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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."
last I heard, MIT was working on something like this. Just a rumor - can anyone verify?
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We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
And very expensive brakes.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Actually, in "The Hobbit", Mithril was described as silver with the strength of triple steel. So it would have to be silver, then? Still expensive...
Hmmm, isn't this just what we need to make space elevators possible?
Ceramic brakes have been used for a pretty long time on racecars. IIRC at least since the early 90'ies. During night races (e.g. Le Mans 24 h) you can see how the brake discs glow red when they brake into the corners.
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.
I see by your high UID number that you've probably only been here a week or two. Roland Piquepaille has been blog-spamming us for a long time now, though it seems that lately he's been getting an article every single day. I'd like to know how much slashdot editors are taking in bribes from this guy. I submit great articles and they get rejected for this. If they'd at least trim out all his spammed radio.weblog.com links I would tolerate him. Now I only read the articles by him in order to comment on what an asshole he is...
The OP means that this guy gets a number of stories posted every week, all containing links to (amongst other things) his blog.
That's rubbing a fair few people here up the wrong way, and personally I'm not surprised. Slashdot gets so many submissions from so many people, that to have so many accepted by the same person seems a little odd, especially given he always promotes his own site in them. Starts to feel like advertising...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
But then, what do I know, I'm an anonymous dork spouting off about elves on Slashdot.
Trust me, it's been going on for way more than the last week. Somehow Piquepaille has managed to average 1 story every 2-3 days for the past 6 months or more. I don't know how he does it. Kickbacks to the /. editors maybe?
As the cargo goes up, the elevator will lag slightly behind the earth's rotation because of coriolis forces. This will create a tension in the cable, pulling on the elevator, and causing it to speed back up. This will slow down the earth's rotation by an extremely small amount. The same kind of thing happens when things go back down.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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.
What would I be best off majoring in if I wanted to get involved in nanotechnology? Material engineering?