Slashdot Mirror
Self-assembling 3D Nanostructures
Roland Piquepaille writes "Chips holding 10 terabits of data? Copper as strong as steel? Ceramics tough enough to be used in car engines? All this will be true in five years, thanks to two new methods to create self-assembling 3D nanostructures. These methods used pulsed laser deposition to create layers of nanodots organized in a matrix. These arrays of nanodots are consistent in shape and size -- 7 nanometers with nickel for example. But the real beauty of these methods is that they can be applied to almost any material, like nickel for data storage or aluminum oxide for ceramics. These methods also reduce drastically imperfections, leading to future superstrong materials. Read more here for other details and an image of a single nickel nanocrystal, or nanodot."
So that's it then - the elves had nanotech. It all makes sense now. Looks like steel, feels like steel, but cuts like sinclair molecule chain
I do remember the UK Science minister at the time (Lord Sainsbury, I think it was) who said "Nanotechnology is going to be really BIG". He didn't quite get it, did he... Oh well, science is anathema to most politicians in the UK
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
last I heard, MIT was working on something like this. Just a rumor - can anyone verify?
--
We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
Roland Piquepaille is a blogspammer, every day for over a week now, we've had his rehashings of old stories posted on the frontpage. Don't click on the first and the last link in the story.
I haven't RTFA, but ceramics are already used in certain motorcycle engines.
I guess you could make stronger bullets...How else could it be used to kill people? I'd like to see this technology get funded.
I used to have self assembling lego/mechano structures, thanks to my father's need to 'help' me whenever I got a new set.
Isn't bits generally used for data transfer, rather than storage, which is generally bytes?
The really great part about Roland Piquepaille's posts is that the sites he mirrors seem never to have any trouble staying up. Perhaps it's just me, but I'd think he could help out more by mirroring some of the sites that appear in other stories?
Well, I guess he still does a service by bringing these stories to attention.
-zach
I post that and read slashdot? Fucking asshat.
"methods also reduce drastically imperfections"
Maybe he should have used those methods on his text!
Another Slashdot story that is going to change my life. Why is it after 3 years I'm still doing the same stinking job, same stinking money eh?
/. to change your life? The .com boom is over, get over it. Find a job you enjoy, or one you can stand. Then, to enjoy yourself, get a life. It's amazing how unimportant work is once you have a kid.
Maybe because you expect
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Hmmm, isn't this just what we need to make space elevators possible?
These things are "self-assembling"!! Doesn't this just scare the hell out of you?!?!
How long will it be before these 3D nanostructures figure out they no long need Mankind to survive...and see us as a threat!?!?
I for one will welcome our new Self-assembling 3D Nanostructures Overlords!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Google cache
Maybe this is the path to a general purpose replicator a la Star Trek. I bet it would make some really tough biscuits.
NC State engineers patent methods for 3-D nanostructures
Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize modern life. From energy-efficient lighting that lasts for 50 years, to greater data storage capacity, to stronger metals and ceramics, the improvements attributed to the development of nanostructures seem limitless. So far, the greatest impediment to developing these advances has been creating usable nanostructures that self-assemble. Engineers at North Carolina State University recently received a patent for two processes that help break that barrier.
Dr. Jagdish "Jay" Narayan, the John C.C. Fan Family Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the NSF Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at NC State, and Dr. Ashutosh Tiwari, research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, developed and patented two methods for self-assembly of three-dimensional nanostructures.
Results of their research will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology with images of the newly created structures appearing on the cover of the journal. The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The new methods are a breakthrough in nanotechnology that opens the door to creating new materials for a myriad of applications, including super-dense data storage, solid-state lighting, super-strong materials and advanced detection systems. According to Narayan, three-dimensional self-assembly is the key to being able to use the nanostructures.
"The grand challenge is to be able to use the nanounit in the form of nanodot, nanowire or nanodisc," said Narayan. "In the past we could make only one layer of the nanostructure with these units. There was only two-dimensional self-assembly, which is not usable for applications. We couldn't control the properties of the medium. Now, with this development, we can control the medium and do three-dimensional self-organization. More importantly, we can change the size in different layers and change the functionality at different depths."
"National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has created a broad base of scientific discovery and potential technological development," said Dr. Mihail Roco, senior advisor for nanotechnology at NSF and chair of the NNI organization. "This research shows the importance of creating infrastructure because NC State University has established a strength in the area of nanostructured materials, and at this moment, we can see several results that weren't initially planned."
The two methods involve using pulsed laser deposition, which works with a variety of materials and reduces imperfections. The sequential growth method uses the laser pulses to ablate successive targets to create layers of nanodots in a matrix. The simultaneous growth method is based on the difference in the oxidation rate of the nanodot and matrix materials. In this method the matrix and nanodots are deposited simultaneously on a substrate. Both methods produce consistent size and shape of the nanodots and demonstrate control of the materials that cannot be achieved by previously proposed methods.
"This device is part of the first generation of passive nanostructures which illustrate how one can exploit new phenomena and behavior of materials at the nanoscale for economic advantage," said Roco.
The patented processes can be applied to almost any material. To create nanostructures for the different applications, the material used for the nanodots and the matrix are changed. For example, to create structures for data storage, Narayan uses nickel; for solid-state applications, gallium nitride or zinc oxide is used; for superstrong materials, copper, tungsten carbide and nickel aluminide are used; and for ceramics, aluminum oxide is used.
The most interesting application may be the development of energy-efficient, low-cost, solid-state lighting. By creating a matrix of layers of varying sizes of nanodots em
This sounds like the stuff that the Asimov robot cities are made of that are mentioned in the Robots and Aliens series of books.
No problems, only solutions
have kids? You insensitive clod, eight years married and still no kids...
Why is it that every time I read about a scientific breakthrough, journalists always promise that it could lead to... *drumroll*... an improved lightbulb?
I wonder if Einstein had this problem.
E=mc^2... helps us understand the relationship between energy and matter... which could lead to...
It's amazing how unimportant getting married and having kids is when you have a meaningful life purpose.
Please, spare us the "I'm married and in a wonderful relationship isn't my life great" spiel. We all appreciate your ability to procreate, but in all reality, it's nothing special.
Some of us have meaningful lives, and don't need a family to support our egos and make us feel needed. Now I'm sure having dependants makes you feel just dandy, but I'm getting tired of hearing people tell me how wonderful their lives are now that they're married with kids. They see themselves as free, I see them as tied to their homes, under the watchful eyes of three or four people, with no personal freedom at all. Before you go and criticize someone for complaining about his job and expound on the virtues of married life, remember: US divorce rate is .5%, what makes you so sure you won't add to that statistic?
Great... As if contact lenses weren't bad enough, we'll soon be on hands & knees searching the carpet for somebody's Very Compact Disc collection
So.. it has come to this
This isn't redundant man...don't you GET IT?
Listen. And understand. Those Self-assembling 3D Nanostructures are out there. They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, EVER, until we are dead!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
The space elivator project needs materials strong enough to with stand the tension of its own weight, and we already have carbon nano fibers that provide 60-70% of the strength needed to make it a reality. If this new technique can get us to the magic strength, we are probably in the threashhold of a new era.
~561
... yada yada ya ... overlords. You can fill the rest in yourselves.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
It's amazing how unimportant work is once you have a kid.
I see - so the kid is now your main job. Maybe you'll get lucky and enjoy it for longer than the first several years.
At the moment, "self assembling" means that we don't have to push the nanodots together after we make them. That's all. You still need to ablate a carefully prepared target with a laser to etch the structures we want.
Personally, I'm excited about their solid state lighting idea.
from the article The most interesting application may be the development of energy-efficient, low-cost, solid-state lighting. By creating a matrix of layers of varying sizes of nanodots embedded in a transparent medium such as aluminum oxide, Narayan can create a chip that glows with white light. Solid-state lighting would use about one-fifth the energy of standard fluorescent lighting and last for approximately 50 years.
Looks like my LCD monitor is about to become obsolete: there's no reason why these solid state can't be made the size of a pixel and tied to active matrix display electronics. Maybe the us military might be able to replace their $30,000+ individual soldier helmet monocles which are currently using 5000 hour MTBF organic led technology with durable, bright and efficient nano-leds and save taxpayer money while we're at it.
Please read the previous sentence for as many thousand times as needed for you to fully understand it.
of the Triangle Tech Journal article, since it's slashdotted at this instant.
Could this technique be what brings us one step closer to the material needed for developing the space elevator?
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
> 'chip-light using' one-fifth the energy of standard fluorescent lighting and last for approximately 50 years
Well that puts LCD back in the race against the upcoming OLED technology. If they can further reduce bad pixels and failure it may be more environmentally friendly than OLED which may have a shorter life span. The energy used by the backlight was LCDs culprit, with that solved LCD may become our long lasting friend.
OLED pushers better speed their cheap display printing tech to market before we expect displays to last 40 years.
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Dennis SCP
of course when your fake hand is strong enough to crush steel it gets classified as a weapon and you have to check it with your luggage...
...and then i got covered in grey-goo from satan...
which was nice!
Okay, so this has been really bugging me, ever since I first read it. In "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson, he talks about making tiny little diamonds that are lighter than air. They have vaccuum inside, and they're diamond, so they're strong enough to handle the pressure. So, they end up being diamonds that float in our atmosphere.
Is that possible, or is there something fundamentally flawed about it?
Education is the silver bullet.
"Mega-Damage" is already trademarked.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Too lazy to create a sig...
I had known this for months.
If you really want to be up to date in nano, check out news.nanoapex.com.
Every day there's a new discovery.
well the idea does seem interesting but the article does lack any details like did they actually try depositing other materials and what was the success rate. Also they are able to deposit Ni uniformly, but have they actually tried depositing it in different size layers to see if their method works. there are a bunch of ideas in the nanoworld which work specifically for a set of materials, so i wonder if this would be as general as claimed, and laser ablation has been around for quite a while now. well if anyone elas has any details it will be cool to know.
Sounds extremely over-optimistic to me.
These "All this will be true in five years," stories are so 1950... It used to look good in Popular Mechanics covers, but the public has got so used to vaporware in press releases that we expect some more solid evidence before getting excited about what's supposed to become true in a five years future.
If you post another story submitted by roland, i will stop reading this site.. I promise.
Hey slashdot: if someone puts the word nano in front of a sentence it does not mean the material is instantly going to build your nerdy wet dream of a space elevator, coming to take you away from your sad little cubicle/hand jobs.
More nano hype. It's published in a crappy journal, and he's got nanoparticles to assemble into a lattice, which they've been doing now for, ooh >5 years? Suitably stabilized Nanoparticles do this anyway, it's called CLOSE PACKING and should be familiar to anyone with a modicum of HS chem.
I have to say, it's a nice trick with the laser ablation though - it generalises exisitng nanoparticle positioning/assembly to a few new materials.
Revolutionary it ain't.
See
http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/~pagrp/
and
http://www.ncsu.edu/chemistry/dlf.html
amongst many many others for better science.
'Nonymous nanotechnologist.
I'd like to place my order for a Number 3 hull, please...
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
... transparent aluminum? :-P
Can someone explain to me how the space elevator is going to make up for changes in rotational momemntum as the elevator moves up and down? Are they going to have rockets on it to counter-act coreolis forces?
Play Command HQ online
In principle you could make a more-or-less general purpose machine that could replicate itself and other machines, given enough raw material. If the software driving it was open source, in principle anybody could become their own manufacturing plant. Have the machine produce other machines that mine raw materials, and you could set it loose in a mineral-rich area and it would replicate enough of itself to start producing whatever you want.
Want to go to Mars? Send a small manufacturing/mining combination machine with instructions to replicate itself and then build a habitable environment. Then we don't need to take the environment with us - we get a lower mission payload.
Hell, with technology that can assemble stuff atom by atom you could produce food.
The implications for society of having what amounts to Star Trek's replicators are massive. You could quite literally eliminate poverty and hunger.
"Why is it after 3 years I'm still doing the same stinking job, same stinking money eh? "
Okay, since you rely on external forces to guide your life:
Watch Star Trek Nemesis, pay real careful attention to what Data says about B-4. The key word is 'ambition'.
"Derp de derp."
Is Roland actually submitting this stuff to Slashdot? Or are the illustrious Slashdot editors merely mining Roland's excellent site for material to fill whatever story quotas they have?
Either way, I make a point of checking Roland's site regularly because he manages to have a posting every day that's usually interesting.
and that the pricks who edit this site enjoy it.
What would I be best off majoring in if I wanted to get involved in nanotechnology? Material engineering?
"It's amazing how unimportant work is once you have a kid."
What some people will do for entertainment is beyond the imagination...
True story :
I knew a guy who once said "I owe it to the world to have kids, because my genes are superior".
Guess what happened ? This arrogant ass had a child who is profoundly autistic.
Wonder if he still thinks his genes are so superior ? Funny, he never seemed that superior to me, even before he had the kid.
It's a joke!
Read the post again.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"For a while Ferarri and perhaps a couple other teams used a molybdenum (maybe not molybdenum) composite"
You are thinking of beryllium. It has been used in engines, and
various other parts of some cars, but is very expensive and also
nasty ( toxic ) to work with. None of this stuff makes for better racing -
all it does is raise the price of being competitive.
I laugh that you suggest my life changing experiences come from a TV show!
I laugh that you're in denial!
"Derp de derp."
Any reasonably techy person reading Tolkien will realize mithril is nothing but aluminum. It occurs in nature EXTREMELY rarely, but has shown up in the Alps, which are the Misty Mountains. He describes it as being similar in color to silver and can be alloyed with other metals to make amazingly light sturdy armor. Nowhere (to my knowledge) does Tolkien say mithril was ever used in swords. The great weapons of the dwarves and the Eldar were always steel whenever materials were mentioned.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon