63 nanotimes News in Brief

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, USA, have developed a technique that enables metallic nanocrystals to self-assemble into larger, complex materials for next-generation antennas and lenses. The metal nanocrystals are cube-shaped and, like bricks or Tetris blocks, spontaneously organize themselves into larger-scale structures with precise orientations relative to one another. 

Image: UC San Diego nanoengineers have developed a technique that enables silver nanocubes to self-assemble into larger-scale structures for use in new optical chemical and biological sensors, and optical circuitry. © UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

This research is in the new field of nanoplasmonics, where researchers are developing materials that can manipulate light using structures that are smaller than the wavelength of light itself. The nanocubes used in this study were less than 0.1 microns. To construct objects like antennas and lenses, Tao’s team is using chemically synthesized metal nanocrystals.

Bo Gao, Gaurav Arya, Andrea R. Tao: Self-orienting nanocubes for the assembly of plasmonic nanojunctions, In: Nature Nanotechnology AOP, June 10, 2012, DOI:10.1038/nnano.2012.83:

 _{http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.83}

University of Utah (US) physicists developed an inexpensive, highly accurate magnetic field sensor for scientific and possibly consumer uses based on a "spintronic" organic thin-film semiconductor that basically is "plastic paint." The new kind of magnetic-resonance magnetometer also resists heat and degradation, works at  room temperature and never needs to be calibrated. The magnetic-sensing thin film is an organic semiconductor polymer named MEH-PPV. Researcher Christoph Boehme says it really is nothing more than an orange-colored "electrically conducting, magnetic field-sensing plastic paint that is dirt cheap. We measure magnetic fields highly accurately with a drop of plastic paint, which costs just as little as drop of regular paint."