NanoBlog

The Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility (CNF) celebrated its 35th anniversary during its annual meeting in July. An archive of the talks by invited speakers is now available and includes:

• Dr. William Brinkman, "Whither Nanoscience?", Director of the Office of Science, US Department of Energy,
• Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, "Computation and Fabrication", Director, The Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT
• Prof. Roger Howe, "Vacuum Nanosystems for Energy Conversion", NNIN Director, Stanford University
• Dr. Jordan A. Katine, "Nanoscale Magnetic Devices in Technological Applications", HGST
• Prof. Michal Lipson, "Manipulating Light on Chip", Electrical & Computer Engineering, Cornell University
• Prof. Celeste Nelson, "Teeny Tiny Tissues: Using Fabrication to Understand and Manipulate Organ Development", Chemical & Biological Engineering, Princeton University
• Prof. Christopher Ober, "The Challenge of Nano: Making patterns on the size scale of macromolecules", Cornell Center for Materials Research, Cornell University

Update: A link to the archive was missing and has been added.

The Engineer Your Life website is a guide to engineering for your girls. The site has done a number of studies to determine the interest young girls might have in engineering. Most you girls don't really know what engineers do but think it really hard and involve only math and science. Most of their teachers don't know what engineer do either. Parents are the other influencer's in girls lives but also don't know that engineers do unless they are involved in engineering in some way. The website indicates that girls are more interested in engineering if they understand that it is fun or enjoyable, is a good place to work, is relevant, pays well, and offers flexibility. Researcher Kito Robinson describes their findings in this video. She also suggest a new approach to engaging young girls with engineering.

Happy 50th anniversary Laser Diode. The IOP Journal of Semiconductor Science and Technology has produced a Special issue on the 50th anniversary of the diode laser. All the articles in the issue are presently open access.

The CK-12 website has an very nice Introduction to Nanotechnology. The section provides some physical perspective on the scale of objects from centimeters to nanometers. A human hair is 50,000 nm in diameter and a water molecule spans 0.1 nm for example.

EMPA has posted a new Nanoparticle Test Handbook to unify the terminology and define standard methods for testing nanoparticles. The handbook can be downloaded in pdf form.

Nanowerk has posted a list of open access Nanotechnology publications.

The Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) autumn enrollment deadline is 9/19. Many courses are available online, and McGehee is teaching Solar Cells this semester.

The 2011 MRS Fall Meeting symposium proceedings on Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene and Related Nanostructures is available now.

The NREL has posted maps of the renewable energy generation potential in the US (see .pptx for the maps and .pdf for the report). The US has the potential to generate 481,500 tWh in total from all sources. The theoretical capacity potential by source includes:

• Solar PV/CSP): 155,000 GW (PV) 8,000GW (CSP)
• Wind: 11,000 GW (onshore) 4,200 GW (offshore to 50 nm)
• Geothermal: 38 GW (conventional) 4,000 GW (EGS)
• Water Power: 68 GW
• Biopower: 62 GW

Researchers at the University of Manchester have built a graphene-hBN superlattice that contains 10 layers of graphene. The researchers posted a very cool video showing the removal and mounting of a sample onto a TEM mount using focused ion beam milling for evaluation of the superlattice. The paper Graphene-based heterostructures and superlattices: Cross-sectional imaging of individual layers and buried interfaces by S. J. Haigh et. al. is available on arXiv.