A research team from Osaka University has developed an ‘atomic pen’ that can inscribe nano-sized text on metal by manipulating individual atoms on the surface.

According to the researchers, the atomic pen is built on a previous discovery that silicon atoms at the tip of an atomic force microscope probe will interchange with the tin atoms in the surface of a semiconductor sample when in close proximity. Using this atom-interchange phenomenon, the researchers were able to arrange individual silicon atoms one by one on a semiconductor surface to spell out the letters ‘Si’. The writing process, which took about an hour and a half to complete, was conducted at room temperature.

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A vial of anti-cancer nano ships glows red under a black light. The particles glow red because they contain fluorescent "quantum dot" nanoparticles.

Nanometer-sized ‘cargo-ships’ that can sail throughout the body via the bloodstream delivering anti-cancer drugs and markers into tumours that might otherwise go untreated or undetected, have been developed.

Scientists at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT report that their nano-cargo-ship system integrates therapeutic and diagnostic functions into a single device that avoids detection and rapid removal by the body’s natural immune system.

Michael Sailor, a professor at UC San Diego, explained: “The idea involves encapsulating imaging agents and drugs into a protective ‘mother ship’ that evades the natural processes that normally would remove these payloads if they were unprotected.

“These mother ships are only 50 nanometers in diameter, or 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, and are equipped with an array of molecules on their surfaces that enable them to find and penetrate tumour cells in the body.”

It is hoped that eventually these microscopic cargo ships could provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to tumors in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body.

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IBM and its joint development partners, AMD, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), have produced the first working static random access memory (SRAM) for the 22 nanometer (nm) technology node - the world’s first reported working cell built at its 300mm research facility in Albany, New York.

SRAM chips are precursors to more complex devices such as microprocessors. The SRAM cell utilises a conventional six-transistor design and has an area of 0.1um2, breaking the previous SRAM scaling barriers.

Dr TC Chen, vice president of Science and Technology, IBM Research, explained: “We are working at the ultimate edge of what is possible - progressing toward advanced, next-generation semiconductor technologies. This new development is a critical achievement in the pursuit to continually drive miniaturisation in microelectronics.”

22 nm is two generations away in chip manufacturing. The next generation is 32 nm — where IBM and its partners are in development with their 32 nm high-K metal gate technology.

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Scientists at the University of California have developed a way to squeeze light into tighter spaces, potentially opening doors to new technology in the fields of optical communications, miniature lasers and optical computers.

Previously optics researchers had managed to pass light through gaps 200 nanometers wide – about 400 times smaller than the width of a human hair. A group of UC Berkeley researchers led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, devised a way to confine light in spaces measuring 10 nanometers, just five times the width of a single piece of DNA and more than 100 times thinner than current optical fibres.

Rupert Oulton, research associate, and lead author of the study explained: “This technique could give us remarkable control over light, and that would spell out amazing things for the future in terms of what we could do with that light.”

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