Anchor Science Favorite RSS Feed:
Nanovip:

Using the same type of nanotechnology that enables hard drives to read and write data, researchers at Stanford University have developed a system that should be able to detect cancer in the human body.
The blood scanner, which is still in the prototype stage, is designed to find cancer markers in the blood stream in the early stages of the disease, when they can be treated more easily and successfully, according to Stanford University. The research document also noted that the sensors can detect cancer markers in a blood sample in less than an hour.
"This is essentially a proof-of-concept study showing that now we have a chip and a reader that can find multiple biomarkers in a sample at a concentration much lower than the standard that is commercially available," said Shan Wang, a Stanford professor of materials science and electrical engineering, in a statement. "The earlier you can detect a cancer, the better chance you have to kill it. This could be especially helpful for lung cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer, because those cancers are hidden in the body."
According to the university, the scanner is based on a silicon chip that has 64 embedded sensors. A handheld device holds the chip, which can detect changes in magnetic fields. Captured cancer proteins are tethered to magnetic nanoparticles. When the sensors detect the magnetic particles, they've also found the cancer markers.
Traditional scanners use electrically charged or glowing particles instead of magnetic nanoparticles. Since magnetism is rarely found in biological systems, researchers noted that they tend to stand out "like a flare in the night sky." The report noted, "By tagging cancer proteins with tiny magnetic particles, rather than electrically charged or glowing particles as in other detectors, the new system can obtain a clearer signal from a smaller number of cancer proteins."
Using nanotechnology to fight cancer is an idea that has been growing.
In August, Stanford researchers announced that they had found a way to use nanotechnology to have chemotherapy drugs target only cancer cells, keeping healthy tissue safe from the treatment's toxic effects.
Cancer researchers have been trying to figure out a way to better deliver drugs to cancer cells without blasting surrounding cells as well. The Stanford researchers developed a way to use single-walled carbon nanotubes as targeted medicinal delivery vehicles.
In July, scientists at the University of California, San Diego said they had discovered a way to use nanotechnology-based "smart bombs" to streamline lower doses of chemotherapy to cancerous tumors, cutting down on the cancer's ability to spread through the body.
Scientists reported that a nanoparticle, carrying a payload of chemotherapy, targets a protein marker found on the surface of certain tumor blood vessels that are associated with the development of new blood vessels and malignant tumor growth.
And last week, scientists at MIT announced that they had developed nanotechnology that can be placed inside living cells to determine whether chemotherapy drugs are reaching their targets or attacking healthy cells.
The sensors, which can detect chemotherapy drugs as well as toxins and free radicals, are carbon nanotubes that scientists have wrapped in DNA so they can be safely injected into living tissue, according to a release from the university.
In this week's announcement, Stanford noted that the new nanotechnology research is tens to hundreds of times more sensitive than traditional cancer scanning techniques.
"This work represents a giant leap ... with significant potential for many applications, including cancer detection and management," said Dr. Sam Gambhir, principal investigator of the Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Stanford, in a written statement.

Nanotechnology companies are to be offered advice and help in setting up a research consortium to bid for government funding.
The Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network (NanoKTN), which nanotechnology firms, has joined with the Materials KTN to offer help in pairing technology developers with integrators and end users.
“Nanotechnology encompasses enabling technologies which can revolutionise materials and processes, but integrating these into end applications requires a networking and communication process which we aim to facilitate,” said Dr Martin Kemp of NanoKTN.
The first focus on the initiative is to promote research projects investigating the use of nano-enhanced materials for transport applications.
Faraday Advance, under the direction of Dr Colin Johnstone, is the transport node of the Materials KTN which focuses on materials in the transport industry, and hence by collaborating with the NanoKTN, the two networks hope to develop nano-enhanced materials projects to benefit the transportation sector.
“Several of the themes may be relevant, such as high value products, resource efficient and sustainable processes (improving productivity or reducing material, energy and resource consumption in production processes), and condition diagnosis,” said Kemp.
The first funding call to be targeted is the Technology Strategy Board ‘High Value Manufacturing’ Call which opens on 19th January 2009 with expressions of interest required by 26th February 2009.
Nanomaterials, materials, and transportation companies interested in finding partners or discussing in confidence a proposal idea, can contact Dr Martin Kemp, NanoKTN or Dr Colin Johnstone, Materials KTN.

Researchers at the company are using nanotechnology to build a future generation of wireless transceivers that are much more sensitive than the ones found in phones today. They'll also be made with a less expensive material, according to IBM. The catch is that the new chips probably won't make it into consumers' hands for another five or ten years.
The scientists, sponsored by DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), have built prototype transistors with the new material, called graphene. It is a form of graphite that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Graphene's structure allows electrons to travel through it very quickly and gives it greater efficiency than existing transceiver chip materials, said Yu-Ming Lin, a research staff member at IBM in Yorktown Heights, New York. The project is part of DARPA's CERA (Carbon Electronics for radio-frequency applications) program.
IBM announced Thursday the researchers have achieved a frequency of 26GHz on prototype graphene transistors. The transistors used in the test had a gate length of 150 nanometers, and the researchers are aiming for a 50nm gate length that would allow for frequencies above 1THz.
Those frequencies are far above what cellular networks use today. There may be military and medical uses for frequencies above 1THz, such as seeing concealed weapons or doing medical imaging without using harmful x-rays, Lin said. Unlike an x-ray, frequencies in the terahertz range would be lower than the frequency of visible light, so it wouldn't have the same radiation dangers, he said.
But at conventional frequencies, graphene-based transceivers could make both cell phones and base stations more sensitive and better able to pick up weak signals. The key is signal-to-noise ratio, or being able to distinguish the radio signal from the other waves around it. At a given distance, a phone with a better signal-to-noise ratio can take better advantage of the signal available from the nearest cell tower. A more sensitive phone might even work in areas where today's phones can't, Lin said. In addition, graphene chips consume less power than today's cell-phone radios, so batteries could last longer, Lin said.
Several specialized materials have been used in high-frequency radios, among them gallium arsenide, germanium and indium phosphide. Graphene is a less expensive alternative that could operate at higher frequencies than those, he said. It is a two-dimensional substance made of carbon, which Lin compared to a unwrapped nanotube.
Cell-phone makers definitely are striving to give users better signals and longer battery life, as well as to cut costs, said Gartner analyst Stan Bruederle. In fact, mobile operators are being forced to put up more base stations to get close enough to subscribers to deliver the high data rates they're looking for with 3G (third-generation) services. More sensitive radios might ease that burden. But there's no guarantee they'll jump on graphene chips as the best solution, Bruederle said.
A current trend is to use existing CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology for transceivers and integrate them with other cell-phone components in one chip. This lowers costs through both integration and use of a high-volume chip technology, Bruederle said. Competing against that kind of process, graphene would probably not make it to market for closer to 10 years, he said.
"Clearly, CMOS is starting to face some challenges" in continuing to reach higher performance, Bruederle said. "But engineers are amazingly innovative. It's a moving target."

“It was out of necessity. … NanoBioMagnetics was scouring the earth for venture capital,” Seeney said. “Venture capital in Oklahoma is very difficult to find. It’s darn-near impossible. So we’ve sort of taken a different approach, which is to raise the capital ourselves.”
The Edmond-based medical device research and development company needed to create a production outlet for its application technology that could lead to health care applications and revenues, he said. Proprietary technology will only take a company so far if it doesn’t involve an end product.
For example, NanoBioMagnetics materials introduced in a patient’s body and manipulated externally by magnetic fields can be used as a drug delivery system to target specific problem areas. That’s a simplified version of how it works, of course – just a few of those nanoparticles together are about the size of a strand of DNA. But what drugs and which medical problems? That’s where licensing and partnerships come into play.
“The business model is to develop technologies, validate them and spin them off. … Because we don’t have a physiological side, we have to develop collaborations to validate health care applications,” he said. The plan seems to have worked. That plant is now manufacturing and sending materials into the cosmetics industry, including a nanoparticle-packed sunscreen called SunVex, and this month announced an agreement to license nanofabrication technology to the Innovation and Technology Transfer Institute in Monterrey City, Mexico. NanoBioMagnetics also recently signed a letter of intent with a company in the United Kingdom to license its technology to deliver stem cells and other cancer therapeutic drugs. And the company earlier this year was granted a U.S. patent to use nanoparticles to amplify sound as a hearing device. The company was invited to present its business program at the Rice Nanotechnology Venture Forum at Rice University in January. The annual event showcases the most promising nanotechnology companies and is one of the largest nanotechnology venture forums in North America. Rice University is the home of the late Nobel Laureate, Richard Smalley, an early nanotechnology pioneer. Seeney said the honor of being one of only 20 highlighted companies affirms the company’s progress and success.
“It costs money to grow. Without venture capital, we had to figure out a way to become self-sufficient,” he said. “We’re trying to build some independence so we don’t have to keep beating down the venture capital door. It’s a great big steel door.”

It's a clear, colorless disk about 5 inches in diameter that bends and twists like a playing card, with a lattice of more than 20,000 nanotube transistors capable of high-performance electronics printed upon it using a potentially inexpensive low-temperature process.
Its University of Southern California creators believe the prototype points the way to such long sought after applications as affordable "head-up" car windshield displays. The lattices could also be used to create cheap, ultra thin, low-power "e-paper" displays.
They might even be incorporated into fabric that would change color or pattern as desired for clothing or even wall covering, into nametags, signage and other applications.
A team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering created the new device, described and illustrated in a just-published paper on "Transparent Electronics Based on Printed Aligned Nanotubes on Rigid and Flexible Structures" in the journal ACS Nano.
Graduate students Fumiaki Ishikawa and Hsiaoh-Kang Chang worked under Professor Chongwu Zhou of the School's Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering on the project, solving the problems of attaching dense matrices of carbon nanotubes not just to heat-resistant glass but also to flexible but highly heat-vulnerable transparent plastic substrates.
The researchers not only created printed circuit lattices of nanotube-based transistors to the transparent plastic but also additionally connected them to commercial gallium nitrate (GaN) light-emitting diodes, which change their luminosity by a factor of 1,000 as they are energized.
"Our results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential to work as building blocks for future transparent electronics," say the researchers.
The thin transparent thin-film transistor technology developed employs carbon nanotubes - tubes with walls one carbon atom thick - as the active channels for the circuits, controlled by iridium-tin oxide electrodes which function as sources, gates and drains.
Earlier attempts at transparent devices used other semiconductor materials with disappointing electronic results, enabling one kind of transistor (n-type); but not p-types; both types are needed for most applications.
The critical improvement in performance, according to the research, came from the ability to produce extremely dense, highly patterned lattices of nanotubes, rather than random tangles and clumps of the material. The Zhou lab has pioneered this technique over the past three years.
The paper contains a description of how the new devices are made.
"These nanotubes were first grown on quartz substrates and then transferred to glass or PET substrates with pre-patterned indium-tin oxide (ITO) gate electrodes, followed by patterning of transparent source and drain electrodes. In contrast to random networked nanotubes, the use of massively aligned nanotubes enabled the devices to exhibit high performance, including high mobility, good transparency, and mechanical flexibility.
"In addition, these aligned nanotube transistors are easy to fabricate and integrate, as compared to individual nanotube devices. The transfer printing process allowed the devices to be fabricated through low temperature process, which is particularly important for realizing transparent electronics on flexible substrates. … While large manufacturability must be addressed before practical applications are considered, our work has paved the way for using aligned nanotubes for high-performance transparent electronics "

The science & technology sector in India has shown steady growth in-spite of the ongoing global recession and there are exciting opportunities ahead in the nanotechnology sector, said C N R Rao, Chairman of the Science Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister of India, while speaking at second edition of Bangalore Nano, a conclave for nanotechnology in Bangalore.
Detailing the nuances of this growth he said: “Even though science is not attractive monetarily, many youngsters have shown great interest in R&D. The future seems very exciting with large scale applications waiting to happen especially in Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has tremendous potential and I see lot of young people taking a keen interest in this field. In India, in spite of the economic slowdown, science & technology has done well and has shown steady growth. In the past year or so many positive developments have taken place in the nanotech field.”
He further advised students to beware of educational institutions offering Masters Degree in Nanotechnology. “Nanotech is still in a nascent stage and one cannot give a master’s degree in this,” he cautioned.
Speaking about how India is gaining in nanotechnology Prof Pulickel M Ajayan, of Rice University said, “The status of India has gone up in recent times. There are good investments coming-in and many youngsters are being motivated towards science and nanotech. The major challenge facing the Nano industry is nanoengineering. One of the best examples is the Carbon Nano tube.”
The various approaches that have been taken to develop applications using carbon nano tubes are a blend of the traditional top-down approach and the bottom-up approach, but there are several bottle necks in that approach.”

Research done by scientists in Italy and Switzerland has shown that carbon nanotubes may be the ideal “smart” brain material. Their results, published December 21 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, are a promising step forward in the search to find ways to “bypass” faulty brain wiring.
The research shows that carbon nanotubes, which, like neurons, are highly electrically conductive, form extremely tight contacts with neuronal cell membranes. Unlike the metal electrodes that are currently used in research and clinical applications, the nanotubes can create shortcuts between the distal and proximal compartments of the neuron, resulting in enhanced neuronal excitability.
The study was conducted in the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry at EPFL in Switzerland and led by Michele Giugliano (now an assistant professor at the University of Antwerp), University of Trieste professor Laura Ballerini and Maurizio Prato, also from the University of Trieste. “This result is extremely relevant for the emerging field of neuro-engineering and neuroprosthetics,” explains Giugliano, who hypothesizes that the nanotubes could be used as a new building block of novel “electrical bypass” systems for treating traumatic injury of the central nervous system. Carbon nano-electrodes could also be used to replace metal parts in clinical applications such as deep brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease or severe depression. And they show promise as a whole new class of “smart” materials for use in a wide range of potential neuroprosthetic applications.
Henry Markram, head of the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry and an author on the paper, adds: “There are three fundamental obstacles to developing reliable neuroprosthetics: 1) stable interfacing of electromechanical devices with neural tissue, 2) understanding how to stimulate the neural tissue, and 3) understanding what signals to record from the neurons in order for the device to make an automatic and appropriate decision to stimulate. The new carbon nanotube-based interface technology discovered together with state of the art simulations of brain-machine interfaces is the key to developing all types of neuroprosthetics -- sight, sound, smell, motion, vetoing epileptic attacks, spinal bypasses, as well as repairing and even enhancing cognitive functions.”
Contact information:
Michele Giugliano, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Antwerp, tel +32 3 820 26 16, fax +32 3 820 26 69, e-mail: michele@tnb.ua.ac.be
Laura Ballerini, MD, Life Sciences Department, Center for Neuroscience B.R.A.I.N. University of Trieste, tel +39 040 558 2411 (or 2730), fax +39 040 567862, e-mail: ballerin@psico.units.it
Henry Markram, professor, EPFL Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, tel +41 21 691 9569, e-mail: henry.markram@epfl.ch

President-elect Barack Obama named physicist John Holdren assistant to the president and director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy on Saturday. Commonly referred to as the presidential science adviser, the position will give Holdren influence over budget allocations for nanotechnology, clean energy, space exploration, climate research and all other federal science and technology initiatives, assuming the Senate confirms him in January.
A former chairman and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Holdren gave a speech to fellow scientists earlier this year that offers a glimpse of the perspective he might lend the incoming administration (full text available here). His thoughts:
On the relationship between energy, the economy and the environment: Like a bad love triangle.
The study of these environmental impacts of energy has been a major preoccupation of mine for nearly four decades. I have concluded from this study that energy is the hardest part of the environment problem; environment is the hardest part of the energy problem; and resolving the energy-economy-environment dilemma is the hardest part of the challenge of sustainable well-being for industrial and developing countries alike.
On technology priorities: Clean energy. Now. Try everything.
The improved technologies we should be pursuing, for help not only with the energy-climate challenge but also with other aspects of the energy-economy-environment dilemma, are of many kinds: improved batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles; cheaper photovoltaic cells; improved coal-gasification technologies to make electricity and hydrogen while capturing CO2; new processes for producing hydrogen from water using solar energy; better means of hydrogen storage; cheaper, more durable, more efficient fuel cells; biofuel options that do not compete with food production or drive deforestation; advanced fission reactors with proliferation-resistant fuel cycles and increased robustness against malfunction and malfeasance; fusion; more attractive and efficient public transportation options; and a range of potential advances in materials science, biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, and process engineering that could drastically reduce the energy and resource requirements of manufacturing and food production.
On biofuels and technology’s role in the food-fuel conflict: Go, go gadget!
We need more effective use of the capabilities provided by satellite imagery and other remote sensing, and by GIS, both for conducting such studies [of projected land requirements for food, animal feed, fiber, biofuels, and infrastructure] and for conveying the results to publics and decision-makers in forms they will understand and use. And, not least, we need technologies for extracting food, fiber, and fuel from agricultural and forest ecosystems in ways less disruptive of the other services those systems provide than the technologies typically used today.

The University of Delaware has established the Center for Fuel Cell Research (CFCR) to improve the understanding of fuel cells and address critical issues and barriers to commercialization.
The center will also provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to participate in fuel cell research and demonstration projects. Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering, founded the center and is serving as its first director.
CFCR research focuses on a broad range of topics in fuel cell and hydrogen infrastructure science and technology; the overall goal of the work is to improve performance and durability with novel materials, architectures, and operating strategies.
“Delaware is a great place to start a fuel cell center,” Prasad says. “We have a large number of people here at UD doing work related to this subject, and many of the major players in the fuel cell market are within a 50-mile radius of the University.”
The new center is housed in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and includes some 25 faculty members from the colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Marine and Earth Studies.
Traditionally, fuel cell research was mostly done by electrochemists, but Prasad says that there are tremendous opportunities for engineers and material scientists as well.
“It is also necessary to involve diverse fields like biotechnology in fuel cell and hydrogen research,” he adds. “For example, photobiological water splitting using certain types of bacteria and sunlight might offer an exciting, renewable way to produce hydrogen in the future.”
Important components of the center's mission are technology transfer to industry and public outreach to educate the community about the benefits of fuel cells through programs such as the University's fuel cell bus. “By 2011, we should be up to four buses,” Prasad says, “and we also have plans to build two more hydrogen refueling stations, one in Wilmington and one in Dover.” There is already a station in Newark.
Prasad sees three barriers to widespread adoption of fuel cell technology: cost, durability, and the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure. CFCR research is addressing issues related to all three.
“Public acceptance is also an important issue,” Prasad says, “and the bus project has helped by increasing awareness. The presence of three filling stations in the state also has the potential to contribute to future efforts to attract fuel-cell related research and demonstration projects to Delaware.”
“I think that the University of Delaware will benefit from a timely confluence of political, industrial, and academic agendas centered on alternative energy approaches,” he continues. “The fuel cell effort is an important part of that.”
The CFCR is part of the overall energy research effort encompassed by the recently launched University of Delaware Energy Institute (UDEI).
Article by Diane Kukich

Sarah Leach, an associate professor of mechanical engineering technology at South Bend, is one of 25 faculty nationwide selected as a field-test instructor as part of a National Science Foundation project to develop curriculum modules about nanomanufacturing for students at associate-degree granting institutions.
Leach will attend a workshop in Las Vegas and begin incorporating what she learns into Purdue Tech courses that begin Jan. 12.
At the workshop, Leach will attend sessions on subjects such as synthesis and assembly, carbon nanotubes, molecular electronics, introduction to bottom-up manufacturing and top-down manufacturing, self-assembly, and deposition.
She will incorporate what she learns from the workshop into the manufacturing processes course she teaches in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology and will collaborate with faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology to provide nanotechnology-related instruction.
Purdue University College of Technology at South Bend, based on the Indiana University South Bend campus, has an enrollment of about 175 students.

A new nanotechnology Working Group (WG), formed in September by ISO Technical Committee 209 (ISO/TC 209) Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments, will begin work in 2009 on developing standards for the nanoscale. This pioneering WG is convened by the United States under the auspices of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST), with IEST experts Anne Marie Dixon, Cleanroom Management Associates, Inc., and David Ensor, Research Triangle Institute Center for Aerosol Technology, as co-convenors.
The preliminary scope for WG 10: Nanotechnology would specify the minimum requirements for design, operations, monitoring, and testing of nanotechnology facilities as they differ from those described in ISO 14644-4 (Design, construction and start-up) and 14644-5 (Operations). The WG is authorized to write a series of standards, if needed. Groups of drafting experts will be assigned to specific documents or sections of documents.

Over the last 60 years, ever-smaller generations of transistors have driven exponential growth in computing power. Could molecules, each turned into miniscule computer components, trigger even greater growth in computing over the next 60?
Atomic-scale computing, in which computer processes are carried out in a single molecule or using a surface atomic-scale circuit, holds vast promise for the microelectronics industry. It allows computers to continue to increase in processing power through the development of components in the nano- and pico scale. In theory, atomic-scale computing could put computers more powerful than today’s supercomputers in everyone’s pocket.
“Atomic-scale computing researchers today are in much the same position as transistor inventors were before 1947. No one knows where this will lead,” says Christian Joachim of the French National Scientific Research Centre’s (CNRS) Centre for Material Elaboration & Structural Studies (CEMES) in Toulouse, France.
Joachim, the head of the CEMES Nanoscience and Picotechnology Group (GNS), is currently coordinating a team of researchers from 15 academic and industrial research institutes in Europe whose groundbreaking work on developing a molecular replacement for transistors has brought the vision of atomic-scale computing a step closer to reality. Their efforts, a continuation of work that began in the 1990s, are today being funded by the European Union in the Pico-Inside project.
In a conventional microprocessor – the “motor” of a modern computer – transistors are the essential building blocks of digital circuits, creating logic gates that process true or false signals. A few transistors are needed to create a single logic gate and modern microprocessors contain billions of them, each measuring around 100 nanometres.
Transistors have continued to shrink in size since Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore famously predicted in 1965 that the number that can be placed on a processor would double roughly every two years. But there will inevitably come a time when the laws of quantum physics prevent any further shrinkage using conventional methods. That is where atomic-scale computing comes into play with a fundamentally different approach to the problem.
“Nanotechnology is about taking something and shrinking it to its smallest possible scale. It’s a top-down approach,” Joachim says. He and the Pico-Inside team are turning that upside down, starting from the atom, the molecule, and exploring if such a tiny bit of matter can be a logic gate, memory source, or more. “It is a bottom-up or, as we call it, 'bottom-bottom' approach because we do not want to reach the material scale,” he explains.
Joachim’s team has focused on taking one individual molecule and building up computer components, with the ultimate goal of hosting a logic gate in a single molecule. How many atoms to build a computer?
“The question we have asked ourselves is how many atoms does it take to build a computer?” Joachim says. “That is something we cannot answer at present, but we are getting a better idea about it.”
The team has managed to design a simple logic gate with 30 atoms that perform the same task as 14 transistors, while also exploring the architecture, technology and chemistry needed to achieve computing inside a single molecule and to interconnect molecules.
They are focusing on two architectures: one that mimics the classical design of a logic gate but in atomic form, including nodes, loops, meshes etc., and another, more complex, process that relies on changes to the molecule’s conformation to carry out the logic gate inputs and quantum mechanics to perform the computation.
The logic gates are interconnected using scanning-tunnelling microscopes and atomic-force microscopes – devices that can measure and move individual atoms with resolutions down to 1/100 of a nanometre (that is one hundred millionth of a millimetre!). As a side project, partly for fun but partly to stimulate new lines of research, Joachim and his team have used the technique to build tiny nano-machines, such as wheels, gears, motors and nano-vehicles each consisting of a single molecule.
“Put logic gates on it and it could decide where to go,” Joachim notes, pointing to what would be one of the world’s first implementations of atomic-scale robotics.
The importance of the Pico-Inside team’s work has been widely recognised in the scientific community, though Joachim cautions that it is still very much fundamental research. It will be some time before commercial applications emerge from it. However, emerge they all but certainly will.
“Microelectronics needs us if logic gates – and as a consequence microprocessors – are to continue to get smaller,” Joachim says.
The Pico-Inside researchers, who received funding under the ICT strand of the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme, are currently drafting a roadmap to ensure computing power continues to increase in the future.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. Chairman and CEO John Brock and his family have given $6 million to create two endowed faculty chairs at Emory University and Georgia Tech to support research in cancer nanotechnology.
Brock's mother, Anise McDaniel Brock, never smoked and lived a healthy lifestyle, but was stricken with lung and colon cancer in 2006. She was treated primarily in Mississippi, where she lived, until her family brought her to Emory.
After her death in December 2007, the Brock family began looking for ways to help researchers develop new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer. A Georgia Tech alumnus, Brock talked with cancer researchers and physicians at Emory and Georgia Tech about their nanomedicine research program. He also worked with the Georgia Cancer Coalition and the Georgia Research Alliance to help enhance the value of his donation.
The result is the Anise McDaniel Brock Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnology at Emory University, with a second chair at Georgia Tech.
Nanotechnology deals with the engineering and creation of materials or devices that are less than 100 nanometers -- one-billionth of a meter -- in size.
Brock said the care his mother received at Emory Winship and the strength of the joint research programs at Emory and Georgia Tech led to the gifts.
“After she passed away, we started talking more about our interest in trying to help researchers get new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer,” Brock says. “My mother was a caregiver in her community. She would be thrilled that some value can be created in the search for better ways to manage cancer.”

PITTSBURGH-University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed the first natural, nontoxic method for biodegrading carbon nanotubes, a finding that could help diminish the environmental and health concerns that mar the otherwise bright prospects of the super-strong materials commonly used in products, from electronics to plastics.
A Pitt research team has found that carbon nanotubes deteriorate when exposed to the natural enzyme horseradish peroxidase (HRP), according to a report published recently in “Nano Letters” coauthored by Alexander Star, an assistant professor of chemistry in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences, and Valerian Kagan, a professor and vice chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health. These results open the door to further development of safe and natural methods-with HRP or other enzymes-of cleaning up carbon nanotube spills in the environment and the industrial or laboratory setting.
Carbon nanotubes are one-atom thick rolls of graphite 100,000 times smaller than a human hair yet stronger than steel and excellent conductors of electricity and heat. They reinforce plastics, ceramics, or concrete; conduct electricity in electronics or energy-conversion devices; and are sensitive chemical sensors, Star said. (Star created an early-detection device for asthma attacks wherein carbon nanotubes detect minute amounts of nitric oxide preceding an attack. See link below.)
“The many applications of nanotubes have resulted in greater production of them, but their toxicity remains controversial,” Star said. “Accidental spills of nanotubes are inevitable during their production, and the massive use of nanotube-based materials could lead to increased environmental pollution. We have demonstrated a nontoxic approach to successfully degrade carbon nanotubes in environmentally relevant conditions.”
The team's work focused on nanotubes in their raw form as a fine, graphite-like powder, Kagan explained. In this form, nanotubes have caused severe lung inflammation in lab tests. Although small, nanotubes contain thousands of atoms on their surface that could react with the human body in unknown ways, Kagan said. Both he and Star are associated with a three-year-old Pitt initiative to investigate nanotoxicology.
“Nanomaterials aren't completely understood. Industries use nanotubes because they're unique-they are strong, they can be used as semiconductors. But do these features present unknown health risks? The field of nanotoxicology is developing to find out,” Kagan said. “Studies have shown that they can be dangerous. We wanted to develop a method for safely neutralizing these very small materials should they contaminate the natural or working environment.”
To break down the nanotubes, the team exposed them to a solution of HRP and a low concentration of hydrogen peroxide at 4 degrees Celcius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) for 12 weeks. Once fully developed, this method could be administered as easily as chemical clean-ups in today's labs, Kagan and Star said.

Pesticide DDT, industrial lubricants PCBs and now plastic BPA (bisphenol A) are all widely used industrial chemical compounds that have been discovered to cause ills such as cancer and/or environmental damage. Worried that the latest chemical craze—nanoparticles (molecules and even atoms engineered at the scale of one billionth of a meter or smaller)—may follow suit, a panel of scientists is urging federal government agencies to assess the potential risks posed by such engineered chemicals and particles before they are used in any more substances.
The National Research Council, one of The National Academies in Washington, D.C., (scientific advisory bodies for the federal government) charges that the 18 government bodies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tasked with assessing chemical safety, have failed to prove that the diminutive particles are not dangerous. The group also charged in a new report that the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the government body created to oversee such efforts, lacks a coherent plan for ensuring that current and future uses of nanotechnology do not pose a risk to human health or the environment.
Nanotechnology risk research "needs to be proactive—identifying possible risks and ways to mitigate risks before the technology has a widespread commercial presence," the report says. Instead the NNI "does not have the essential elements of a research strategy—it does not present a vision, contain a clear set of goals [or] have a plan of action."
More than 800 widely available products, including cosmetics, sporting goods and video displays, contain some form of nanotechnology, whether engineered particles or compounds, according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (a Washington, D.C. think tank created by Congress in 1968). That number is set to grow as nanotech comes to items such as food additives and medical treatments.
"There's definitely an exposure, especially from nanosilver that's really common in consumer products as well as buckyballs and titanium dioxide in skin creams," says toxicologist Jennifer Sass, a senior health scientist at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Nanomaterials, because of their size, are more bioavailable; and because of their surface area to mass, they are more chemically reactive. How that relates to toxicity needs to be looked at."
Gaps in the research—despite more than $14 billion in government and private investment—include a basic understanding of how nanomaterials are absorbed and metabolized by the human body as well as how toxic they may be to people already working with them. The NNI also does not have a plan for managing accidents or spills involving nanomaterials, according to the report.
Instead, the bulk of research is focused on developing medical therapies and roughly $15 million has been spent to assess human health and environmental risks, according to the Wilson Center. "Where you've got somebody in a workplace working with nanoengineered materials, the questions are: How much am I breathing in? What's the toxicity? How do I reduce the risk? Those are things we know we need answers to and don't have answers to," says physicist Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor to the Wilson Center's project on emerging nanotechnologies. "We know there's a potential for risk. We don't know if there is actual risk."
Both industry and environmental groups agreed that the government needs a better plan, including a joint letter from eight groups, such as the American Chemistry Council industry organization and the Environmental Defense Fund, calling for a government research strategy.
"What this means is that we are learning from past lessons with some of the pesticides or [genetically modified] foods that we do need to show that these materials are going to be safe all the way through their life cycle[s]," says toxicologist Raymond David of the chemical company, BASF Corporation, which also signed the letter. "One of the risks is a risk that the consumer will not accept nanotechnology because of not having understood what happens when people are exposed and what are the downstream consequences of that exposure."
"If you're serious about making sure nanotechnology succeeds and to reap the economic benefits of its development, then you've got to invest in health and safety research," Maynard adds. "There's no shortcut there."

Nanotechnology policy experts are urging that food additives containing nanoscale materials be subject to new safety testing to ensure that their use does not pose unintended risks.
The call comes as nanotechnology emerges as a major regulatory challenge facing the incoming Obama administration. It also takes place amid debate over how to restructure the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and possibly create a separate government food safety agency.
Policy experts at the Project urge FDA to issue guidance on how existing listings for food additives and “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) substances apply to nanoscale materials. This action by FDA would help increase consumer confidence and private-sector investment in new technologies. According to companies that use nanoscale materials in foods, the technology can be used to improve food taste, quality and safety.
“Failure by FDA to issue any guidance for nano food-additives leaves the door open to manufacturers to make their own judgments and enter the market without FDA clearance, despite having a material with novel properties,” says PEN director David Rejeski. “Clear FDA guidance for nanoscale food-additives combined with a pre-market safety evaluation would provide a level playing field and rules of the road for industry developing new applications based on nanoscale materials.” Congress created the GRAS concept to build some flexibility into the oversight system by exempting additives that truly were considered safe from the pre-market approval requirement. FDA and industry have used this authority over the years to avoid the food additive approval process for well-tested substances whose safety is recognized by experts.
“The time may come, when the body of scientific evidence demonstrating the safety of a nanoscale food additive is sufficient to meet the GRAS standard. But the science is not close to meeting that level of confidence now,” says Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the Project.
The worldwide nanotechnology food market is estimated to grow to over $20 billion by 2010. An inventory that includes 84 consumer products in the food and beverage sector which are currently available to consumers and which manufacturers claim are nanotechnology, can be found here:nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer
A number of PEN reports and statements detailing the challenges nanotechnology in food pose to FDA oversight and to consumer perceptions are available here:nanotechproject.org/news/archive/7037/

The paradox of perfection – that flaws make things perfect – could be the key to designing nanoelectronic circuits from carbon nanotubes, according to US scientists.
They have discovered that a circuit of nanotubes can only guide a current if some of the tubes carry structural defects.
Individual carbon nanotubes are exceptionally good conductors because they are essentially a single carbon molecule. They can even outdo silicon at transmitting charge, which means nanotube circuits could boost computing speeds while reducing chip size (see our feature What happens when silicon can shrink no more? ).
But connecting nanotubes into such circuits is not easy, says Vincent Meunier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "The connections between individual nanotubes do not conduct well," he says.
Instead of jumping easily into an adjacent nanotube, as they would between metal wires, electrons are more likely to bounce back when they reach the end of a tube, says Meunier. Electrons treat junctions between nanotubes as barriers – what scientists call "opaque".
Now Meunier's team has discovered that it could improve the transparency of the junctions by adding flaws to the connecting ends of nanotubes.
The carbon atoms within a nanotube are normally arranged in a hexagonal lattice similar to chicken wire. But the researchers used detailed simulations to see what happens when a few pentagons and heptagons are added to the otherwise regular structure.
The results show that such irregularities can make connections between nanotubes much better conductors. A Y-junction of three nanotubes with no defects usually behaves as an insulator. But a virtual version with added flaws switched into an excellent conductor.
Adding just two defects creates a small "window" of conductance for certain strengths of current, but adding more faults lets almost any current make the jump.
Ordinarily, electrons arriving at a three-pronged Y junction will simply bounce off the far wall and reflect back the way they have come. The defects effectively change the angle of that far wall so that electrons do not simply bounce back. Careful positioning of the defects can redirect the bouncing electrons into one of the other nanotubes.
"It's an indirect effect," says Meunier, "no current passes through the defect itself."
Meunier's team say that structural defects could be used to precisely guide an electric current on a particular path through a honeycomb network of nanotubes. "Then you can start to make all kinds of things," Meunier says. "You could make really complicated networks."
Defects can be added to nanotubes exactly where needed using a focused electron beam, he says.
Chuanhong Jin at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, is impressed. "This is a very interesting theoretical proposal for designing new carbon nanotube-based 3D nano-circuits," he says.
"The method should be of particular importance for the realisation of the long-expected all-carbon programmable nano-electronics circuits."
Journal reference: ACS Nano (DOI: 10.1021/nn800612d)

Researchers at the company are using nanotechnology to build a future generation of wireless transceivers that are much more sensitive than the ones found in phones today. They'll also be made with a less expensive material, according to IBM. The catch is that the new chips probably won't make it into consumers' hands for another five or ten years.
The scientists, sponsored by DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), have built prototype transistors with the new material, called graphene. It is a form of graphite that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Graphene's structure allows electrons to travel through it very quickly and gives it greater efficiency than existing transceiver chip materials, said Yu-Ming Lin, a research staff member at IBM in Yorktown Heights, New York. The project is part of DARPA's CERA (Carbon Electronics for radio-frequency applications) program.
IBM announced Thursday the researchers have achieved a frequency of 26GHz on prototype graphene transistors. The transistors used in the test had a gate length of 150 nanometers, and the researchers are aiming for a 50nm gate length that would allow for frequencies above 1THz.
Those frequencies are far above what cellular networks use today. There may be military and medical uses for frequencies above 1THz, such as seeing concealed weapons or doing medical imaging without using harmful x-rays, Lin said. Unlike an x-ray, frequencies in the terahertz range would be lower than the frequency of visible light, so it wouldn't have the same radiation dangers, he said.
But at conventional frequencies, graphene-based transceivers could make both cell phones and base stations more sensitive and better able to pick up weak signals. The key is signal-to-noise ratio, or being able to distinguish the radio signal from the other waves around it. At a given distance, a phone with a better signal-to-noise ratio can take better advantage of the signal available from the nearest cell tower. A more sensitive phone might even work in areas where today's phones can't, Lin said. In addition, graphene chips consume less power than today's cell-phone radios, so batteries could last longer, Lin said.
Several specialized materials have been used in high-frequency radios, among them gallium arsenide, germanium and indium phosphide. Graphene is a less expensive alternative that could operate at higher frequencies than those, he said. It is a two-dimensional substance made of carbon, which Lin compared to a unwrapped nanotube.
Cell-phone makers definitely are striving to give users better signals and longer battery life, as well as to cut costs, said Gartner analyst Stan Bruederle. In fact, mobile operators are being forced to put up more base stations to get close enough to subscribers to deliver the high data rates they're looking for with 3G (third-generation) services. More sensitive radios might ease that burden. But there's no guarantee they'll jump on graphene chips as the best solution, Bruederle said.
A current trend is to use existing CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology for transceivers and integrate them with other cell-phone components in one chip. This lowers costs through both integration and use of a high-volume chip technology, Bruederle said. Competing against that kind of process, graphene would probably not make it to market for closer to 10 years, he said.
"Clearly, CMOS is starting to face some challenges" in continuing to reach higher performance, Bruederle said. "But engineers are amazingly innovative. It's a moving target."
(Additional reporting by Agam Shah in San Francisco.)

Brock's mother, Anise McDaniel Brock, never smoked and lived a healthy lifestyle, but was stricken with lung and colon cancer in 2006. She was treated primarily in Mississippi, where she lived, until her family brought her to Emory.
After her death in December 2007, the Brock family began looking for ways to help researchers develop new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer. A Georgia Tech alumnus, Brock talked with cancer researchers and physicians at Emory and Georgia Tech about their nanomedicine research program. He also worked with the Georgia Cancer Coalition and the Georgia Research Alliance to help enhance the value of his donation.
The result is the Anise McDaniel Brock Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnology at Emory University, with a second chair at Georgia Tech.
Nanotechnology deals with the engineering and creation of materials or devices that are less than 100 nanometers -- one-billionth of a meter -- in size.
Brock said the care his mother received at Emory Winship and the strength of the joint research programs at Emory and Georgia Tech led to the gifts.
“After she passed away, we started talking more about our interest in trying to help researchers get new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer,” Brock says. “My mother was a caregiver in her community. She would be thrilled that some value can be created in the search for better ways to manage cancer.”