Nanowires lead revolutionary change in battery technology

Stanford researchers have used silicon nanowires to revolutionise rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology. Research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, has led to technology that produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

See Stanford News.

Top 10 Scientific Discoveries 2007

Time Magazine is running its annual Top 10 Scientific Discoveries for 2007. Well worth a browse.

See Time Top 10.

Bacteria produces nanotubes

Researchers from Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, have used Shewanella bacteria, which are metal reducing, to sythesize arsenic-sulfide nanotubes.

See Biophotonics Newsletter.

Major spintronics research breakthrough

"Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have generated, modulated and electrically detected a pure spin current in silicon, the semiconductor used most widely in the electronic device industry. Magnetic contacts on the surface of an n-type silicon layer enable generation of a spin current which flows separately from a charge current. The spin orientation is electrically detected as a voltage at a second magnetic contact. The relative magnetizations of these contacts allow full control over the orientation of the spin in the silicon channel.

"The electronics industry has relied largely on the control of charge flow, and through size scaling (i.e. reducing the physical size of elements such as transistors) has continuously increased the performance of existing electronics. However, size scaling cannot continue indefinitely as atomic length scales are reached, and new approaches must be developed. Basic research efforts at NRL and elsewhere have shown that spin angular momentum, another fundamental property of the electron, can be used to store and process information in metal and semiconductor based devices."

See EUREKA ALERT, also Spintronics briefing in Scientific American

3-D Endoscopy has arrived

Researchers from MIT, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston have developed for the first time a 3-D endoscopic imaging device.

See Nature Photonics.

Nanoparticles as drug delivery vehicles

Researchers at MIT have developed a method for the precise delivery of drugs for treatment of tumours using superparamagnetic nanoparticles tethered to chemotherapeutic molecules.

See Biophotonics Newsletter.