Purdue Nanotechnology News

Quantum computing breakthrough arises from unknown molecule

June 26, 2008 - The odd behavior of a molecule in an experimental silicon computer chip has led to a discovery that opens the door to quantum computing in semiconductors.

In a Nature Physics journal paper currently online, the researchers describe how they have created a new, hybrid molecule in which its quantum state can be intentionally manipulated - a required step in the building of quantum computers.

"Up to now large-scale quantum computing has been a dream," says Gerhard Klimeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and associate director for technology for the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

"This development may not bring us a quantum computer 10 years faster, but our dreams about these machines are now more realistic."

The workings of traditional computers haven't changed since they were room-sized behemoths 50 years ago; they still use bits of information, 1s and 0s, to store and process information. Quantum computers would harness the strange behaviors found in quantum physics to create computers that would carry information using quantum bits, or qubits. Computers would be able to process exponentially more information. [Read More]

Tiny refrigerator taking shape to cool future computers

June 19, 2008 - Researchers at Purdue University are developing a miniature refrigeration system small enough to fit inside laptops and personal computers, a cooling technology that would boost performance while shrinking the size of computers.

Unlike conventional cooling systems, which use a fan to circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips, miniature refrigeration would dramatically increase how much heat could be removed, said Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

The Purdue research focuses on learning how to design miniature components called compressors and evaporators, which are critical for refrigeration systems. The researchers developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression."

In related research, the engineers are among the first to precisely measure how a refrigerant boils and vaporizes inside tiny "microchannels" in an evaporator and determine how to vary this boiling rate for maximum chip cooling.

The research is led by Garimella and Eckhard Groll, a professor of mechanical engineering. [Read More]

Purdue Participating in Biotech Convention

June 10, 2008 - A delegation from Purdue's Discovery Park and the Purdue Research Park will join global leaders next week at the BIO 2008 International Convention, showcasing how they are working together at the state, national and international levels to help heal, fuel and feed the world.

Slated for June 17-20 at the San Diego Convention Center, the annual event, sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, is expected to draw 20,000 corporate executives, researchers, government officials and venture capitalists for three days of networking and learning.

Purdue Research Park and Discovery Park are among the event's 2,200 exhibitors, showcasing the latest in biotechnology and life science products and services. A new feature, the Emerging Technologies Zone, will provide a venue for first-time exhibitors, including early-stage and startup companies, to get their ideas and products in front of the industry's top decision makers.

Imaging yields insights into 'nanomedicine' for cancer treatment

May 2, 2008 - Researchers at Purdue University have discovered a possible new pathway for anti-tumor drugs to kill cancer cells and proposed how to improve the design of tiny drug-delivery particles for use in "nanomedicine."

The synthetic "polymer micelles" are drug-delivery spheres 60-100 nanometers in diameter, or roughly 100 times smaller than a red blood cell. The spheres harbor drugs in their inner core and contain an outer shell made of a material called polyethylene glycol.

Purdue researchers showed for the first time how this shell of polyethylene glycol latches onto the membranes of cancer cells, allowing fluorescent probes mimicking cancer drugs to enter the cancer cells, said Ji-Xin Cheng, an assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry.

"This is an interesting new step in developing nanomedicine techniques in drug delivery," he said. [Read More]

'Sticky Nanotubes' Hold Key To Future Technologies

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2008) — Researchers at Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces required to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.

So-called "peel tests" are used extensively in manufacturing. Knowing how much force is needed to pull a material off of another material is essential for manufacturing, but no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

Researchers are trying to learn about the physics behind the "stiction," or how the tiny structures stick to other materials, to manufacture everything from nanoelectronics to composite materials, "nanotweezers" to medical devices using nanotubes, nanowires and biopolymers such as DNA and proteins, he said.

Flexible carbon nanotubes stick to surfaces differently than larger structures because of attractive forces between individual atoms called van der Waals forces.

"Operating in a nanoscale environment is sort of like having flypaper everywhere because of the attraction of van der Waals forces," Raman said. "These forces are very relevant on this size scale because a nanometer is about 10 atoms wide." [Read More]

CCMB collaborates with Purdue University

April 15, 2008 - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, India, was joined by researchers from Purdue University USA for a two day symposium on "Bionanotechnology and pharmaceuticals—a glimpse into the future", which was held on March 13 and 14. The two day conference discussed the advancements in bionanotechnology and pharma industry, and how these two fields are coming together to address the challenges of healthcare delivery. It spoke on how bionanotechnology is offering many new approaches to the field of medicine, ranging from advanced engineering of tissues and organs to nanoscale drug delivery that may target single diseased cells. The symposium highlighted laboratory advancements in microfabrication and nanofabrication and their roles in nanomedicine and drug delivery.

Microfabrication allows construction of cellular sized or smaller devices made of new materials for what is known as cell land-tissue engineering. Nanofabrication is used to create nanoscale devices for advanced targeting and delivery of pharmaceuticals to individual human cells through the emerging field of nanomedicine. "We are very pleased that Purdue partnered with CCMB for this event," said N Madhusudhana Rao, CCMB. India and the US face many similar challenges in healthcare, climate change and the environment, energy, improving manufacturing, development of adequate cyber infrastructure, and others. These challenges can be met more effectively when both countries work together to exploit new opportunities in life sciences and nanotechnology. [Read More]

Manufactured buckyballs don't harm microbes that clean the environment

Nanowerk News - April 9, 2008 - Even large amounts of manufactured nanoparticles, also known as Buckyballs, don't faze microscopic organisms that are charged with cleaning up the environment, according to Purdue University researchers.

In the first published study to examine Buckyball toxicity on microbes that break down organic substances in wastewater, the scientists used an amount of the nanoparticles on the microbes that was equivalent to pouring 10 pounds of talcum powder on a person. Because high amounts of even normally safe compounds, such as talcum powder, can be toxic, the microbes' resiliency to high Buckyball levels was an important finding, the Purdue investigators said.

The experiment on Buckyballs, which are carbon molecules C60, also led the scientists to develop a better method to determine the impact of nanoparticles on the microbial community.

"It's important to look at the entire microbial community when nanomaterials are introduced because the microbes are all interdependent for survival and growth," said Leila Nyberg, a doctoral student in the School of Civil Engineering and the study's lead author. "If we see a minor change in these microorganisms it could negatively impact ecosystems." [Read More]

Needle-size Device Created To Track Tumors, Radiation Dose

ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2008) — Engineers at Purdue University are creating a wireless device designed to be injected into tumors to tell doctors the precise dose of radiation received and locate the exact position of tumors during treatment.

The information would help to more effectively kill tumors, said Babak Ziaie, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a researcher at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center.

Ziaie is leading a team that has tested a prototype "wireless implantable passive micro-dosimeter" and said the device could be in clinical trials in 2010. "Because organs and tumors shift inside the body during treatment, a new technology is needed to tell doctors the exact dosage of radiation received by a tumor," Ziaie said.

The prototype is enclosed in a glass capillary small enough to inject into a tumor with a syringe, said Ziaie, who has a dual appointment in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.

Research findings are detailed in a paper appearing in the June issue of IEEE Transactions On Biomedical Engineering. The paper was written by doctoral student Chulwoo Son and Ziaie. [Read More]

Purdue exhibit helps mark NanoDays

April 2, 2008 - Purdue's "Nano in Your Neighborhood" exhibit on display in Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering is helping to celebrate NanoDays.

NanoDays is a weeklong event established by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network to raise public awareness of nanoscale science and engineering through community-based educational outreach. This year's NanoDays started March 29 and runs through April 6.

"Nano in Your Neighborhood," designed by the Purdue Agricultural Communication department and Purdue nanotechnology experts, is an interactive exhibit that relates emerging science to everyday life.

Visitors of the exhibit will walk through a fictional neighborhood that focuses on six themes introducing them to different areas of nanotechnology. The neighborhood features elements like a university, manufacturing company, mega-mart, medical center, farm and drive-in, each of which explores related areas of nanotechnology.

Throughout the exhibit visitors will find videos, hands-on and flip panel displays, interactive games, a "Jumbotron video and more.

More details on NanoDays are available at www.nisenet.org/page.php?page_ID=46.

Transparent Computer Monitors? Engineers Make First 'Active Matrix' Display Using Nanowires

ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Engineers have created the first "active matrix" display using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, flexible color monitors and "heads-up" displays in car windshields.

The transistors are made of "nanowires," tiny cylindrical structures that are assembled on glass or thin films of flexible plastic. The researchers used nanowires as small as 20 nanometers - a thousand times thinner than a human hair - to create a display containing organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDS. The OLEDS are devices that rival the brightness of conventional pixels in flat-panel television sets, computer monitors and displays in consumer electronics.

"This is a step toward demonstrating the practical potential of nanowire transistors in displays and for other applications," said David Janes, a researcher at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. [Read More]

World-Class Nanoelectronics Research Center Launched by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI)

March 25, 2008 - Governor Mitch Daniels joined executives from IBM, Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today to announce plans to open a $61 million nanoelectronics research center on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The collaboration is designed to create new research opportunities that will lead to development of atomic-scale technologies and drive future breakthroughs in computing.

Officially billed as the Midwest Academy for Nanoelectronics and Architectures (MANA), the center will link Notre Dame and Purdue University with the development resources of national laboratories and the trillion-dollar per year technology industry. Together, the team of academia and business will work to develop and exploit a new class of semiconductor materials and devices -- nanoelectronics -- that stretches beyond today’s state-of-art chip technologies.

“For Indiana, this means national leadership in a central technology of the future, and we’d be excited to welcome it anywhere in our state. But it’s a special thrill to see it come to Notre Dame, which now enters new dimensions of research prominence and contributions to its home state through the partnership with Purdue,” said Daniels. [Read More]

Simpler way of building three-dimensional structures using DNA nanotechnology

March 18, 2008 - A large variety of two- and three-dimensional nanostructures have been constructed using DNA nanotechnology. Most of the construction methods require many different specially designed DNA molecules. Purdue University researchers have published a new DNA nanotech method that uses essentially one tile that self-assembles into a variety of larger three-dimensional shapes. Roger Highfield, Science Editor of the Telegraph (UK) describes the accomplishment:

… A team of scientists has created a versatile strategy for building three dimensional structures on the nanometre (billionth of a metre) scale by coaxing strands of DNA to [form] a basic building block that can then assemble spontaneously into complex three dimensional shapes over distances of around ten to twenty billionths of a metre.

…A variety of patterns and nanostructures have already been made from DNA, or alternatively DNA has been used as a glue to stick gold particles together, by making DNA molecules that interact just in the right way.

But larger and more complex three-dimensional structures are difficult to make using existing fabrication methods, which would require the use of hundreds of different DNA strands.

Today, in the journal Nature, Dr Chengde Mao of Purdue University, Indiana, and colleagues overcome this problem by programming DNA to fold first into a basic structural unit, akin to a basic building block that can be used to make more complicated shapes. [Read More]

New Materials Power Nanoscale Manufacturing

March 14, 2008 - Coupled with new manufacturing methods, next-generation device, packaging and substrate materials are being developed to meet the technical challenges of fabricating and assembling nanoscale ICs. These advanced materials include nanoparticles, fabricated or self-assembled nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes (CNT) and semiconductor or metallic nanowires, as well as composites containing at least one nanoscale component.
CNTs may be used in various parts of both active and passive devices as well as packages, for added strength, improved thermal conductivity, and reduced weight, as well as providing higher-speed conductors. Although multi-walled CNTs are also being developed, semiconducting single-walled CNTs with diameters of around 1nm are thought by many to be major candidates for replacing silicon as a semiconductor in nanoelectronics.

Recently, researchers at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center devised a method for growing densely-packed CNTs on chips in order to enhance heatflow at critical points where chips connect to heatsinks. The method - using microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition - outperforms conventional thermal interface materials, and does not require a clean-room environment, making it a potentially low-cost approach.

Materials aside from carbon are also being examined, such as graphene, and even silicon continues to hold promise in some areas. Graphene is theoretically capable of scaling down much further than silicon, to circuits only a few atoms across, in part because of its extreme strength and stability. Its conductive properties work differently from other conductors: electrons move at the same high speeds, regardless of their energy. Those high speeds mean that graphene-based transistors could theoretically switch faster than silicon-based transistors. [Read more]

Purdue joins researchers in India for bionanotechnology, pharmaceuticals symposium

March 10, 2008 - Researchers from Purdue University will join colleagues from the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in India next week for a symposium on advancements in bionanotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

"Bionanotechnology and Pharmaceuticals: A Glimpse into the Future" is expected to draw more than 100 researchers and students from across the globe for the conference on March 13-14 in Hyderabad. Lectures, a panel discussion on transforming pharmaceutical manufacturing, and a poster session for students and researchers are planned.

"Pharmaceuticals and other aspects of health care are major beneficiaries of the nanotechnology revolution sweeping our world today," said conference speaker Craig Svensson, dean of Purdue's College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences. "Novel formulations, tissue engineering and tools of nanoscience are changing our world's health-care system. The symposium will foster new links and new possibilities in the next frontier of health and medicine." [Read More]

Purdue leads center to simulate behavior of micro-electromechanical systems

March 7, 2008 - The National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded a $17 million cooperative agreement for a research center at Purdue University's Discovery Park to develop advanced simulations for commercial and defense applications, Purdue officials announced Friday (March 7).

The center will focus on the behavior and reliability of miniature switches and is one of five new Centers of Excellence chosen by the NNSA.

About 35 researchers at Purdue, including faculty members, software professionals and students, will be involved in the new Center for Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems, or PRISM. The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the University of New Mexico will collaborate in the center.

"The center takes advantage of Purdue's interdisciplinary strengths and considerable expertise in computational modeling and nanotechnology," Purdue President France A. Córdova said. [Read More]

New technique takes a big step in examination of small structures

March 6, 2008 - (Nanowerk News) A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved.

Wen Jiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Purdue, led a research team that used the emerging technique of single-particle electron cryomicroscopy to capture a three-dimensional image of a virus at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms. Approximately 1 million angstroms would equal the diameter of a human hair.

"This is one of the first projects to refine the technique to the point of near atomic-level resolution," said Jiang, who also is a member of Purdue's structural biology group. "This breaks a threshold and allows us to now see a whole new level of detail in the structure. This is the highest resolution ever achieved for a living organism of this size."

Details of the structure of a virus provide valuable information for development of disease treatments, he said.

"If we understand the system - how the virus particles assemble and how they infect a host cell - it will greatly improve our ability to design a treatment," Jiang said. "Structural biologists perform the basic science and provide information to help those working on the clinical aspects."

A paper detailing the work was published in the Feb. 28 issue of Nature. [Read More]

Good vibrations probe innards of molecular electronic junctions

March 6, 2008 - (Nanowerk News) Using an unusual spectroscopic technique, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have provided the most convincing evidence yet that current is flowing through a simple silicon-based molecular “sandwich,” which is the most basic structure of molecular electronics. The work is an important step toward realizing the dream of organic molecule-based electronics that could enable much denser, cheaper computer memories and other replacements of traditional electronic devices ("Probing molecules in integrated silicon-molecule-metal junctions by inelastic tunneling spectroscopy").

“The ultimate in miniaturization is the molecule,” explains NIST’s Curt Richter. “The hope is that a single molecule will one day be able to act as an electrical component such as a diode or a resistor with the ultimate goal being shrinking computer chips.”

Colleagues at Purdue University provided three types of silicon-molecule-metal junctions that are a few micrometers large. The small molecules researchers used were octadecane, nitrobenzene and diethylaminobenzene. [Read More]

Their Deepest, Darkest Discovery - Scientists Create a Black That Erases Virtually All Light

February 20, 2008 - Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black.

The material, made of hollow fibers, is a Roach Motel for photons -- light checks in, but it never checks out. By voraciously sucking up all surrounding illumination, it can give those who gaze on it a dizzying sensation of nothingness.

"It's very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night," said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. "Nothing comes back to you. It's very, very, very dark."

But scientists are not satisfied. Using other new materials, some are trying to manufacture rudimentary Harry Potter-like cloaks that make objects inside of them literally invisible under the right conditions -- the pinnacle of stealthy technology.

Both advances reflect researchers' growing ability to manipulate light, the fleetest and most evanescent of nature's offerings. The nascent invisibility cloak now being tested, for example, is made of a material that bends light rays "backward," a weird phenomenon thought to be impossible just a few years ago.

Known as transformation optics, the phenomenon compels some wavelengths of light to flow around an object like water around a stone. As a result, things behind the object become visible while the object itself disappears from view.

"Cloaking is just the tip of the iceberg," said Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and an expert in the fledgling field. "With transformation optics you can do many other tricks," perhaps including making things appear to be located where they are not and focusing massive amounts of energy on microscopic spots. [Read More]

BNC's Weaver to receive 2008 IEST Fellow Award

February 19, 2008 - The 2008 Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) Fellow Award will be presented to John Weaver for his "numerous publications and significant technical contributions to the advancement of cleanroom design and construction, particularly in the emerging field of nanotechnology." A formal announcement of Weaver's accomplishment will be made as part of the Awards and Membership Luncheon on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at ESTECH 2008 in Bloomingdale, Illinois.

The IEST is an international society whose members are internationally recognized for their contributions to the environmental sciences in the areas of contamination control; design, test, and evaluation; product reliability; and aerospace.

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