NanoBlog

The Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) is offering a Graduate Certificate in Nanotechnology: Design and Manufacturing of Intelligent Systems online. There are three required courses, one fundamental elective course, and one additional elective course required (5 courses total) to earn the certificate. The courses must be completed in two years.

Researcher Duygu Kuzum gives this short talk at Google Solve for X about building circuit to mimic the human brain. Graphene is used as a probe or interface to the brain. It electrically conductive and transparent so the neurons that it connects to can be imaged.


Graphene interface technology Litt Lab at the University of Pennsylvania

The short film Diamond Light Source: Science in its Purest Form reports on the research by three scientists working at the facility. One scientist is using the synchrotron to study martian meteors in details so that they can correlate the rock material composition to data measured by satellites in orbit around Mars. A second research is studying catalysts to understand how they promote chemical reactions. A third scientist is studying protein crystals to better understand how they work in the body and to make better drugs.

Lux Research analysts report that graphene nanoplatelets are following the same path as multiwall carbon nanotubes. That is there is over capacity of graphene nanoplatelets and limited commercial applications for the materials. They also point out that most companies in the graphene space are not executing well and their technical value is unclear. They don't expect graphene to live up to the hype.

The latest issue of the MRS Bulletin is all about 2D layered transition-metal dichalcogenides.

Researchers have grown large area graphene on a eutectic substrate using a Platinum foil with a thin silicon film. When the substrate is heated a liquid platinum silicide layer forms and graphene grow with large crystals and very quickly compared to other CVD growth techniques. The liquid platinum slicide produces a smooth growth surface that hides the polycrystalline structure of the platinum foil. The Nature Communications paper Rapid epitaxy-free graphene synthesis on silicidated polycrystalline platinum is currently open access.

A beta version of the NanoTCAD ViDES IDE is now available. It provides a graphical user interface to help simplify modeling of nanoscale devices like monolayer FETs. The nanoTCAD ViDES is free at the moment, runs on 64 bit Linux, and requires activation.

Researchers have produced light from transparent suspended graphene ribbons fabricated on a silicon dioxide and reported the results in the Nature Nanotechnology paper Bright visible light emission from graphene. The height of the graphene above the substrate is used to tune the output wavelength. The simulation is very cool as it shows violent vibrations of the graphene nanoribbons when light is emitted.

The IEEE NanoTechnology Council has a blog on nanotechnology used to share the latest developments on the topic. Some of the papers highlighted in May 2015 include graphene devices, 3D magnetic devices, and Carbon NanoTube devices, for example.

The Science Museum in the UK has posed a blog on the Secret of Scientific Creativity revealed by Andre Geim, ‘godfather of graphene’. The blog chronicles Andre Geim life, career, and his curiosity to learn and explore new things. His curiosity to understand diamagnetism lead him to levitate a frog and hamster in a strong magnetic field. The same curiosity helped lead to the isolation of a single sheet of carbon known as graphene.