http://www.physorg.com/nanotech-news/nano-physics/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on nanophysics, nanotechnology, nanotech and nanoscience. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are developing a way to control the Casimir force, a quantum mechanical force, which attracts objects when they are only hundred nanometers apart. http://www.physorg.com/news179677332.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:50:01 EST news179677332 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stanford engineers have built what they believe is a chip with the most advanced computing and storage elements made of carbon nanotubes to date by devising a way to root out the stubborn complication of nanotubes that cause short circuits. http://www.physorg.com/news179596676.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:58:58 EST news179596676 (PhysOrg.com) -- Microchip manufacturers have long faced challenges miniaturizing transistors, the key active components in nearly every modern electronic device, which are used to amplify or switch electronic signals. http://www.physorg.com/news179590555.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:16:53 EST news179590555 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon. The results have just been published in Nano Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news179331125.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:16:01 EST news179331125 (PhysOrg.com) -- David Cox, a scientist in the Quantum Detection group at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, is an expert in nanofabrication techniques. Recently, using the tools of his trade and a bit of humor, he has created his latest masterpiece: the world's smallest snowman, which measures just 0.01 mm across (about one-fifth the width of a human hair). http://www.physorg.com/news179153163.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:46:35 EST news179153163 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered a new, more precise method for measuring how much - or how little - nanoscale interfaces love water. http://www.physorg.com/news179082513.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:10:03 EST news179082513 Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Naval Research Laboratory have developed a new way to introduce magnetic impurities in a semiconductor crystal by prodding it with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Detailed in a recent paper, this technique will enable researchers to selectively implant atoms in a crystal one at a time to learn about its electrical and magnetic properties on the atomic scale. http://www.physorg.com/news178978543.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:16:57 EST news178978543 (PhysOrg.com) -- While quantum dots have existed since the 1980s, only in the past decade have physicists successfully created lateral few-electron single quantum dots. These quantum dots enable physicists to manipulate quantum spins, which could be used as qubits for quantum information applications. Along these lines, a team of physicists from the National Research Council in Canada who were responsible for the original lateral few-electron single quantum dot have recently designed a new few-electron triple quantum dot circuit, and demonstrated that all three quantum dots can be tuned in resonance. http://www.physorg.com/news178789034.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:10:01 EST news178789034 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles. http://www.physorg.com/news178459486.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:00:05 EST news178459486 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Carbon nanotubes are exciting for fundamental physics, and for potential technological applications," Nadya Mason tells PhysOrg.com. "However, we are generally limited in the way that we can study them. Many of these limitations have to do with controlling tunneling, or the way electrons move on and off the nanotube." In order to overcome this limitation, Mason, a scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, participated in an experiment using a superconducting tunnel probe in a carbon nanotube to observe spectroscopic features. http://www.physorg.com/news177934374.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:13:55 EST news177934374 Vibrations in nanostructures offer applications in molecular-scale biological sensing and ultrasensitive mass detection. To approach single-atom sensing, it is necessary to reduce the dimensions of the structures to the nanometer scale while preserving long-lived vibrations. http://www.physorg.com/news177870451.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:28:18 EST news177870451 (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineering researchers have used a very tiny beam of light with as little as 1 milliwatt of power to move a silicon structure up to 12 nanometers. http://www.physorg.com/news177672319.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:25:53 EST news177672319 Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered a new class of bowtie-shaped devices that capture, filter and steer light at the nanoscale. These "nano-colorsorter" devices act as antennae to focus and sort light in tiny spaces, a useful technique for harvesting broadband light for color-sensitive filters and detectors. http://www.physorg.com/news177251056.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:25:15 EST news177251056 The performance of modern electronics increases steadily on a fast pace thanks to the ongoing miniaturization of the utilized components. However, se-vere problems arise due to quantum-mechanical phenomena when conven-tional structures are simply made smaller and reach the nanometer scale. Therefore current research focuses on the so-called bottom-up approach: the engineering of functional structures with the smallest possible building blocks - single atoms and molecules. http://www.physorg.com/news177249897.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:09:44 EST news177249897 In the quest to make hydrogen as a clean alternative fuel source, researchers have been stymied about how to create usable hydrogen that is clean and sustainable without relying on an intensive, high-energy process that outweighs the benefits of not using petroleum to power vehicles. http://www.physorg.com/news177242747.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:06:27 EST news177242747 Researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University have developed, characterized, and modeled a new kind of probe used in atomic force microscopy (AFM), which images, measures, and manipulates matter at the nanoscale. http://www.physorg.com/news177073639.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:08:34 EST news177073639 (PhysOrg.com) -- Computers of the future could be operating not on electrons, but on tiny waves traveling through an electron "fluid," if a new proposal is successful. The new circuit design, recently introduced by Dr. Héctor J. De Los Santos, CTO of NanoMEMS Research, LLC, in Irvine, California, may be a promising candidate to replace CMOS-based circuits, and ultimately continue the circuit density growth described by Moore's Law. http://www.physorg.com/news176635049.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:50:02 EST news176635049 Collaborative users from the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory, working with the Electronic & Magnetic Materials & Devices Group, have found a controllable way to modify the surfaces of pristine Nb-doped SrTiO3 (Nb:STO) at the nanoscale. http://www.physorg.com/news176573506.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:30:03 EST news176573506 Danish nanophysicists have developed a new method for manufacturing the cornerstone of nanotechnology research - nanowires. The discovery has great potential for the development of nanoelectronics and highly efficient solar cells. http://www.physorg.com/news176377185.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:50:01 EST news176377185 In campy old movies, Lucretia Borgia swans around emptying powder from her ring into wine glasses carelessly left unattended. The poison ring is usually a confection of gold filigree holding a cabochon or faceted gemstone that can be broken to empty the ring's contents. It is invariably enormous - so large it is rather odd nobody seems to notice it. http://www.physorg.com/news176306859.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:08:21 EST news176306859 Very tiny wires, called nanowires, made from such metals as silver and gold, may play a crucial role as electrical or mechanical switches in the development of future-generation ultrasmall nanodevices. http://www.physorg.com/news176047225.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:00:02 EST news176047225 A multidisciplinary team of UC researchers is the first to find an innovative and novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means. http://www.physorg.com/news175871026.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:05:04 EST news175871026 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have created a nanoscale crystal device that, for the first time, allows scientists to confine both light and sound vibrations in the same tiny space. http://www.physorg.com/news175766229.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:57:51 EST news175766229 A team of engineers from the University of Pennsylvania has transformed simple nanowires into reconfigurable materials and circuits, demonstrating a novel, self-assembling method for chemically creating nanoscale structures that are not possible to grow or obtain otherwise. http://www.physorg.com/news175513114.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:39:20 EST news175513114 Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have uncovered the physical mechanism by which arrays of nanoscale pillars can be grown on polymer films with very high precision, in potentially limitless patterns. http://www.physorg.com/news175451434.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:31:34 EST news175451434 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, working with American researchers, have succeeded in using an electrical signal to control both the elastic and the magnetic properties of a nanomaterial at a very localized level. This opens up new possibilities for data storage with very high data densities. Their findings are to be published in November in the leading scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology. http://www.physorg.com/news175445828.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:58:37 EST news175445828 (PhysOrg.com) -- To power a very small device like a pacemaker or a transistor, you need an even smaller generator. The components that operate the generator are smaller yet, and the efficiency of those foundational components is critical to the performance of the overall device. http://www.physorg.com/news175444804.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:52:12 EST news175444804 (PhysOrg.com) -- 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. http://www.physorg.com/news175415776.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:37:08 EST news175415776 (PhysOrg.com) -- Taking nanomaterials to a new level of structural complexity, scientists have determined how to introduce kinks into arrow-straight nanowires, transforming them into zigzagging two- and three-dimensional structures with correspondingly advanced functions. http://www.physorg.com/news175339313.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:23:16 EST news175339313 (PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, the transistors inside radios, televisions and other everyday items have transmitted data by controlling the movement of the electron`s charge. Scientists now have discovered that transistors could use less energy, generate less heat and operate at higher speeds if they exploited another property of the electron: its spin. http://www.physorg.com/news175283352.html Nanotechnology - Nanophysics Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:40:01 EST news175283352