Metals are much more efficient at conducting electricity. To make tiny semiconductor devices that conduct efficiently is not easy.

By taking advantage of the nanotubes’ small size and a special type of electric field, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered a way to produce a field effect in a metallic single-wall carbon nanotube that conducts electricity 40 times more efficiently than copper. Carbon nanotubes are rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms that can be smaller than a single nanometer which has a is the span of 10 hydrogen atoms.

The metal field effect transistor potentially can consume less energy, operate at higher frequencies and dissipate heat more readily than traditional semiconducting field effect transistors. The research team projected that the metal transistor could be in use in five to ten years’ time. Their research paper was published in Applied Physics Letters (April 19, 2004). ( MIT Technology Review, 24 May 2004)

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Carnegie Mellow University in Pittsburgh have created nanoscopic hairs out of polymer with the sticking power similar to those on a gecko’s feet.

Another research team at the UK’s Manchester University went a step further by producing a material made of millions of such artificial hairs.

Each synthetic hair is made from a material called kapton measuring 2.0 microns in height and 0.2 microns in diameter - the same as gecko’s hairs. The hair-covered tape is made using a mould created by a lithographic process, a special printing method. A one centimetre square piece of tape one holds around 100 million of these artificial hairs and could support a weight of one kilogram.

According to the researchers, this discovery holds promise for many applications, from vehicle tyres that run on roads better in all weather conditions to supergrip shoes for athletes. The next challenge is find a way to make the nanoscopic hairs durable enough to be reapplied many times. (New Scientist, May and June 2003)

A nanoscale computer—programmed to find cancer cells and release DNA molecules to eradicate them—has been shown to work in test tubes. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel hope they will eventually get these miniscule computers to work in the human body.

The researchers used the simple molecular computer which they developed three years ago by adding “input” and “output” modules composed of DNA. The computer is then programmed with medical knowledge to determine whether the signal it was sensing indicates disease output modules. If cancer is diagnosed, the output unit of the computer will activate a controlled release of a single-stranded DNA molecule which will cause the cancer cell’s activities to self-destruct.

In one series of test-tube experiments, the computer successfully identified RNA molecules indicating the presence of prostate cancer and at another time the signs of one form of lung cancer.

Their research gives hope to future development of a ‘smart’ drug molecule which holds the drug in an inactive state and is encoded for release only when the disease exists in the human body. (Source: NanoBiotech News, May 12, 2004)

The researchers built the nanorods by depositing sequentially segments of gold and conducting polymer into the pores of an aluminium template. After the gold-polymer rods were synthesized, the rods were left parallel to one another, gold end to gold end and polymer end to polymer end. The polymer ends created strong interactions building stress which resulted in curves being formed.

Inspired by the molecular assembly techniques used in living cells, the research team at Northwestern has successfully created a new class of nanometer-scale building blocks that can self assemble into ultra-tiny spheres, tubes and curved sheets. (Science, Jan 16)

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