Nanotechnology

Creating glasses that don’t fog or freeze up could not only bring a world of comfort to millions of people, but it could also have a myriad of applications in cameras, microscopes, mirrors and refrigerated displays – to name just a few. While there have been many advancements in this field, so far, the main problem [...]

The veined wing of the clanger cicada kills bacteria is able to destroy bacteria by its structure alone – one of the first structures ever found that can do this. The clanger cicada is an insects that looks like something between a fly and a locust; its wings are covered with a vast hexagonal array [...]

Finding ways to diagnose cancer earlier could potentially save millions of lives, improving the chances of survival for many patients. This is why researchers have developed nanoparticles which amplify tumor signals, making them much easier to detect. Nanotech to the rescue The new technology was developed by researchers from MIT and it makes biomarker detection [...]

In a breakthrough for nanotechnology, researchers at the Harvard’s Wyss Institute have found the right mix of chemistry and molecular programming to trick DNA strands to fit together perfectly, just like Lego bricks, and thus form various objects and shapes, all based on the scientists’ software design. Thus, a myriad of objects made out of [...]

We’ve all been hearing about the miracles that carbon nanostructures will provide us in the near future for several years now. One of the first steps to making its application commercially viable is making it easy to use and manufacture. Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai and Southeast University have made identifying the [...]

Scientists at University of Texas Dallas have made artificial muscles capable of supporting 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power than natural muscle of the same size. Applications for this kind of technology are quite numerous, ranging from extremely strong and intelligent textiles to high-temperature applications since the fabric has [...]

Data storage has reached great heights in the past two decades. You can now fit in a typical PC hard-drive thousands of CDs and millions of floppy disks (who else remembers these?). However, magnetic hard drive developers have almost reached the physical limit to where they can cram up data. Researchers at University of Texas at [...]

Previously, scientists have managed to devise material that can convert light into electricity, and other materials that can convert heat into electricity. Now, a group of researchers  at University of Texas at Arlington have managed to create a hybrid material that can convert both forms of energy at the same time into electricity. This double spanned function [...]

Common to Central and South America, the Blue Morpho is an iconic butterfly, prized for its brilliant blue color and iridescence. Beyond its beauty, however, scientists have discovered that its wings have a certain microscopic texture that could benefit a wide range of applications from self-cleaning instruments, to more efficient piping. For example, the researchers [...]

New tests conducted by MIT researchers working at the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies showed nanomaterials could lead to better armor against pretty much everything, from all sort of bullets to micrometeorites. Go small to go big In the good old days, if you wanted a good armor, you had to bulk up. First it was [...]