Interested In Science?

The reason behind this vague subject matter is the lack of time I have had to concentrate on any single specific development in the recent press (read the ABOUT ME page if you are wondering where my time goes), and simultaneously the fact that recently, in the attempt to find some focus of interest, I have been besieged and, admittedly, a little distracted, by a) the increase in interest in my site (~400 hits per week mainly on OLED hits) and b) the amount of literature being produced out there ‘on the web’ about such a wide variety of subjects WITHIN nanotech (my favourite area of the vast and all-conquering discipline ’science’) that I think it is stupid to try and concentrate on one area when there are issues out there that need to be covered which cover the whole science area.

That incredibly long winded introduction was a means of covering my lazy behind for momentarily focusing on the more recent news in nanotechnology that concern cancer detection, nanotube applications and, of course as is always the case with such ground-breaking, newsworthy innovations their inevitable governing, restriction and enforced guidelines as set down by Uncle Sam (the US gov) and Uncle Keith (UK’s gov with, in my opinion, a particularly apt nomenclature).

Already concerns are springing up over the possible problems caused by the new products and technologies allowed by nanomaterials. Regardless of their potential for amazing advances in the fields mentioned above their possible hazards are being called into question (FDA finds no proof of harm with nanotech products, Editorial: Governments differing over Nanotech safety). Fortunately, the FDA has, as yet, found no evidence that these nanomaterials now being included in everything from cosmetics (eg. sunscreens) to sports equipment (eg. baseball bats) pose a significant threat.

I guess it is a good thing that these things are treated with suspicion, seeing as these nanoparticles are being used to address cancer-detection, and it would be an horrific irony and potential legal-minefield if the detection system helped induce secondary cancers in the patient.

interestedinscience.com © 2007

We’ve all played on them. Well, I say played, but the fun that can be had with a touch screen is rather limited. You don’t have a keyboard - everything is inputted through pressing the correct part of the screen and the computer reads this input. The touch screen technology is about a decade old, and relies on good old electronic circuit principles to work (metallic layers are pressed together upon touching the screen, which closes a circuit at a pressure point, telling the computer exactly where the screen was touched; very clever but simple).

Well, now there is a new toy under development.

Hands up who has seen Minority Report?

Me too. It’s ok. Nice idea if a bit far fetched, whimsical, and in violation - I am positive - of several human rights laws. Anyway. The screens are the obvious link in this little post; in the film Tom Cruise is seen flicking windows and files and images around on the screen with his hands in some special gloves. Extremely neat, and given the fact touch screen technology has been around for a few years, it’s suprising the idea hasn’t caught on and been flaunted by Apple or some major hardware manufacturer.

Well, now it is becoming more of a reality! And from labs in the UK. And labs run by Microsoft! Bravo.

Here is a link to the film on YouTube which demonstrates it:

I have watched it, and it looks good. However, I have also watched a video of the iPhone….and I’m not taking sides, I’m really not…but it doesn’t look an awful lot different to this new technology. Obviously there are a few cool new aspects coming with the new microsoft screen, namely the sensors ability to ’see’ objects within ~ 1cm away; but in all honesty I don’t know if there’s something to be excited about here yet.

There is more on this at NewScientist.co.uk or, obviously, on YouTube, at the above link.

interestedinscience.com © 2007

Sorry for the recent hiatus on this site - a move in office and residence has yielded little time to find interest in the world of science, extracurricular or otherwise!

I’ll get back on it as soon as I can, probably by the weekend.

abc

This may sound like madness, but IBM are on the way to discovering how to use single atoms (!) and molecules to store pieces of data. Thus the transistor on computer chips of today is being shrunk to a 1000th of the size!

This is being made possible by the virtue of something called anisotropy, which pertains to a property dependent on direction; in this case a magnetisation effect also referred to through a quantum dynamic property as spin. Due to the spin quantum number of any atom essentially being either up or down (i.e. 1 or 0…ringing any bells??) this property can be exploited towards the storage of binary data!

For more on this break-through read up at ScientificAmerican.com.

As I have covered in Plastic Electronics: Explained and probably several posts about nanomaterials or plastic electronics, silicon based computer chips are approaching their physical limits of ’shrink-ability’. By this I mean the break-down of the quantum abilities of the materials once certain components of them become so small that they are unable to do what they should (namely, the gate-oxide in a silicon transistor is becoming so thin that soon electrons will be able to tunnel through and it will no longer be an insulator).

So as you can imagine, in order to keep up with the infamous Moore’s Law and maintain the linear increase of transistors-per-chip, ways to circumvent this issue have been being researched for several years, from several different directions.

One of the latest efforts to show promise is from a group of researchers in Hong Kong who have incorporated the use of carbon nanotubes instead of the copper or tungsten ‘plugs’ to interconnect the layers of silicon semiconductor. This doesn’t remove the use of silicon, but does take a stab at improving the ability of companies to make ever-smaller/powerful microchips.

Read more here at the patent application, and here at NewScientist.

interestedinscience.com © 2007

On the flying coat tails of nanobattery post from a couple of weeks ago comes this revelation from Scientific American, NewScientist and the BBC News pages.

Paper Batteries. Sounds stupid. Reads very interestingly. BBC News says,

‘[The researchers] have produced a sample slightly larger than a postage stamp that can release about 2.3 volts, enough to illuminate a small light.’

Professor Robert Linhardt from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute believes this allows us a ‘glimpse into the future…’. He also says that controlling the quantity of out-put power should be relatively easy due to the nature of paper - stack several sheets together, rip it in half etc etc.

They are made by the incorporation of carbon nanotubes onto cellulose paper. Carbon nanotubes have relatively enormous surface areas and consequently storage of charges on these surfaces clearly enables battery-like abilities.

Read the reports here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6945732.stm

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=61525146-E7F2-99DF-368134A7014B95DE&chanID=sa003

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn12480-nanotubes-turn-paper-into-a-power-source.html

This is a great development, although how reliable and practical these devices turn out to be remains to be seen.

interestedinscience.com © 2007

I love my mac. I write this blog on a very nice, 6 month old macbook pro which I adore because it is fast, easy to use, and keeps me warm when I use it as a laptop (it gets very hot, but never crashes…well, it hasn’t yet!!)

I love the colour. I love the screen. I love how thin it is (closed it is thinner than just the base part of my girlfriend’s laptop - a non-mac).

The reason I didn’t buy the iMac when I was looking to buy was because I wanted something portable, but even if I hadn’t, it would have taken me some persuasion to buy something which looks a bit toy-like.

The new iMac could engender no such reservations. Check out this puppy here…and here:

I love it.

Well done to everyone at Apple for yet another b-e-a-utiful piece of engineering. I realise that when you design and build a computer and operating system that go together automatically it must be a little easier than designing an operating system which can go with a plethora of hardware. Equally, PC designers, it must be difficult to design a system as thin and efficient as the macs being unveiled so regularly….I don’t know why it’s so difficult, but it must be because it hasn’t been achieved yet!!!???!!! So, no hard feelings.

Anyway. The new iMac. Love it. Good choice going brushed metal too. And the keyboards!? Seriously, how do you do it?

interestedinscience.com © 2007

This gadget is superb. I can’t vouch for the quality of the screens produced, the resolution is stated but I wouldn’t like to even offer an opinion on them, but they look fantastic!

A friend of mine who is a bit of a computer-boff told me about the keyboard a couple of weeks ago, but I’d clean forgot about them until I was just surfing whilst waiting on a reaction to heat up

Here are the image and links to where these amazing devices can be purchased from.

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

It looks the part…and unfortunately will probably cost more than the computer with which you’re using it. But oh good god it’s a piece of style.

For the record I am not in the employment of the designers or sellers of this keyboard - I actually believe that these keyboards need no selling, as they sell themselves quite well I reckon!

If anyone who reads this blog has one or has ordered one, please leave a review when you’ve seen just how good it is!

interestedinscience.com © 2007

I am hugely aware of a distinct lack of postings on this site for almost a fortnight now - and I feel I can only justify this with a rather large work load in the lab, coupled with preparations for a bit of a lab redesign…so I apologise.

I am very happy to have read in the RSC Chemistry World RSS feed (click here to subscribe - it is worth it) about a new review on molecules for application in electronic circuits. A review is essentially an overview of the recent literature and developments in a specific area of a subject. They sometimes quote new work, but this is not the usual case. They are (hopefully) a thorough ‘review’ of work in the area of focus, and thus can be exceptionally useful for finding primary literature (original journal articles) and tying ideas together.

The area of molecules for use as electronic devices has been reviewed several times over, with Carroll and Gorman’s ‘The Genesis of Molecular Electronics’ and Tour’s ‘Molecular Electronics. Synthesis and Testing of Components’ being my two favourites. There hasn’t been a good one for a while though, so this recent review on the developments in molecular rectifiers and switches was a welcomed read.
Published in a recent edition of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, it describes the recent advances in the synthesis of potential molecular devices, with the primary focus on memory units.

Interestingly it also highlights an issue that I think is overlooked in a lot of the literature. Perhaps the main impetus for designing molecular devices was the idea of producing molecule sized devices to replace the aging macroscopic scale semiconductors and silicon computer chips that we have today, enabling, potentially, the designed and production of tiny electronic components and, perhaps one day, a tiny computer, which is no larger than a matchbox and yet has unparalled functionality. This is not the case, as is largely becoming more and more evident as the task of locating and implementing the now available devices into electronic circuits. They are just too small to be able to manipulate with today’s technologies, and any technologies that can be envisioned in the near future. What this paper discusses, admittedly only briefly, is the role these miniature electronic architectures are going to have - simply replacing their inorganic counterparts due to their not being able to be made any smaller.

Essentially this means nothing. The idea that one day a computer will just be a small lump of plastic, which connects wirelessly to an OLED screen which can be unrolled (perhaps even out of the computer/plastic block itself??) is a sci-fi notion that I think I may be alone in believing may be possible. What it means practically is that Moore’s Second Law (addressing the fact that costs will prohibit improvements in silicon-based chips before their quantum abililties could) could be side-stepped as an issue, and Intel could produce smaller and smaller chips into the next century without having to deviate from their mission statement.

But I digress.

So, the journal to get reading is Org. Biomol. Chem. 2007 5 2343 by Mayor et al. Read it, and feel free to comment on my rants here at interestedinscience.com.

interestedinscience.com © 2007

Now, I know most (actually at this time and date, it’s all!) of the blogs and pages written here are strongly pertaining to nanomaterials and plastic electronics, but this one I feel needs special attention because it is such a simple yet essential component of any electrical circuit. The power supply!

I have read literally hundreds of papers on dozens of different aspects of plastic electronic componentry, from molecular wires to OLEDs that can also act as light harvesting devices (photovoltaics), i.e. the simplest to the more complicated issues. I had not heard of any developments regarding a nano-scale power supply - or nanobattery, probably because I hadn’t really considered it. I have now…

One of the most recent RSS Feeds from NewScientist regards the invention of a biological nanobattery. It sounds absurd at first, but when the principle of a battery is analysed it makes sense.

A battery is just a combination of materials that allow the semi-permanent storage of a charge, due to the nature of the differences between the materials’ potential differences and electromotive forces.

I was curious as to how this principle could be adapted and implemented on the nano-scale, and was pleased to see such a simple process described. NASA decided to investigate the use of the protein ferritin, an iron-based compound that can carry either a negative or positive charge. Ferritin already has a use in materials science as a reagent in the preparation of carbon nanotubes, but its use as a major constituent of a nano-scale device is novel.
NASA’s proposed capacitor is based on a system of layers of oppositely charged ferritin, deposited by spin coating one on top of the other, until sufficient layers are present to enable charge storage between them. Unfortunately the only further information I could find on this research is a rather legal-term-dense patent application (see the NewScientist website), but if I find anything more about it I will share it here asap.

To be thorough on the subject I did a quick literature search on nanobatteries, and was pleased and somewhat surprised to discover that there has been a significant amount of research done - and this ferritin-based cell is not the only sort out there.

In 2004 mPhase Technologies in association with Bell Labs claimed to have successfully prepared the first nano-battery. A report said the battery was
“…based on a Bell Labs’ discovery that liquid droplets of electrolyte…stay in a dormant state atop…nanograss until stimulated to flow…triggering a reaction that produces electricity”
Unfortunately, yet again, I couldn’t find any useful journals or articles relating to this report, but I shall keep looking - and if anybody out there knows something, please drop a comment!
Nano-batteries are an inevitable feature of a nano-tech device, and since these devices are becoming more and more popular I think any developments in this power-supply area are worthy of reporting.

interestedinscience.com © 2007