Tenn. Lab Develops Electron Microscope
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are peering into the atomic world with record clarity, developing an electron microscope image that can distinguish the individual, dumbbell-shaped atoms of a silicon crystal.
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $7.5 million over five years to establish the Center for Probing the Nanoscale (CPN) at Stanford University.
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UK researchers have developed a way of using light to detect the presence of bacteria.
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A synchrotron acts like a gigantic microscope that generates intense beams of brilliant light to view the microstructure of materials.
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A tiny picture of Cambridge University's crest demonstrates the emerging power of nanotechnology.
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Researchers create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly.
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Scientists are perfecting a technique which they hope will improve detection of mad cow disease (vCJD).
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Superblack material made from microscopic carbon nanotubes is produced in a US laboratory.
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Nanotechnology research advances are happening with such frequency these days that the individual achievements are losing some of their power to awe â until you stop and think about them. Take two successes announced in recent days: the creation of the worldâs most powerful electron microscope and the invention of a new [...].
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A map of the mouse brain down to details of individual cells has been completed, the first project of an institute funded by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen, it was announced Tuesday.
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By M. Paul Jackson, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.  Sep. 5--In a nondescript laboratory on Deacon Boulevard, scientists work  to build machines that are smaller than the period at the end of this  sentence.
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A new chip-making technology that uses a special kind of electron microscope to draw the circuits and will lead to better memory chips.
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Broad ribbons of light help sort and manipulate individual cells.
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MIT scientists perfect the use of light beams as a tweezer-like tool for manipulating microscopic objects.
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PHILADELPHIA _ Surrounded by files and boxes _ "amoeba to chemical,""salt marsh to zooplankton" _ Ruth Patrick bends her head to peer into the microscope. "Ah, here," she says with a smile of satisfaction.
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Researchers at Rockefeller University make small synthetic vesicles that resemble a crude kind of biological cell.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM has demonstrated how to perform certain computer functions on single atoms and molecules, a discovery that could someday lead to processors the size of a speck of dust, the company said Thursday. Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California developed a technique for measuring magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction. Being able to measure magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level is a crucial step toward the magnet representing the ones or the zeroes used to store data in binary computer language. In a second report, researchers at IBM's lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The new technologies are at least 10 years from being used for components in commercial products, but the discoveries will allow scientists to take a large step forward in their quest to replace silicon, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon. To build faster, smaller chips, IBM and other chip vendors like Intel and AMD have shrunk the dimensions of chip features from 90 nanometers to 65nm in the current generation of chips and plan to continue to 45nm and 32nm in coming years. The problem is that wires built from silicon tend to leak more electricity at each step on that scale and will eventually reach a limit where they are no longer useful. "Across all our areas of nanotechnology research, we're trying to determine the new kinds of materials we can use in computing when silicon reaches its fundamental limits. The ultimate goal is molecular-level computers, but the interim products will probably be hybrids with current technology, using things like carbon nanotubes," McMahon said. IBM defines nanotechnology as work done at a scale of 100nm or smaller. At that scale, scientists must use a tool called the STM (scanning tunneling microscope) to photograph and manipulate individual atoms as they did in their latest research. Their next challenge is to find a way to make these laboratory demonstrations work at room temperature, he said. Having measured the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom, "their next step is finding atoms that can do it at stable temperatures that are suitable for storage devices. If they can find that, it's still a decade out from commercialization," he said. The Zurich researchers also developed a technique for using a molecule containing two hydrogen atoms as a switch, either on its own or with an adjacent molecule. They are now looking to apply the method to many other molecules, enabling the system to work as a collection of logic gates, the building blocks of microprocessors. Even if the teams reach those goals, they must find a way to manufacture the systems on a large scale, instead of moving single atoms with the STM. One possibility is to use the process of self-assembly, where atoms under certain conditions will naturally form the desired shapes. In May, IBM said it had used that approach to insulate the wires on a chip by creating trillions of tiny, vacuum-filled holes around each one.