Science fiction writers have long envisioned sailing a spacecraft by the optical force of the sun’s light. But, the forces of sunlight are too weak to fill even the oversized sails that have been tried. Now a team led by researchers at the Yale School of Engineering has shown that the force of light indeed can be harnessed to drive machines — when the process is scaled to nano-proportions.

Their work opens the door to a new class of semiconductor devices that are operated by the force of light. They envision a future where this process powers quantum information processing and sensing devices, as well as telecommunications that run at ultra-high speed and consume little power.

The energy of light has been harnessed and used in many ways. The “force” of light is different — it is a push or a pull action that causes something to move.

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A super-resolution X-ray microscope developed by a team of researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) and EPFL combines the high penetration power of x-rays with high spatial resolution, making it possible for the first time to shed light on the detailed interior composition of semiconductor devices and cellular structures.

It uses a Megapixel Pilatus detector which has excited the synchrotron community for its ability to count millions of single x-ray photons over a large area. This key feature makes it possible to record detailed diffraction patterns while the sample is raster-scanned through the focal spot of the beam. In contrast, conventional x-ray (or electron) scanning microscopes measure only the total transmitted intensity.

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University of Surrey researchers have found a way to make ultra-small, pure carbon crystals formed entirely from the spherical carbon ‘buckyball’ molecule C60.

The method involves mixing two liquids together – one of which contains C60, at low temperature. Lozenge shaped crystals can be quickly obtained with widths down to 80nm – around 100,000 times smaller than the width of a pencil, and much smaller than previously thought possible with this method.

The electronic properties of the C60 molecules that make up the small crystals are particularly important to the development of new nanoelectronic devices such as solar cells and gas sensors. It is therefore possible this advance could allow researchers to accelerate the development of these nanotechnologies based on this simple method of creating high purity, ultra small C60 components.

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The Chair of Display Technology at Universitaet Stuttgart has worked in collaboration with Nano Proprietary’s subsidiary, applied Nanotech Inc (ANI), to increase the fabrication yield of carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film transistors (TFTs) for use in displays, electronic circuits, sensors, memory chips and other applications that are transitioning from rigid substrates, such as silicon and glass, to flexible substrates.

ANI and the Universitaet Stuttgart have worked together to increase the fabrication yield of carbon nanotube TFTs using ANI’s proprietary printing-like method of carbon nanotube deposition. The TFTs exceed an on/off ratio of five orders of magnitude and achieve the electron mobility necessary for thei utilisation for low temperature plastic-based substrates.

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Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are very energy-efficient, but trap light very effectively. Although 70 per cent of energy from the LED is converted to light, a high refractive index at the LED-air interface means much of the light is reflected straight back inside, allowing just 20 per cent of light escapes.

Dr Faiz Rahman, a nanotechnology researcher at the University of Glasgow, believes LEDs have the potential to be as bright as ordinary bulbs, and has found a way to release the trapped light from the devices.

To extract more light from the LED bulb, Dr Rahman is puts millions of holes into its surface. These holes measure 200nm is diameter, are 400 times narrower than a human hair, and penetrate just 100nm into the LED’s surface.  Spaced 300nm apart, 160 holes fit across a hair’s width. Although a single LED chip may be around 0.3 x 0.3mm, that’s enough space for hundreds of holes.

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Researchers from Hewlett-Packard’s central research facility have proven the existence of what had previously been only theorised as the fourth fundamental circuit element in electrical engineering. This scientific advancement could make it possible to develop computer systems that have memories that do not forget, do not need to be booted up, consume far less power and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.

Four researchers at HP Labs’ Information and Quantum Systems Lab, led by R. Stanley Williams, presented the mathematical model and a physical example of a “memristor” – a blend of “memory resistor” – which has the unique property of retaining a history of the information it has acquired.

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