NanoBlog

Sir Harry Kroto passed away at the age of 76. He was awarded a Nobel prize in 1996 for discovering Buckyballs (C60). I saw him speak at Rutgers University by a lucky circumstance a long time ago. He was an exceptional and inspiring speaker. He will certainly be missed. The Guardian and NPR have good summaries of his achievements.

kwnat is a software package used to simulate quantum transport of electrons in materials by solving the tight binding approximation. Material structures are simulated by writing models in Python. There is an interactive online tutorial available and it is based on the 2016 APS tutorial: Introduction to Computational Quantum Nanoelectronics.

The Python Tight Binding (PyTH)is a software package that calculates the tight binding approximation for the electronic structure of solids with any dimension. The package was developed by the group of David Vanderbilt at Rutgers University and is open source.

Materials Today has posted a review paper on Magnetite nanoparticles for cancer diagnosis, treatment, and treatment monitoring: recent advances. Magnetic nanoparticles are being used for contrast enhancement agents and are being developed for cancer therapies. Presently, magnetic nanoparticle cancer therapies have not shown enough selectivity, control, and drug delivery capacity to begin clinical trials. The article is presently open source.

Don Lincoln from the Fermi Lab has written an article about the electron titled: The Nature of the Electron. The article covers the history and evolution of the theories of the electron.

The Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility is offering a short course on Technology & Characterization at the Nanoscale June 7-10, 2016. The course is designed to give a broad understanding of nanoscale research and development. The course is $850 for industrial participants.

The Incredible Materials database contains information on piezoelectrics, strong ferromagnets, shape-memory alloys, transparent conductors, memory foams, superhard and wear-resistant materials. This information includes chemical formulas, crystal structure, properties, and links to external resources on the material. The database contains about 300 materials and they can be searched by general property, specific property, and chemical variety at the moment.

The polymer database PoLyInfo contains material design data on homopolymers, copolymers, polymer blends, composites and compounds that consist of homopolymers and copolymers. The database can be searched by name, chemical formula, material type, material properties, publication reference, and structure. It looks like a powerful tool.

X-Fab announced its X-Cite Award Program today. The award program aims to encouraging people to enter designs that are innovative and challenge the X-FAB analog, high-voltage, optical, RF and MEMS processes. Applications are due March 31, 2016. The contest winner will be given a free prototyping run to validate their ideas.

The NSF and NBC has produced six short videos on nanotechnology. The videos include:

• Nanoelectronics
• Nanocoatings
• Nanostructured metalmaterials with Dr. Julia Greer
• Nanosensors & nanoparticles for cancer treatments
• QuantumDots for better displays and solar cells with Paul Alivisatos
• nanoscale and measurements with Dawn Bonnell

These videos give a good overview of nanotechnology products, applications, and research.