Greening” Your Flat Screen TV
Electronic products pollute our environment with a number of heavy metals before, during and after they’re used. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 70% of heavy metals in landfill come from discarded electronics. With flat screen TVs getting bigger and cheaper every year, environmental costs continue to mount.
To counter this, a new Tel Aviv University solution applies a discovery in nano-technology, based on self-assembled peptide nanotubes, to “green” the optics and electronics industry. Researchers Nadav Amdursky and Prof. Gil Rosenman of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Electrical Engineering say their technology could make flat screen TV production green and can even make medical equipment — like subcutaneous ultrasound devices — more sensitive.
Inspired by a biomaterial involved in Alzheimer’s disease research discovered by Prof. Ehud Gazit of the university’s Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, the scientists developed a new nano-material, applying the scientific disciplines of both biology and physics. This biological material is the basis for their new, environmentally-friendly variety of light-emitting diodes (LED) used in both consumer and medical electronics.
Their new invention is more than a clean, green way to create light, the researchers say. It also generates a strong signal that can be used in other applications in the nano-world of motors, actuators and ultrasound. (more…)
Nanowick at Heart of New System to Cool ‘Power Electronics’
This diagram depicts a cooling device called a heat pipe, used in electronics and computers. Researchers are developing an advanced type of heat pipe for high-power electronics in military and automotive systems. The system is capable of handling roughly 10 times the heat generated by conventional computer chips. (School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University)
Researchers have shown that an advanced cooling technology being developed for high-power electronics in military and automotive systems is capable of handling roughly 10 times the heat generated by conventional computer chips.
The miniature, lightweight device uses tiny copper spheres and carbon nanotubes to passively wick a coolant toward hot electronics, said Suresh V. Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University.
This wicking technology represents the heart of a new ultrathin “thermal ground plane,” a flat, hollow plate containing water.
Similar “heat pipes” have been in use for more than two decades and are found in laptop computers. However, they are limited to cooling about 50 watts per square centimeter, which is good enough for standard computer chips but not for “power electronics” in military weapons systems and hybrid and electric vehicles, Garimella said. (more…)
Paintable Electronics? Exploring Spray-On Manufacturing of Transistors
This airbrush technique deposits a well-studied material called P3HT to create spray-on transistors, which perform comparably to lab-standard equivalents made by spin coating. (NIST)
A multidisciplinary research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found* that an organic semiconductor may be a viable candidate for creating large-area electronics, such as solar cells and displays that can be sprayed onto a surface as easily as paint.
While the electronics will not be ready for market anytime soon, the research team says the material they studied could overcome one of the main cost hurdles blocking the large-scale manufacture of organic thin-film transistors, the development of which also could lead to a host of devices inexpensive enough to be disposable.
Silicon is the iconic material of the electronics industry, the basic material for most microprocessors and memory chips. Silicon has proved highly successful as a substance because billions of computer elements can be crammed into a tiny area, and the manufacturing process behind these high-performance chips is well-established. (more…)
Scientists Create World’s First Molecular Transistor
Engineers adjusted the voltage applied via gold contacts to a benzene molecule, allowing them to raise and lower the molecule’s energy states and demonstrate that it could be used exactly like a traditional transistor at the molecular level. (Hyunwook Song and Takhee Lee)
A group of scientists has succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule. The team, which includes researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, published their findings in the December 24 issue of the journal Nature.
The team, including Mark Reed, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale, showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.
The researchers were able to manipulate the molecule’s different energy states depending on the voltage they applied to it through the contacts. By manipulating the energy states, they were able to control the current passing through the molecule.
“It’s like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule’s different energy states,” Reed said. “We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high.” In this way, the team was able to use the molecule in much the same way as regular transistors are used. (more…)
Researchers Create Molecular Diode
by Richard Harth
This is a schematic for molecular diode. The symmetric molecule (top) allows for two-way current. The asymmetrical molecule (bottom) permits current in one direction only and acts as a single-molecule diode. (Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University)
Recently, at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, N.J. Tao and collaborators have found a way to make a key electrical component on a phenomenally tiny scale. Their single-molecule diode is described in this week’s online edition of Nature Chemistry.
In the electronics world, diodes are a versatile and ubiquitous component. Appearing in many shapes and sizes, they are used in an endless array of devices and are essential ingredients for the semiconductor industry. Making components including diodes smaller, cheaper, faster and more efficient has been the holy grail of an exploding electronics field, now probing the nanoscale realm.
Smaller size means cheaper cost and better performance for electronic devices. The first generation computer CPU used a few thousand transistors, Tao says noting the steep advance of silicon technology. “Now even simple, cheap computers use millions of transistors on a single chip.” (more…)
Paper Battery May Power Electronics in Clothing and Packaging Material
Batteries made of paper may power electronics in the future, researchers say. Shown are images from an experimental paper-based battery. (The American Chemical Society)
Imagine a gift wrapped in paper you really do treasure and want to carefully fold and save. That’s because the wrapping paper lights up with words like “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Holidays,” thanks to a built in battery — an amazing battery made out of paper. That’s one potential application of a new battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper, being described in the October 14 issue of ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.
Albert Mihranyan and colleagues note in the report that scientists are trying to develop light, ecofriendly, inexpensive batteries consisting entirely of nonmetal parts. The most promising materials include so-called conductive polymers or “plastic electronics.” (more…)
Researchers Find Better Way to Manufacture Fast Computer Chips
By Pam Frost Gorder
“Graphene has huge potential -- it’s been dubbed ‘the new silicon,’” said Padture, who is also director of Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials.
Engineers at Ohio State University are developing a technique for mass producing computer chips made from the same material found in pencils.
Experts believe that graphene — the sheet-like form of carbon found in graphite pencils — holds the key to smaller, faster electronics. It might also deliver quantum mechanical effects that could enable new kinds of electronics.
Until now, most researchers could only create tiny graphene devices one at a time, and only on traditional silicon oxide substrates. They couldn’t control where they placed the devices on the substrate, and had to connect them to other electronics one at a time for testing.
In a paper published in the March 26 issue of the journal Advanced Materials, Nitin Padture and his colleagues describe a technique for stamping many graphene sheets onto a substrate at once, in precise locations. (more…)
Carbon Nanotubes Are Superior to Metals for Electronics
Research conducted by Cemal Basaran may make metal an obsolete component of electronics. "We are done with metals," says Basaran.
In the quest to pack ever-smaller electronic devices more densely with integrated circuits, nanotechnology researchers keep running up against some unpleasant truths: higher current density induces electromigration and thermomigration, phenomena that damage metal conductors and produce heat, which leads to premature failure of devices.
But University at Buffalo researchers who study electronics packaging recently made a pleasant discovery: that’s not the case with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs). (more…)
“Spintronics” Could Replace Electronics
Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved (the digital “one” means “an electron is present on the component”, zero means “no electron present”), here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively into the electron, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. Both are possible with a single electron pump, as scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have, together with colleagues from Latvia, now shown. They will present their results in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. (more…)
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