This development from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a major breakthrough toward commercializing graphene. The link goes to a news release on this development, but it also serves as a very nice quick-hit primer on graphene as a material.

The release:

Graphene Films Clear Major Fabrication Hurdle

APRIL 08, 2010

Lynn Yarris

Graphene, the two-dimensional crystalline form of carbon, is a potential superstar for the electronics industry. With freakishly mobile electrons that can blaze through the material at nearly the speed of light – 100 times faster than electrons can move through silicon – graphene could be used to make superfast transistors or computer memory chips. Graphene’s unique “chicken wire” atomic structure exhibits incredible flexibility and mechanical strength, as well as unusual optical properties that could open a number of promising doors in both the electronics and the photonics industries. However, among the hurdles preventing graphite from joining the pantheon of star high-tech materials, perhaps none looms larger than just learning to make the stuff in high quality and usable quantities.

“Before we can fully utilize the superior electronic properties of graphene in devices, we must first develop a method of forming uniform single-layer graphene films on nonconducting substrates on a large scale,” says Yuegang Zhang, a materials scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Current fabrication methods based on mechanical cleavage or ultrahigh vacuum annealing, he says, are ill-suited for commercial-scale production. Graphene films made via solution-based deposition and chemical reduction have suffered from poor or uneven quality.

Zhang and colleagues at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) center for nanoscience, have taken a significant step at clearing this major hurdle. They have successfully used direct chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to synthesize single-layer films of graphene on a dielectric substrate. Zhang and his colleagues made their graphene films by catalytically decomposing hydrocarbon precursors over thin films of copper that had been pre-deposited on the dielectric substrate. The copper films subsequently dewetted (separated into puddles or droplets) and were evaporated. The final product was a single-layer graphene film on a bare dielectric.

“This is exciting news for electronic applications because chemical vapor deposition is a technique already widely used in the semiconductor industry,” Zhang says.

“Also, we can learn more about the growth of graphene on metal catalyst surfaces by observing the evolution of the films after the evaporation of the copper. This should lay an important foundation for further control of the process and enable us to tailor the properties of these films or produce desired morphologies, such as graphene nanoribbons.”

Zhang and his colleagues have reported their findings in the journal Nano Letters in a paper titled, “Direct Chemical Vapor Deposition of Graphene on Dielectric Surfaces.” Other co-authors of this paper were Ariel Ismach, Clara Druzgalski, Samuel Penwell, Maxwell Zheng, Ali Javey and Jeffrey Bokor, all with Berkeley Lab.

In their study, Zhang and his colleagues used electron-beam evaporation to deposit copper films ranging in thickness from 100 to 450 nanometers. Copper was chosen because as a low carbon solubility metal catalyst it was expected to allow better control over the number of graphene layers produced. Several different dielectric substrates were evaluated including single-crystal quartz, sapphire, fused silica and silicon oxide wafers. CVD of the graphene was carried out at 1,000 degrees Celsius in durations that ranged from 15 minutes up to seven hours.

“This was done to allow us to study the effect of film thickness, substrate type and CVD growth time on the graphene formation,” Zhang says.

A combination of scanning Raman mapping and spectroscopy, plus scanning electron and atomic force microscopy confirmed the presence of continuous single-layer graphene films coating metal-free areas of dielectric substrate measuring tens of square micrometers.

“Further improvement on the control of the dewetting and evaporation process could lead  to the direct deposition of patterned graphene for large-scale electronic device fabrication, Zhang says. “This method could also be generalized and used to deposit other two-dimensional materials, such as boron-nitride.”

Even the appearance of wrinkles in the graphene films that followed along the lines of the dewetting shape of the copper could prove to be beneficial in the long-run. Although previous studies have indicated that wrinkles in a graphene film have a negative impact on electronic properties by introducing strains that reduce electron mobility, Zhang believes the wrinkles can be turned to an advantage.

“If we can learn to control the formation of wrinkles in our films, we should be able to modulate the resulting strain and thereby tailor electronic properties,” he says.

“Further study of the wrinkle formation could also give us important new clues for the formation of graphene nanoribbons.”

This work was primarily supported by the DOE Office of Science.

The Molecular Foundry is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs), premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale.  Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.  The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov.

Additional Information

A copy of the Nano Letters paper “Direct Chemical Vapor Deposition of Graphene on Dielectric Surfaces” can be viewed here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl9037714

For more about Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry visit http://foundry.lbl.gov/

For more about the DOE NSRCs visit http://nano.energy.gov

(a) Optical image of a CVD graphene film on a copper layer showing the finger morphology of the metal; (b) Raman 2D band map of the graphene film between the copper fingers over the area marked by the red square on left. (image from Yuegang Zhang)

To make a graphene thin film, Berkeley researchers (a) evaporated a thin layer of copper on a dielectric surface; (b) then used CVD to lay down a graphene film over the copper. (c) The copper dewets and evaporates leaving (d) the graphene film directly on the dielectric substrate.

Sometimes it’s just about making an existing process a little better. Of course it’s a lot more fun to blog about game-changers and the medical breakthroughs.

The release:

Scientists develop environmentally friendly way to produce propylene oxide using silver nanoclusters

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have identified a new class of silver-based catalysts for the production of the industrially useful chemical propylene oxide that is both environmentally friendly and less expensive.

“The production of propylene oxide has a significant amount of by-products that are harmful to the environment, including chlorinated or peroxycarboxylic waste,” said chemist Stefan Vajda of Argonne’s Materials Science Division and Center for Nanoscale Materials. “We have identified nanoclusters of silver as a catalyst that produce this chemical with few by-products at low temperatures.”

Propylene oxide is commonly used in the creation of plastics and propylene glycols for paints, household detergents and automotive brake fluids.

The study is a result of a highly collaborative team that involved five Argonne Divisions and collaborators from the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin and from the University of Illinois in Chicago, including a collaboration between the experimental effort led by Stefan Vajda and the theoretical analysis led by materials chemist Larry Curtiss and nanoscientist Jeff Greeley.

Large silver particles have been used to produce propylene oxide from propylene, but have suffered from a low selectivity or low conversion to propylene oxide, creating a large amount of carbon dioxide. Vajda discovered that nanoscale clusters of silver, consisting of both three atoms as well as larger clusters of 3.5 nanometers in size, are highly active and selective catalysts for the production of propylene oxide.

Curtiss and Greeley then modeled the underlying mechanism behind why these ultrasmall nanoparticles of silver were so effective in creating propylene oxide. They discovered that the open shell electronic structure of the silver catalysts was the impetus behind the nanoclusters selectivity.

“Propylene oxide is a building block in the creation of several other industrially relevant chemicals, but the current methods of creating it are not efficient,” Curtiss said.

“This is basically a holy grail reaction,” remarked Greeley. “The work opens a new chapter in the field of silver as a catalyst for propene epoxidation,” added Curtiss.

###

Funding for this project was from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. A paper on this work will be published in the April 9 issue of the journal Science.

The Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs), premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale, supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit http://nano.energy.gov.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Photos are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/4502854661/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/4503484446/

There may be some economic pollyannas starting to make appearances, but don’t count Fed chief Ben Bernanke among them. His exact quote the current state of things? “Far from being out of the woods.” Those aren’t the words of someone who’s feeling real good about the economy right now.

From the second link:

Bernanke said he expects the Fed’s easy money policies and a gathering recovery “will be sufficient to slowly reduce the unemployment rate over the coming year” from its current level of 9.7%. But he admitted that the jobless rate remains a major concern.

“The economy has stabilized and is growing again, although we can hardly be satisfied when 1 out of every 10 U.S. workers is unemployed and family finances remain under great stress,” Bernanke said.

The Fed chief also noted that bank lending continues to be weak and inflation expectations stable. Those observations should allow the central bank to continue to hold short-term interest rates near zero percent for what the Fed has called an “extended period” while keeping prices stable.

The CIO.com daily newsletter had a lot of cyberwar coverage today, and there’s plenty to think about when contemplating the future of national security.

Here’s highlights from three articles.

First up, is the U.S. the most at-risk nation in the world vis-a-vis cyber attack? Facts on the ground ought to give a little pause.

From the link:

Although the United States likely has the best cyberwar capabilities in the world, “that offensive prowess cannot make up for the weaknesses in our defensive position,” one-time presidential advisor Richard Clarke argues in his forthcoming book Cyber War.

Clarke — who served as special advisor to the president for cybersecurity in 2001 and now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School for Government and works at Good Harbor Consulting — fears that any outbreak of cyber warfare would spill over into more violent conflict.

“Far from being an alternative to conventional war, cyber war may actually increase the likelihood of the more traditional combat with explosives, bullets and missiles,” Clarke writes in his book, which is due out April 20.

Next up, when the cyber attack happens here, what’s the chain-of-command and other protocols? Not as easy to answer as I’d like because of the widespread nature of cyber attack and the likely integral involvement of private enterprise. It’s akin to bombing a factory without the obvious military-based response.

From the link:

Because possible return fire could come from traditional military, intelligence, diplomatic or economic agencies — and perhaps even from private business — the United States needs a set of policies and procedures for cyberwarfare that are still in the making, experts say.

The president’s top cyber adviser, Howard Schmidt, has said in interviews that the responsibility for cybersecurity is a shared responsibility between public and private sectors. And within the government it will be shared among government agencies but not in a well-defined way. “Who’s in charge?” asks Jamie Sanbower, the director of security for Force 3, an integrator that works with the federal government. “That’s the number-one challenge we’re facing right now.”

And finally more analysis of the Google/China issue, and does it signal the beginning of a public cyberwarefare age? If nothing else, with a very concrete example to turn to, expect a lot more mainstream coverage of cyberwar issues

From the final link:

Many see the attacks as evidence that the U.S. is already in the midst of an undeclared cyberwar, with attacks against government targets estimated to have more than doubled in the past two years. Just last week, a top FBI official called cyberattacks an “existential threat” to the U.S. On Friday, two U.S. senators now pushing cybersecurity legislation in Congress reiterated those sentiments.

And Mike McConnell the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and director of national intelligence during the Bush administration, recently said in a Washington Post (WPO) column that the U.S is not only fighting such a war, it’s also losing the battle.

… are a great live act. If you don’t know anything about King Khan, this album — Supreme Genius of King Khan — is a great place to start. I featured King Khan and the Shrines in a “video fun” post early last year. The King Khan and BBQ show is a lot of fun live, but he’s at his best with the Shrines.

I dissed the entire bailout move and have now been proven beyond wrong. Who knows how we got to this point, but the return-on-investment has been dramatic.

From the link:

U.S. taxpayers earned an annualized 8.5 percent return from the government’s bailout of 49 financial firms, underscoring efforts by the industry to speed up repayments and warrant repurchases, according to a report by SNL Financial.

Firms such as Citigroup, (C) which still has common shares held by the U.S. Treasury Department, and rivals that have made partial redemptions were excluded from the analysis, SNL Financial said in a statement on Monday.

Proceeds from Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) warrant repurchases and auctions led to a surge in returns through March 30, SNL said. So far, since the start of the program in late 2008, 64 institutions have fully repaid government aid.

Here’s a little context:

Neatorama explains:

In the 1920s and 1930s, censorship of movies was often governed by local boards, and achieved by snipping the scenes from the film reels.  It won’t surprise anyone that those clipped film segments were sometimes saved.  Here a number of them have been assembled into a montage, which was submitted to the 2007 72 Hour Film Festival in Frederick, Maryland.

What I find most interesting about this montage is — as in any censorship — how much what was deemed too racy for the general public reveals about the censor making those decisions.

(Hat tip: the Daily Dish)

Something of a match made in heaven. Get psychedelic and start grooving on a motherboard’s layout.

Here’s some music to help the journey.

… and a bit more corporate (at least for now) after this appeals court ruling.

From the link:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a sharp blow to the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to set the rules of the road for the Internet, ruling that the agency lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

The decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, specifically concerned the efforts of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, to slow down customers’ access to a service called BitTorrent, which is used to exchange large video files, most often pirated copies of movies.

This post is the fourth in an ongoing series highlighting the artists behind the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project. (Hit this link for all posts related to the project.)

Brad Ford Smith is a Dallas-based artist and a third generation Texan. His abstract organic forms focus on how the eye and mind translate information, and how that visual experience can be altered by the passing of time. Brad’s works on paper and wall sculptures have been exhibited throughout Dallas and Chicago, where he resided shortly after earning his BFA in painting and printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute.

In addition to making art, Brad is a professional member of the American Institute of Conservation. He specializes in the restoration of wooden artifacts.

How did you get involved with the RAPID Artists project?

Heather Gorham (ed, note: also a RAPID Artists project participant) introduced me to the folks at SculptCAD about eight years ago. I instantly saw how this 3D modeling program could open up a new world of fabrication options. It has been on my list of must do ever since.

Is this your first experience with 3D/digital sculpting technology and tools?

Other than that first introduction eight years ago, I have kept tabs on the subject, but this is the first time for me to use/learn the program.

How have these technologies changed the way you approach your process?

The challenge is learning how to use the tools, and then using those tools to create in an artistic manner. With each new tool there is the temptation to get carried away with all the new things that that tool offers. For example, the spin tool will take any wiggly profile and spin it on an axis to create a solid form. I played with this tool for an hour or so, creating some really wonderful shapes, but in the end, those shapes were only about using the tool and not about artistic expression. Managing the WOW factor has been tricky.

Are these digital tools a net positive, a net negative or entirely neutral in your artistic process?

I really love learning new processes. They always offer new ways to see and manipulate the world. The only negative is that this sculpture represents the FIRST work of art that I have made using this process, therefore it represents a large learning curve. Hopefully I will have more opportunities to use this technology in the future.

What are your thoughts on the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project?

When Nancy (Hairston, SculptCAD founder) asked me to be part of this project, and I saw the list of artists involved, I was very excited and honored. Even though the artists in the SCRA project come from a wide range of artistic directions and disciplines, we are all connected by using/learning this technology. That has given us a common thread to build our conversations upon, which has lead to some great insight on the creative process.

Looking beyond the project, what do you have coming up in the near future art-wise? Do you have any shows or projects planned?

As soon as I get my 3D computer sculpture sent off to the printer, I am off to Italy to spend some quality time looking at sculptures made the old fashion way. After that I will be creating a book of my drawings using the iPhoto book program, and then looking for a venue to install a few wall sculptures in.

How can people interested in your work get in touch with you?

You can see more of my artwork as well as links to my blog and flicker site at www.BradFordSmith.us

Do you have any final thoughts on the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project?

After seeing the first round of sculptures come back from the printers last week, I am really excited about how all the artwork will look when shown together. I am also very interested in the reactions of the people who will see this group exhibit at the RAPID Prototype and 3D Imaging Conference this May.

News from KurzweilAI.net:

‘The Singularity is Near’ film debuts at Sonoma Film Festival

KurzweilAI.net, Apr. 5, 2010 “The Singularity Is Near: a True Story About the Future” makes its festival debut at the 13th Annual Sonoma Film Festival (April 15-18, 2010) with a special screening on Friday, April 16, 2010. The feature-length film, directed by Anthony Waller and produced by Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, executive producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem MotionInfoCulture), explores the controversial ideas of Ray Kurzweil, based on his New York Times best-selling book by the same title. Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with leading experts, such as former White House counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clark; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, and Robert A. Freitas, Jr.; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and music luminary Quincy Jones. Kurzweil illustrates possible scenarios of his imagined future with narrative scenes starring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. For more information: Sonoma Film Festival and The Singularity is Near – The Movie.

New research on how carbon nanotubes may be used in medical applications.

The release:

[PRESS RELEASE, 5 April 2010] A team of Swedish and American scientists has shown for the first time that carbon nanotubes can be broken down by an enzyme – myeloperoxidase (MPO) – found in white blood cells. Their discoveries are presented in Nature Nanotechnology and contradict what was previously believed, that carbon nanotubes are not broken down in the body or in nature. The scientists hope that this new understanding of how MPO converts carbon nanotubes into water and carbon dioxide can be of significance to medicine.

“Previous studies have shown that carbon nanotubes could be used for introducing drugs or other substances into human cells,” says Bengt Fadeel, associate professor at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. “The problem has been not knowing how to control the breakdown of the nanotubes, which can caused unwanted toxicity and tissue damage. Our study now shows how they can be broken down biologically into harmless components.”

Carbon nanotubes are a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms rolled into a tube with a diameter of only a couple of nanometres (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a metre) and a length that can range from tens of nanometres up to several micrometers. Carbon nanotubes are lighter and stronger than steel, and have exceptional heat-conductive and electrical properties. They are manufactured on an industrial scale, mainly for engineering purposes but also for some consumer products.

Carbon nanotubes were once considered biopersistent in that they did not break down in body tissue or in nature. In recent years, research has shown that laboratory animals exposed to carbon nanotubes via inhalation or through injection into the abdominal cavity develop severe inflammation. This and the tissue changes (fibrosis) that exposure causes lead to impaired lung function and perhaps even to cancer. For example, a year or two ago, alarming reports by other scientists suggested that carbon nanotubes are very similar to asbestos fibres, which are themselves biopersistent and which can cause lung cancer (mesothelioma) in humans a considerable time after exposure.

This current study thus represents a breakthrough in nanotechnology and nanotoxicology, since it clearly shows that endogenous MPO can break down carbon nanotubes. This enzyme is expressed in certain types of white blood cell (neutrophils), which use it to neutralise harmful bacteria. Now, however, the researchers have found that the enzyme also works on carbon nanotubes, breaking them down into water and carbon dioxide. The researchers also showed that carbon nanotubes that have been broken down by MPO no longer give rise to inflammation in mice.

“This means that there might be a way to render carbon nanotubes harmless, for example in the event of an accident at a production plant,” says Dr Fadeel. “But the findings are also relevant to the future use of carbon nanotubes for medical purposes.”

The study was led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and was financed in part through grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission. The work was conducted as part of the NANOMMUNE project, which is coordinated by associate professor Bengt Fadeel of the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and which comprises a total of thirteen research groups in Europe and the USA.

… isn’t “conservative” enough for the GOP, the term has lost all meaning.

I guest-blogged at FrumForum (then New Majority) at the launch of the site and quickly figured out as a fiercely independent little “l” libertarian, I had essentially nothing to offer the conversation the GOP was getting into. Now it seems the same is happening to Frum himself. The American political term “conservative” has been stretched beyond belief to the point it either doesn’t mean what most people on the right think it does, or more likely it just doesn’t have any true meaning to speak of anymore.

The politics of Karl Rove are not conservative. The presidency of Bush 43 was not conservative in almost every aspect, and the rambling of Sarah Palin are absolutely not conservative. And these self-described “conservatives” on the right are further and further marginalizing themselves and the party. The GOP should see some gains this electoral cycle, and in a way that might be the worst possible thing for the long-term viability of the Republican brand. A tiny ray of political hope might keep the party from the dramatic re-imagining that needs to happen sooner, rather than later.

I’ve loved Cowboy Bebop for years. Watched the series here when Adult Swim began running it on Cartoon Network, and I eagerly caught the movie in the theater when it was released. If you’ve never seen it, or just don’t like anime, you should take the time to check out Bebop. It’s a just awesome space opera with wild west American sensibilities filtered through a Japanese perspective and projected onto a late twenty-first century world of space travel and commerce within the solar system.

I caught Cowboy Bebop – The Movie again last night on DVD and remembered all over again just how great that entire world is. As a bonus, given the nanotech-centricity of this blog a lot of the time, biological nanotechnology plays a major part in the plot of the movie. Do check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

And don’t forget about the series — here’s a link to a box set of Cowboy Bebop Remix Complete Collection at Amazon for $35.49 (at the time of this post) that includes all 26 episodes on six discs, an absolute steal.

This is something of a setback in an exciting area of solar panel improvement.

The release:

NIST scientists address ‘wrinkles’ in transparent film development

		IMAGE: This atomic-force microscopy image shows wrinkling in a single-wall carbon nanotube membrane; the inset shows an optical reflection micrograph of the membrane without any strain. The random arrangement of the… Click here for more information.

A closer look at a promising nanotube coating that might one day improve solar cells has turned up a few unexpected wrinkles, according to new research* conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and North Dakota State University (NDSU)—research that also may help scientists iron out a solution.

The scientists have found that coatings made of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are not quite as deformable as hoped, implying that they are not an easy answer to problems that other materials present. Though films made of nanotubes possess many desirable properties, the team’s findings reveal some issues that might need to be addressed before the full potential of these coatings is realized.

“The irony of these nanotube coatings is that they can change when they bend,” says Erik Hobbie, now the director of the Materials and Nanotechnology program at NDSU. “Under modest strains, these films can develop irreversible changes in nanotube arrangement that reduce their conductivity. Our work is the first to suggest this, and it opens up new approaches to engineering the films in ways that minimize these effects.”

High on the wish list of the solar power industry is a cheap, flexible, transparent coating that can conduct electricity. If this combination of properties can somehow be realized in a single material, solar cells might become far less expensive, and manufacturers might be able to put them in unexpected places—such as articles of clothing. Transparent conductive coatings can be made of indium-tin oxide, but their rigidity and high cost make them less practical for widespread use.

Carbon nanotubes are one possible solution. Nanotubes, which resemble microscopic rolls of chicken wire, are inexpensive, easy to produce, and can be formed en masse into transparent conductive coatings whose weblike inner structure makes them not only strong but deformable, like paper or fabric. However, the team’s research found that some kinds of stretching cause microscopic ‘wrinkles’ in the coating that disrupt the random arrangement of the nanotubes, which is what makes the coating conduct electricity.

“You want the nanotubes to stay randomly arranged,” Hobbie says. “But when a nanotube coating wrinkles, it can lose the connected network that gives it conductivity. Instead, the nanotubes bundle irreversibly into ropelike formations.”

Hobbie says the study suggests a few ways to address the problem, however. The films might be kept thin enough so the wrinkling might be avoided in the first place, or designers could engineer a second interpenetrating polymer network that would support the nanotube network, to keep it from changing too much in response to stress. “These approaches might allow us to make coatings of nanotubes that could withstand large strains while retaining the traits we want,” Hobbie says.

###

* E. K. Hobbie, D. O. Simien, J. A. Fagan, J. Y. Huh, J. Y.Chung, S. D. Hudson, J. Obrzut, J. F. Douglas, and C. M. Stafford. Wrinkling and Strain Softening in Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Membranes. Physical Review Letters, March 26, 2010, 104, 125505.

… research has determined a bacterial byproduct that was found in the soil of Easter Island provides longevity in mice, and two separate studies showed reversal of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Pretty amazing discovery.

From the link:

A study published yesterday in the Journal of Biological Chemistry confirmed that mice with Altzheimers showed marked improvement in memory and cognition after being fed a rapamycin-enhanced diet. This study was released simultaneously with another, in PLoS One, which confirmed the results of the first in a different group of mice.

Also from the link:

Rapamycin has already been approved by the FDA to treat organ rejection in transplant patients. That means doctors could start prescribing it for the “off label” use of treating Alzheimers tomorrow. The researchers are still not sure if the drug would reverse the effects of Alzheimers, or simply block them. But for millions of people suffering the effects of Alzheimers, that question may be moot.

Seems like a lot of news in solar cost reduction of late. In a related note, I’ve added a new link group to the sidebar — “Interesting blog topics” — and each link goes to a search for all my posts in that category. If you’re interested in solar news, that link is a great way to find everything I’ve covered in one spot.

From the link, the release:

PLASTIC ELECTRONICS COULD SLASH THE COST OF SOLAR PANELS

Posted Mar 30, 2010 By Chris Emery

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.

By overcoming technical hurdles to producing plastics that are translucent, malleable and able to conduct electricity, the researchers have opened the door to broader use of the materials in a wide range of electrical devices.

With mounting concerns about global warming and energy demand, plastics could represent a low-cost alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO), an expensive conducting material currently used in solar panels, according to the researchers.

“Conductive polymers [plastics] have been around for a long time, but processing them to make something useful degraded their ability to conduct electricity,” said Yueh-Lin Loo, an associate professor of chemical engineering, who led the Princeton team. “We have figured out how to avoid this trade-off. We can shape the plastics into a useful form while maintaining high conductivity.”

A multi-institutional team reported on its new technique in a paper published online March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The area of research, known as “organic electronics” because plastics are carbon-based like living creatures, holds promise for producing new types of electronic devices and new ways of manufacturing existing technologies, but has been hampered by the mysterious loss of conductivity associated with moldable plastics.

“People didn’t understand what was happening,” said Loo, who co-wrote the paper. “We discovered that in making the polymers moldable, their structures are trapped in a rigid form, which prevented electrical current from traveling through them.”

Once they understood the underlying problem, Loo and her colleagues developed a way to relax the structure of the plastics by treating them with an acid after they were processed into the desired form.

Princeton researchers have developed a new way to manufacture electronic devices made of plastic, employing a process that allows the materials to be formed into useful shapes while maintaining their ability to conduct electricity. In the plastic transistor pictured here, the plastic is molded into interdigitated electrodes (orange) allowing current flow to and from the active channel (green). (Image: Loo Research Group)

Using the method, they were able to make a plastic transistor, a fundamental component of electronics that is used to amplify and switch electronic signals. They produced the electrodes of the transistor by printing the plastic onto a surface, a fast and cheap method similar to the way an ink-jet printer produces a pattern on a piece of paper.

Loo said the technique potentially could be scaled up for mass production presses akin to those used to print newspapers. “Being able to essentially paint on electronics is a big deal,” Loo said. “You could distribute the plastics in cartridges the way printer ink is sold, and you wouldn’t need exotic machines to print the patterns.”

By allowing plastic solar cells to be manufactured using low-cost printing techniques and by replacing ITO as the primary conducting material, the plastics the team developed hold potential for lowering the cost of solar panels.

Currently, the electricity generated by plastic solar cells is collected by a transparent metal conductor made of ITO. The conductor must be transparent so that sunlight can pass through it to the materials in solar cells that absorb the light energy.

A rare and pricey byproduct of mining, ITO had come under increasing demand for use in flat-screen televisions, mobile phones and other devices with display screens. “The cost of indium tin oxide is skyrocketing,” Loo said. “To bring down the costs of plastic solar cells, we need to find a replacement for ITO. Our conducting plastics allow sunlight to pass through them, making them a viable alternative.”

The researchers anticipate that the plastics also could replace expensive metals used in other electronic devices, such as flexible displays. In addition, the scientists are beginning to explore the use of the plastics in biomedical sensors that would display a certain color if a person had an infection. For instance, the plastics turn from yellow to green when exposed to nitric oxide, a chemical compound produced during ear infections in children.

If the devices could be produced at a low cost, they might be useful in developing countries that lack advanced medical facilities. “You wouldn’t need any fancy machines or lab equipment to diagnose an infection,” Loo said, “all you would need is your eyes to see the color change in the plastics.”

The co-authors of the paper were Joung Eun Yoo, who received her doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Texas-Austin in 2009 with Loo as her adviser; Kimberly Baldwin, a high school student who spent a summer in Loo’s lab; Jacob Tarver, a Princeton chemical engineering graduate student; Enrique Gomez of Pennsylvania State University; Kwang Seok Lee and Yangming Sun of the University of Texas-Austin; Andres Garcia and Thuc-Quyen Nguyen of the University of California-Santa Barbara; and Hong Meng of DuPont Central Research and Development.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

… here’s one idea.

From the link:

Or perhaps people shouldn’t bother composing a message at all. AnotherSETI scientist, astronomer Seth Shostak, has proposed that we just broadcast everything on the Google servers out to aliens.

“Instead of trying to think of what’s fundamental, just send them a lot of data and let them sort through and find the pattern,” Vakoch said.

Vakoch discussed some of the issues around interstellar message composition in a recent paper in the journal Acta Astronautica.

Doing some science on the once and future miracle material. I’m not holding my breath, but if graphene manages to reach fifty percent of its hype, it’s going to change the world. It’s that hyped, and it truly has that much promise.

From the link:

“We found that if a single graphene sheet is grown on a metal like ruthenium, the metal binds very strongly to the carbon atoms and disrupts the characteristic properties normally found in isolated graphene,” Sutter said. “But those properties re-emerge in subsequent layers grown on the substrate.”

In other words, the first graphene layer grown on ruthenium satiates the metal substrate, allowing the rest of the layers to reclaim their normal properties.

“As a result of this growth process, a two-layer stack acts like an isolated monolayer of graphene and a three-layer stack acts like an isolated bilayer,” Sutter said.

The findings of the group, which also includes Brookhaven researchers Mark Hybertsen, Jurek Sadowski, and Eli Sutter, lays groundwork for future graphene production for advanced technologies, and helps researchers understand how metals — for example in device contacts — change the properties of graphene.

Lithium-air batteries may be the short-term solution to lightweight and relatively efficient battery power. Major implications in terms of electric vehicles and handheld electronics.

From the link:

Yang Shao-Horn, an MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, says that many groups have been pursuing work on lithium-air batteries, a technology that has great potential for achieving great gains in energy density. But there has been a lack of understanding of what kinds of electrode materials could promote the electrochemical reactions that take place in these batteries.

Lithium-oxygen (also known as lithium-air) batteries are similar in principle to the lithium-ion batteries that now dominate the field of portable electronics and are a leading contender for electric vehicles. But because lithium-air batteries replace the heavy conventional compounds in such batteries with a carbon-based air electrode and flow of air, the batteries themselves can be much lighter. That’s why leading companies, including IBM and General Motors, have committed to major research initiatives on lithium-air technology.