Researchers use nanotechnology to harness the power of fireflies
What do fireflies, nanorods, and Christmas lights have in common? Someday, consumers may be able to purchase multicolor strings of light that don’t need...
How to convert waste heat to electricity at the nanoscale
Scientists have discovered that a class of materials known to convert heat to electricity and vice versa behaves quite unexpectedly at the nanoscale in...
Power without the power cord
Cell phones and flashlights operate by battery without trouble. Yet because of the limited lifespan, battery power is not a feasible option for many...
Ferroelectric nanostructures directly on plastic
The technique, which uses a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) tip to produce patterns, could facilitate high-density, low-cost production of complex ferroelectric structures for...
Nanocable could be big boon for energy storage
Thanks to a little serendipity, researchers at Rice University have created a tiny coaxial cable that is about a thousand times smaller than a...
The World’s Smallest Battery
A benchtop version of the world’s smallest battery — its anode a single nanowire one seven-thousandth the thickness of a human hair — has...
Graphene is the new electronic material for high-performance devices
That material, the focus of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, is graphene – a fancy name for extremely thin layers of ordinary carbon...
The Robojelly built on nanotechnology and powered by hydrogen and oxygen
Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech have created an undersea vehicle inspired by the common jellyfish that runs on...
Nanocrystal-coated fibers might reduce wasted energy
Researchers are developing a technique that uses nanotechnology to harvest energy from hot pipes or engine components to potentially recover energy wasted in factories,...
Solar cells could reach 70 percent efficiency
It has long been thought that conversion efficiency of solar cells cannot exceed 34 percent for a single material or less than about 45...