Yuntian Zhu, a Los Alamos scientist, has recently developed carbon-nanotube fibers (CNT) that may prove to be some of the strongest materials on Earth. These CNTs are 100 times stronger than steel (pound for pound for the same weight), tougher ...
Robots Waltz on a Pinhead
Researchers at the Donald Lab at Duke University have built miniature robots, only a few microns tall, capable of acting in concert to achieve collaborative tasks. This ability was recently demonstrated by orchestrating a dance to a Strauss Waltz between ...
Research Team Develops New Nanomotors
Researchers at ASU’s Biodesign Institute in Arizona report the development of a new generation of tiny nanomotors that are up to 10 times more powerful than existing motors. The research team, led by Joseph Wang, director of the Center for ...
Carbon Nanotubes for Chemical Detection
Researchers at Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have recently been able to use carbon nanotubes to make the “blackest black” — the darkest material ever created, reflecting only 0.045 percent of all light shown on it. Schematic of a ...
Conducting Plastics
Alberto Morpurgo and his team of researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently attached a micrometer-thick crystal of an organic polymer to a similarly thin organic crystal of a second polymer creating a thin but strongly conducting ...
New ‘Super Paper’ Stronger than Cast Iron
Recently a group of researchers in Sweden and Japan reported the development of a new type of paper that resists breakage when pulled apart almost as well as that of cast iron. Composed of sub-microscopic particles of cellulose, this material, ...
Making Nanotubes into Electric Circuits
Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry have recently discovered a new way of producing carbon nanotubes from a highly sensitive ready made electric circuit. These ultramicroelectrodes may be particularly useful for the creation of ultra sensitive sensors ...
Nanotubes to form Ultrasensitive Sensors
Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry have recently discovered a new way of producing carbon nanotubes from a highly sensitive ready made electric circuit. These ultramicroelectrodes may be particularly useful for the creation of ultra sensitive sensors ...
Nanosoccer – a Match under the Microscope
Hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the second Nanosoccer tournament is currently underway at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. This year, only three teams are competing in the 2008 U.S. “RoboCup Open”, in which miniature ...
New Strong, Light, and Stretchy Materials
A team of researchers led by Ludwig Gauckler, a Professor of material science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, has created a nanocomposite of aluminum oxide and a polymer, which is as tough as metal but ...