become blocked, flow reactors fail and production stops. Droplet-based chemistry eradicates this problem, but previously it could only be used for very simple, single-step reactions where all reagents were present in the droplets from the outset. Here we have developed a method for controllably injecting new reagents into the flowing droplets, greatly expanding the palette of materials that can be produced.”

In the new research, the scientists have introduced a third phase, a gas, alongside the two liquids to establish an even spacing between the droplets and so ensure that each one receives the same dose of the added reagent.

John de Mello, who heads up the research team, likened the challenge to throwing small parcels into the open windows of passing cars. “If the cars are all moving at the same speed and are exactly the same distance apart, you can time things well and achieve a perfect success rate. That’s what the gas is needed for – to maintain a uniform separation between droplets.”

James Bannock from Imperial’s Doctoral Training Centre In Plastic Electronics commented: “This three-phase droplet chemistry provides an incredibly controlled, straightforward and low cost method for carrying out the multistep chemical procedures needed to create robust and high-quality advanced materials.”

Tom Phillips, also a co-author of the work, added: “This step forward is very exciting for industry as the method should scale well to higher production volumes, allowing high-specification advanced materials to be made in the quantities that industry needs.”

The scientists compared the performance of the three-phase reactor to conventional droplet reactors by using a simple visual test. They added a continuous stream of red dye to a droplet stream of blue dye, and then they recorded images of the droplets before and after the red dye was added. Without the gas, there were irregularities in the spacing between the droplets after dye was added and significant variations in their size and colouration due to inconsistent dosing. With the gas present, all droplets were uniformly spaced and had the same purple colour after dye was added, indicating that each droplet had received the exact same dose of dye.

The scientists used their new three-phase chemical reactor to create quantum dots, which are nanocrystals made of semiconductors most commonly used in solar cells and medical imaging. They believe the technique will be readily applicable to a broad range of fine chemicals and advanced materials.

REFERENCE:

Nightingale, A.M. et al. ‘Controlled multistep synthesis in a three-phase droplet reactor’. Nature Communications. 6 May 2014.

To Read the Full Article Go Here:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140506/ncomms4777/full/ncomms4777.html

Nanotechnology – a tiny solution to the global water crisis: University of Waterloo

Prof. Frank Gu, is a Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He has established an interdisciplinary research program combining functional polymers and polymer-metal oxide hybrid materials to solve problems in medicine, agriculture and environmental protection.

 

Dr. Gu received his BSc from Trent University and Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada, where he majored in chemical engineering and was awarded with Canada Graduate Scholarship from Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Following completion of his graduate program, he was awarded a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship to purse his research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School. Under the co-supervisions of Institute Professor Robert Langer and Professor Omid Farokhzad, he developed novel nanofabrication technologies which were licensed to leading biotechnology companies including Bind Biosciences and Selecta Biosciences.

In July 2008, Dr. Gu joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo as an Assistant Professor. In 2012, he was awarded the Canada Research Chair position to advance his research in the development of targeted delivery systems using nanotechnology. His expertise in the development of functional nanoparticles for targeted delivery has generated over 100 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, as well as 15 US and World patent applications.

–

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Scientists make less flammable batteries

The Boeing Dreamliner’s battery troubles last year highlighted the potential dangers of lithium-ion technology, but a safer alternative is emerging. As news reports of lithium-ion battery (LIB) fires in Boeing Dreamliner planes and Tesla electric cars remind us, these batteries — which are in everyday portable devices, like tablets and smartphones — have their downsides.

Now, scientists have designed a safer kind of lithium battery component that is far less likely to catch fire and still promises effective performance. They report their approach in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Lynden Archer, Geoffrey Coates and colleagues at Cornell University explain that the danger of LIBs originates with their electrolytes, the substance that allows ions to flow between the electrodes of the battery. The electrolyte usually contains a flammable liquid. To minimize this fire hazard, some researchers are developing more stable, solid electrolytes.

But although solid electrolytes are less likely to fuel a fire, their ability to transport ions has fallen short, especially at room temperature. Coates’s team set out to tackle both issues and come up with a safer, high-performance battery component, while Archer’s team studied the electrochemical characteristics of the materials. The team’s efforts have led to a new family of solid polymer electrolytes that is both good at conducting lithium ions at room temperature and minimizing the risk of fire.

Not only are these materials safer than their liquid counterparts in LIBs, but they could also be used in high-energy lithium-metal batteries, such as promising lithium-sulfur and lithium-air batteries.

Source and top image of Lynden Archer: Cornell University

For more read Energy Harvesting and Storage for Electronic Devices 2014-2024, Forecasts, Technologies, Players and attend:

Energy Harvesting and Storage USA 19-20 November 2014, Santa Clara, USA

Read more at: http://www.energyharvestingjournal.com/articles/scientists-make-less-flammable-batteries-00006550.asp?sessionid=1

Check Out the New (Tiny) Assembly Line of the Future!

Published on May 15, 2014

There’s no shortage of ideas about how to use nanotechnology, but one of the major hurdles is how to manufacture some of the new products on a large scale. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), UMass Amherst chemical engineer Jim Watkins and his team are working to make nanotechnology more practical for industrial scale manufacturing. One of the projects they’re working on at the NSF Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing (CHM) is a roll-to-roll process for nanotechnology that is similar to what is used in traditional manufacturing. They’re also designing a process to manufacture printable coatings that improve the way solar panels absorb and direct light. They’re even investigating the use of self-assembling nanoscale products that could have applications for many industries.

“New nanotechnologies can’t impact the US economy until practical methods are available for producing products using them in high volumes, at low cost. CHM is researching the fundamental scientific and engineering barriers that impede such commercialization, and innovating new technologies to surmount those barriers,” notes Bruce Kramer, senior advisor in the NSF Engineering Directorate’s Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), which funded the research.

“The NSF Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing is developing platform technologies for the economical manufacture of next generation devices and systems for applications in computing, electronics, energy conversion, resource conservation and human health,” explains Khershed Cooper, a program director in the CMMI Division. “The Center creates fabrication tools that are enabling versatile and high-rate continuous processes for the manufacture of nanostructures that are systematically integrated into higher order structures using bottom-up and top-down techniques. For example, CHM is designing and building continuous, roll-to-roll nanofabrication systems that can print, in high-volume, 3D nanostructures and multi-layer nanodevices at sub-100 nanometer resolution, and in the process realize hybrid electronic/optical/mechanical nanosystems.”

 

 

Israel, Chinese universities announce $300 million joint nanotechnology project as ties expand

Israel, Chinese universities announce $300 million joint nanotechnology project as ties expand

TEL AVIV, Israel – Two top universities from Israel and China announced Monday that they are starting a $300 million research project focused on nanotechnologies, the latest move in booming ties between the Jewish state and the Asian giant.

Tel Aviv University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University said they will exchange graduate students and faculty members to work at a joint research centre based at the two institutions.

The co-operation initially will focus on nanotechnology, particularly with medical and optics applications, but may be later expanded to other areas, including raw materials, water treatment and environmental issues, officials from both sides said at a news conference at the Israeli university.

Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter said funding will be sought from private and government sources, adding that almost a third of the money already has been raised for the project, which is to be formally launched on Tuesday.

“It’s an unprecedented agreement in size and scope,” Klafter said. “It was built from the bottom up because it started with our scientists meeting and falling in love with each other.”

Read More:

http://world.einnews.com/article/205456489/b38sJdd4WMPMj_yC

 

The Future of Solar Energy is TINY Technology!

Published on Feb 26, 2014

Technology is getting smaller and smaller — but NOTHING compares to nanotechnology. As we learn more about how materials behave on the nanoscale, we have more potential applications to use nanotechnology practically — including more efficient solar energy! Jonathan Strickland explains how nanotech could even make our solar panels more efficient, flexible, and affordable.

What does “nanotechnology” mean to you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

 

How Soon Will West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s Retreat Trigger A Sea Level Warning?

Two teams of scientists say the long-feared collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun, kicking off what they say will be a centuries-long, “unstoppable” process that could raise sea levels by as much as 15 feet.

“There’s been a lot of speculation about the stability of marine ice sheets, and many scientists suspected that this kind of behavior is under way,” Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a news release about one of the studies. “This study provides a more qualitative idea of the rates at which the collapse could take place.”

The findings from Joughin and his colleagues, to be published this week in the journal Science, indicate that in some places, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is losing tens of feet, or several meters, of ice elevation every year.

They estimate that Thwaites Glacier would probably disappear entirely in somewhere between 200 and 1,000 years. That loss would raise global sea levels by nearly 2 feet (60 centimeters). The glacier serves as a linchpin for the rest of the West Antarctic Ice sheet, which has enough frozen mass to cause another 10 to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) of sea level rise.

A second study, published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters, reports the widespread retreat of Thwaites and other glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — and says the retreat can’t help but continue.

“It has passed the point of no return,” the research team’s leader, Eric Rignot of the University of California at Irvine, told reporters during a NASA teleconference on Monday. The second study projected that the glacial retreat in Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea Embayment, which includes Thwaites Glacier, would result in 4 feet (1.2 meters) of sea level rise — and open the way to more widespread retreats.

Rignot’s team based their findings on a detailed analysis of radar data from two European Earth Remote Sensing satelllites, ERS-1 and ERS-2. Joughin’s team relied on radar maps primarily derived from an aerial NASA survey called Operation IceBridge.

Scientists have been warning for decades that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was in peril due to climate change, and recent readings have shown that the region is warming more quickly than expected. The loss of ice that is floating on the seas surrounding the continent would not contribute significantly to sea level rise. However, losing the ice that’s currently grounded on the continent would.

A moment of ‘wow’

The two studies released on Monday document the glaciers’ retreat and project what’s likely to happen in the future. “We finally have hit this point where we have enough observations to put this all together, to say, ‘Wow, we really are in this state.'” NASA scientist Tom Wagner told reporters.

The key findings in both studies relate to what’s happening to the “grounding line” for Antarctica’s glaciers. That’s the subsurface boundary between ice that is floating on the sea and ice that is anchored to land.

“The grounding line is buried under a thousand or more meters of ice, so it is incredibly challenging for a human observer on the ice sheet surface to figure out exactly where the transition is,” Rignot explained in a NASA news release. “This analysis is best done using satellite techniques.”

The radar readings from both teams show that the grounding line for some areas of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has retreated by as much as 20 miles (37 kilometers) over the past couple of decades, apparently due to the interaction with warmer seas. The main worry is that there appears to be no submerged hill or mountain that could slow down further retreat.

Rignot said that means the glacial retreat has triggered a process of “positive feedback.”

“We feel that this is at the point where even if the ocean is not providing additional heat, the system is in a chain reaction that is unstoppable,” he told reporters.

Joughin said computer models produce a wide range of scenarios for the collapse of Thwaites Glacier. Some scenarios suggest that the glacier could last more than a millennium longer, but the most likely scenarios predict that rapid collapse would occur somewhere between 200 and 500 years from now.

What lies ahead

Higher greenhouse-gas emissions would lead to faster ice loss, and lower emissions could slow down the meltdown. But in any case, the loss of Thwaites Glacier appears inevitable, Joughin said: “All of our simulations show it will retreat at less than a millimeter of sea level rise per year for a couple of hundred years, and then, boom, it just starts to really go.”

In its most recent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that global sea levels were likely to rise between 4 inches and 3 feet (10 to 90 centimeters) by the year 2100. Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a geoscientist at Penn State University who didn’t play a role in either study, said future IPCC estimates “will almost certainly be revised, and revised upwards.”

“The IPCC projections don’t really include Antarctic contributions to any great measure,” he told reporters. “The results are just now starting to come together.”

Anandakrishnan said future middle-of-the-road estimates for 2100 may well zero in on the top end of the current IPCC projection, around 3 feet. Without mitigating measures, that amount of sea level rise would inundate significant areas of coastal cities including Miami Beach, New Orleans and New York.

A high-resolution radar map shows Thwaites Glacier’s thinning ice shelf. Warm circumpolar deep water is melting the underside of this floating shelf, leading to a speedup in the glacier’s retreat. This glacier now appears to be in the early stages of collapse, with full collapse potentially occurring within a few centuries.

In addition to Rignot, the authors of the paper in Geophysical Research Letters, “Widespread, Rapid Grounding Line Retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler Glaciers, West Antarctica From 1992 to 2011,” include Jeremie Mouginot, Mathieu Morlighem, Helene Seroussi and Bernd Scheuchl.

Article By  Alan Boyle: Science Editor for NBC News Digital

Controlling Water Molecules at the “Nano-Scale” has Broad Applications

Controlling the mobility of water molecules is of relevance to several scientific disciplines and has implications in multiple technological applications.

 

 

For instance, water adsorption/desorption in nanoporous materials, such as zeolites, has potential in long-term thermal storage and energy engineering^{9, 10}; filters with nanopores and nanochannels are increasingly explored for their large surface area and higher efficiency^{11, 12}; in heat transfer problems, nanofluids are under investigation because of their peculiar thermal properties^{13, 14}; in micro/nanotechnology processes, controlling the deposition and surface diffusion of water molecules is critical for precise manufacturing^{15, 16}; in biology, the mechanisms regulating the transport of single water molecules through cell membrane channels (aquaporins) and the multi-scale water compartmentalization in tissues are still elusive^{17, 18, 19, 20}. Also, proteins tend to modify their structure and function according to the surrounding aqueous environment^{21, 22}.

Certainly, nanomedicine is one of the fields where several exciting discoveries and technological applications can be directly related to the anomalous behaviour of water in confined geometries. A few examples are the enhancement in longitudinal relaxivity associated with the entrapment of Gd³⁺-ion complexes in mesoporous structures^{23, 24}; the dynamics of water molecules in nanotubes and nanochannels for controlled drug delivery^{25, 26}; and the design of hydrogel-based nano/microparticles^{27, 28}.

In particular, the dynamics of water molecules is essential in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in that contrast enhancement is influenced by the local diffusion of water molecules^{29, 30}. It is known that for paramagnetic metal complexes, such as Gd³⁺ ions, the Solomon–Bloembergen–Morgan theory³¹ would predict a change in longitudinal relaxivity r₁ of the complex following a variation in the relative translational diffusion time (τ_D) of the water molecules surrounding the complex, and in the residence lifetime (τ_M) of the water molecules bound to the complex. Similarly, for magnetic nanoparticles (NPs), such as the iron oxide NPs, an increase in τ_D (that is, decrease in D) would enhance the transversal relaxivity r₂ (ref. 32).

Hence, the modulation and precise control of the diffusion of the water molecules in the vicinity of an MRI contrast agent plays an important role in imaging performance. This concept has been already successfully proved by experiments²³, but a clear rationale (and a computationally efficient tool) for optimally designing such agents is still missing.

Despite its fundamental importance in science and technology, the physical and transport properties of water are far from being completely understood¹. The self-diffusion of water molecules D in proximity of solid surfaces, at the interface between immiscible liquids, and in confined geometries, such as nanopores and nanotubes, is a very different process as compared to the bulk phase^{2, 3, 4}.

The thermal agitation of the water molecules in the bulk liquid is only dictated by the local temperature and pressure conditions, and molecular diffusion follows the Einstein relation⁵. Differently, under confined conditions, the mobility of water molecules is perturbed by the presence of additional interaction forces arising at the water/solid interfaces, mainly van der Waals and Coulomb interactions. These additional forces usually reduce the local molecular diffusion^{6, 7}. Even if considerable work has been done in recent years, both experimentally and theoretically, to understand and characterize the perturbed behaviour of the water molecules in confined geometries, there is still no complete comprehension of the process and often the published results are contradictory⁸.

In this work, the self-diffusion coefficient D of water molecules is investigated through molecular dynamics (MD) simulations under five different isothermal configurations, namely, within silica (SiO₂) nanopores, around spherical hydroxylated NPs, within SiO₂ nanopores filled by NPs, around single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and proteins. The coefficient D has been estimated for almost 60 cases by varying the size of the NPs and nanopores, the electrostatic surface charges and level of hydrophobicity, as well as the type of protein. The self-diffusion coefficient D for all different configurations has been found to scale with a single non-dimensional parameter θ, incorporating both geometrical and physicochemical information, following the relationship D(θ)=D_B[1+(D_C/D_B−1)θ]. The D(θ) scaling is modulated by the coefficients D_B and D_C, which represent the bulk and totally confined diffusion of water, respectively. This D(θ) law has been applied to estimate the enhancement in MRI contrast in magnetic nanoconstructs obtained by geometrically confining super-paramagnetic iron oxide NPs (SPIOs) into silicon mesoporous matrices. It has been confirmed that the transversal relaxivity of SPIOs can be significantly augmented by modulating the diffusion of water molecules. This law would help in explaining and rationalizing previous experimental evidences²³, and represent a ready-to-use tool for the rational design of nanoconstructs based on the nanoscale confinement of water molecules.

Computing the diffusion of nanoconfined water molecules

MD simulations were used to compute the self-diffusion coefficient D of water molecules confined under different configurations. These are shown in Fig. 1 and include the case of water molecules (blue dots) moving (a) around spherical hydroxylated nanoparticles (NPs) (grey dots); (b) within a hydrated nanopore (grey dots); (c) around hydroxylated NPs (red dots) adsorbed on the surface of a hydrated nanopore (grey dots); (d) around and within single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs); (e,f) around proteins. The NPs are made out of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) crystals (red and cyan dots), with OH⁻ functional groups on their surface, or SiO₂ crystals (grey dots), with silanol SiOH functional groups on the surface. The nanopores are made out of SiO₂ only.

Figure 1: Selected configurations.

(a) SiO₂ particle in water, diameter φ=5.2 nm (blue dots: water molecules; grey dots: SiO₂ atoms); (b) SiO₂ nanopore filled by water, diameter Φ=8.1 nm; (c) sixteen Fe₃O₄ NPs within a SiO₂ nanopore filled by water, φ=2.0 nm and Φ=8.1 nm (red and cyan dots: Fe₃O₄ atoms); (d) single-walled CNT with chirality (5,5); (e) green fluorescence protein; (f) leptin protein (the standard ribbon visualization of secondary structures has been used for proteins). In d–f water molecules have been removed for clarity. Almost 60 different cases have been analysed by varying the size and surface properties of the NPs, nanopores and nanotubes as well as the type of protein.

To Read the Full Text and Results Go to This Link:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140403/ncomms4565/full/ncomms4565.html

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

 

 

Why Should We Launch Solar Panels Into Space?

Published on May 5, 2014

To solve the energy crisis currently facing the world, one Japanese space firm is aiming to launch a giant solar panel into space! While this would cost a lot of money, the solar panel would generate capture a ton of energy from the sun! Trace explains how this solar panel in space would be better than any other panel on Earth.

To learn more about Full Sail’s web and technology programs, visit http://fullsail.edu/dnews

Read More:
Japan Has A Plan To Start Using Space-based Solar Power By The 2030s
http://io9.com/japan-has-a-plan-to-st…
“In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan has doubled its efforts to find a viable alternative to nuclear power.”

How space-based solar power will solve all our energy needs
http://io9.com/5963955/how-space-base…
“Humanity’s demand for energy is growing at an astonishing rate. Combine this with an ever-dwindling supply of fossil fuels, and it becomes painfully clear that something innovative and powerful is required.”

How Japan Plans to Build an Orbital Solar Farm
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/s…
“Imagine looking out over Tokyo Bay from high above and seeing a man-made island in the harbor, 3 kilometers long.”

The Navy’s Plan to Beam Down Energy From Orbiting Solar Panels
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/space-so…
“For decades, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest oil consumer, and as global petroleum prices continue to rise, the military has been searching for feasible energy alternatives. Now they’re looking in space.”

Space-Based Solar Power
http://www.energy.gov/articles/space-…