A team of researchers from Peking University in Beijing, China, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has demonstrated that carbon nanotube-based integrated circuits can work under a supply voltage much lower than that used in conventional silicon integrated circuits.
(Phys.org) — Although oceans and seas contain about 97% of Earth’s water, currently only a fraction of a percent of the world’s potable water supply comes from desalinated salt water. In order to increase our use of salt water, desalination techniques must become more energy-efficient and less expensive to be sustainable…
About 40 percent of the solar energy reaching Earth’s surface lies in the near-infrared region of the spectrum — energy that conventional silicon-based solar cells are unable to harness. But a new kind of all-carbon solar cell developed by MIT researchers could tap into that unused energy, opening up the possibility of combination solar cells — incorporating both traditional silicon-based cells and the new all-carbon cells — that could make use of almost the entire range of sunlight’s energy.
(Phys.org) — Squashed nanotubes may be ripe with new possibilities for scientists, according to a new study by Rice University.
Selenium is an inexpensive element that naturally belongs in the body. It is also known to combat bacteria. Still, it had not been tried as an antibiotic coating on a medical device material. In a new study, Brown University engineers report that when they used selenium nanoparticles to coat polycarbonate, the material of catheters and endotracheal tubes, the results were significant reductions in cultured populations of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, sometimes by as much as 90 percent.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have developed new methods to track stem cells and further understanding of what happens to them after they have been in the body for a significant period of time.
Researchers have shown that they can tune the strain in graphene suspended like drumheads over microscopic holes in a substrate of silicon oxide using the tip of an advanced scanning probe microscope and a conducting plate below the substrate. Tuning the strain enabled the group to create areas in the graphene where electrons behaved as though they were confined to quantum dots.