Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have developed an improved method for directly writing nanometer-scale patterns onto a variety of surfaces

The new writing method, dubbed “thermal dip pen nanolithography,” represents an important extension for dip pen nanolithography (DPN), an increasingly popular technique that uses atomic force microscopy (AFM) probes as pens to produce nanometer-scale patterns.

In conventional DPN, a probe tip is coated with a liquid ink, which then flows onto the surface to make patterns wherever the tip makes contact. Dozens of research groups worldwide are working on DPN applications, but the technique – which uses the AFM tips to both sense surface patterns and write new patterns – has been limited by an inability to turn the ink flow on and off. Existing dip pens apply ink as long as they remain in contact with a surface...read the wave

PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 30, 2004--Arrowhead Research Corporation (OTCBB: ARWR), an emerging company in the field of nanotechnology, have announced that NASDAQ has approved the Company's common stock and common stock purchase warrants (ARWRW) for listing on the NASDAQ SmallCap Market(TM), subject to certain conditions. The Company expects its stock to begin trading on the SmallCap Market within the next ten trading days.

Commenting on the approval...read the wave

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Contradicting fears that the semiconductor industry's pace of development is slowing, Intel Corp. announced it has achieved a milestone in shrinking the size of transistors that will power its next-generation chips.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company says it's created a fully functional 70-megabit memory chip with transistor switches measuring just 35 nanometres — about 30 per cent smaller than those found on today's state-of-the-art chips.

By shrinking the size of the transistors and other features etched into the silicon, more of the tiny devices can be squeezed on to a single chip. As a result, microprocessors become more powerful and memory chips can store more data without growing in size...read the wave

Bell Labs has been a fount of innovation since its founding in 1925. Now the research center for Lucent Technologies (LU ), Bell Labs has been fundamental in many technologies taken for granted today, including computer and phone networks. Cherry Murray, senior vice-president for physical sciences research, has been with Bell Labs for 26 years and has seen major innovations go from research to development. BusinessWeek's Sarah R. Shapiro recently spoke with Murray about where she sees innovation going in the next 20 years. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow…read the wave

RIKEN, an anglicized acronym for Japan's Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, described on Tuesday the MDGrape 3, a processor it thinks will become the cornerstone of a computer capable of operating at a petaflop, or a quadrillion operations per second--far faster than the 36 trillion ops supercomputers of today.

Samples of the chip, which was designed for life sciences research, can now perform 230 gigaflops, or 230 billion operations per second, while running at 350MHz, better than standard general-purpose chips. In a worst-case scenario, the chip performs 160 gigaflops at 250MHz, said Makoto Tanji, a researcher with RIKEN's high-performance computing group. Tanji spoke at the Hot Chips conference taking place at Stanford University…read the wave

A SOUTH Wales technology company that is pioneering a sophisticated solution to help the construction industry improve the soundproofing qualities of new buildings has gained its first foothold overseas.

Xetal Consultants of Crynant, near Neath, is celebrating new business in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the rapidly-developing Middle East emirates which are providing strong opportunities for specialists in the building and construction sector.

Xetal was able to target the region after securing support from WalesTrade International (WTI), the overseas trade arm of the Welsh Assembly Government, which helped Xetal's commercial team meet potential customers and agents in the United Arab Emirates…read the wave

The heart of a minuscule atomic clock---believed to be 100 times smaller than any other atomic clock---has been demonstrated by scientists at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), opening the door to atomically precise timekeeping in portable, battery-powered devices for secure wireless communications, more precise navigation and other applications.

Described in the Aug. 30, 2004, issue of Applied Physics Letters, the clock's inner workings are about the size of a grain of rice (1.5 millimeters on a side and 4 millimeters high), consume less than 75 thousandths of a watt (enabling the clock to be operated on batteries) and are stable to one part in 10 billion, equivalent to gaining or losing just one second every 300 years.

In addition, this "physics package" could be fabricated and assembled on semiconductor wafers using...read the wave

Since our launch in September 2003, visitors may have seen that we are committed to regularly updating the site.

We pride ourselves on " informing Joe & Mary Public " by publishing as wide a view of nanotechnology as possible, it is our aim to inform more than to instruct.

Our vision is to be a " NanoTech Soapbox " i.e. allowing any party, be they for or against nanotechnology to freely state their news & views.

Your Support is still Needed & highly appreciated ! Unlike many of the other NanoTech News websites, newsletters, and research advisory firms who charge by an expensive subscription model or rely on intrusive advertising, Nano Tsunami is only made possible through your voluntary donations.

So why Donate? Well without your financial support, Nano Tsunami will either have to move to a completely subscription based model, or cease to exist...read the wave

EDMONTON—The pragmatic visionaries of NINT could be forgiven a quiet groan at yet another prediction that research into the very, very small will soon yield very, very big payoffs.

The National Institute of Nanotechnology here is intended as the main focal point for Canada's as yet largely unfocused bid to elbow into the nanorealm, a field that even cautious experts say could usher in a new industrial revolution.

Eventually. Maybe in two or three decades. Maybe longer.

So far, however, what's happening in NINT's temporary quarters at the University of Alberta is as much basic science as technology, and not always strictly nano either...read the wave

In Disarmament Diplomacy No. 65, Sean Howard warned of the dangers of enhanced or even new types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) emerging from the development of 'nanotechnology', an umbrella term for a range of potentially revolutionary engineering techniques at the atomic and molecular level.1 Howard called for urgent preliminary consideration to be given to the benefits and practicalities of negotiating an 'Inner Space Treaty' to guard against such developments. While echoing this call, this paper draws attention to the existing potential of nanotechnology to affect dangerous and destabilizing 'refinements' to existing nuclear weapon designs. Historically, nanotechnology is a child of the nuclear weapons labs, a creation of the WMD-industrial complex. The most far-reaching and fateful impacts of nanotechnology, therefore, may lie - and can already be seen - in the same area....read the wave

There was much talk in the 1990's about the convergence of video, audio and data. And what we have today certainly is proving the validity of that vision.

Video and audio, or course, can be digitized and treated as data. To put it another way, on our networks and computers today, video and audio are logical constructs that leverage information technology.

Today, we are witnessing a convergence that radically will reshape our world. This new convergence extends far beyond the world of communication and media, and enters into new physical frontiers posing challenges hitherto relatively unconsidered.

The topic at hand is the combining of information technology with the worlds of biotechnology and nanotechnology...read the wave

"Biology today is at the same stage chemistry was a century ago — it's growing up quickly, making the transition from a largely descriptive discipline to one where we use what we know about biological systems to build new things," says Jan Liphardt, a Divisional Fellow in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division (PBD) and a newly named assistant professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

"In response to this development," Liphardt says, "PBD has established the nation's first Synthetic Biology Department," which is headed by PBD staff scientist Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical engineering at UC Berkeley. As founding members, Liphardt and his group are particularly interested in the design and construction of what Carlos Bustamante, head of PBD's Advanced Microscopies Department and a UCB professor of biochemistry, molecular biology, and physics, has dubbed "biobots" — autonomous, special-purpose robots, about the size of a virus or cell and composed of a small number of biological and artificial parts...read the wave

Europeans are not the only ones struggling to reach a consensus on whether or not public money should be used to support stem cell research. A recent poll in the US on whether federal funding should be used for embryonic stem cell research found a near equal split in public opinion.

Asked 'Do you support or oppose federal funding for embryonic stem cell research?', 43 per cent declared themselves in favour of such a policy, while 47 per cent said that they would oppose it. The poll was conducted via telephone interviews with 1,001 American adults over five days in August of this year.

Embryonic stem cell research would involve the use of embryos left over from...read the wave

Continuing to expand its capacity, Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has disclosed plans that it is looking to build a new wafer fab for use in processing devices at the 65nm node.
The proposed fab would be a 300mm facility, which would make NAND-based flash memories and other 65nm products. The company is already developing its first sub-70nm parts, including an 8-gigabit flash-memory device for advanced NAND applications.

"We will build a new line for 65nm," said Jon Kang, SVP of technical marketing for the company's U.S. arm, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., based in San Jose, California...read the wave

Those attending the International Commercial- ization of Micro and Nano Systems Conference (COMS) will also have opportunities to connect with global small-tech leaders representing all segments of the micro-nano value chain, said Chris Lumb, co-chair of NanoMEMS Edmonton, the Greater Edmonton region’s small-tech cluster organization...read the news

ITHACA, N.Y. -- With equipment so sensitive that it can locate clusters of electrons, Cornell University and University of Tokyo physicists have -- sort of -- explained puzzling behavior in a much-studied high-temperature superconductor, perhaps leading to a better understanding of how such superconductors work.

It turns out that under certain conditions the electrons in the material pretty much ignore the atoms to which they are supposed to be attached, arranging themselves into a neat pattern that looks like a crystal lattice. The behavior occurs in a phase physicists have called a "pseudogap," but because the newly discovered arrangement looks like a checkerboard in scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images, J.C. Séamus Davis, Cornell professor of physics, calls the phenomenon a "checkerboard phase."...read the wave

Researchers at Temple University are using protein structures to design and assemble metal oxide nanoparticles that could be used in environmental remediation.

The researchers have been exploring how these nanoparticles can be used in environmental remediation, such as helping to transform toxic metals in lakes, rivers or streams, and in groundwater for easier cleanup. "The protein we use to make these particles is ferritin, which is a protein we carry around in our blood," says Daniel R. Strongin, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Temple. "It's an iron storage protein, so if there's extra iron in our blood, it typically gets stored in ferritin. Then, when our body needs iron, the ferritin releases what has been stored."...read the wave

PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)- A research project funded by Arrowhead Research Corporation (OTCBB:ARWR) has resulted in a breakthrough in carbon nanotube technology. The California Institute of Technology ("Caltech") has filed for patent protection on the invention, and Arrowhead has the right to obtain an exclusive license from Caltech. Arrowhead and its subsidiaries have already acquired a large and diverse portfolio of nanotech intellectual property, which consists of approximately 100 U.S. and foreign patents and patent applications.

Atomic force microscopes are used to analyze materials at the molecular and atomic levels. When attached to AFM tips, carbon nanotubes can be used for ultrahigh-resolution imaging and manipulation at the nanoscale. The invention presents several advantages in using SWNTs for AFM imaging. The polymer coating provides a chemically inert and electrically insulating outer layer and mechanically stabilizes the attached nanotube, which enables imaging in liquids without the need for an intervening adhesive...read the wave

AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 26, 2004 -- Austin, Texas-based Nano-Proprietary, Inc. (OTC BB:NNPP.OB - News), through its subsidiary, Applied Nanotech, Inc. (ANI), have announced that its U.S. Patent claiming two-dimensional carbon nanostructures (dubbed by ANI ``carbon flakes''), with the priority date of August 21, 2000, was allowed by the U.S. Patent Office. These two-dimensional carbon nanotube structures, which may also be referred to as carbon nanowalls, may have attractive electron emission properties due to their sharp edges. The large surface area of this newly identified carbon phase may also make them particularly useful in applications for chemical and bio-sensors. Professor Yihong Wu of Kyoto University in Japan recently announced that he had succeeded in growing and observing a similar two-dimensional nano-structure (dubbed ``Carbon nanowalls'' ...read the wave