Mechanical Engineering : Research Guide

A new scientific review explores the exciting potential of hot carriers, energetic electrons generated by light in plasmonic nanostructures. These tiny structures hold immense promise for future technologies due to their unique way of interacting with light and creating hot carriers.

Scientists from the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute have made an innovative discovery in nanoscale optoelectronics. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications and titled "Atomic-Precision Control of Plasmon-Induced Single-Molecule Switching in a Metal–Semiconductor Nanojunction," introduces a method for achieving unprecedented control over single-molecule photoswitching. This breakthrough could transform the future of nano-device technology.

Researchers have demonstrated a way to speed up—and potentially scale up—the process for separating particles in fluids, which can be used for studying microplastics in drinking water or even analyzing cancer cells from blood.

University of California, Irvine scientists have discovered a one-dimensional nanoscale material whose color changes as temperature changes. The team's results appear in Advanced Materials.

James Cook University researchers have achieved a significant breakthrough that allows them to convert microplastics to a highly valuable material. The study is published in the journal Small Science.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have been improving the resolution of a process known as photolithography. They hope to use their technique to help advance the miniaturization of computer chips.

EPFL scientists have developed an AI-based technique to improve the chemical analysis of nanomaterials, overcoming challenges of noisy data and mixed signals.

Scientists from the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have made a significant discovery in the field of nanotechnology, as detailed in their latest publication in Advanced Materials. Their paper, titled "Spectroscopic and Interferometric Sum-Frequency Imaging of Strongly Coupled Phonon Polaritons in SiC Metasurfaces," introduces a novel microscopy method that allows for the unprecedented visualization of nanostructures and their optical properties.

At Ruhr University, the groups of Professor Martina Havenith and Professor Sebastian Kruss collaborated for a new study, which took place as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Ruhr Explores Solvation," or RESOLV for short. Ph.D. students Sanjana Nalige and Phillip Galonska also made significant contributions to the research, now published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague have successfully synthesized bimetallic nanoparticles using waste extracts from Cannabis sativa and Vitis vinifera, showcasing an eco-friendly approach with potent antimicrobial properties. The work is published in the journal RSC Advances.

Phosphorus is a vital component of every organism and plays a key role, for example, in energy transfer in the body and within cell membranes, bones and teeth. Phosphorus is also special because it occurs in numerous different forms (allotropes). For example, there is the highly explosive, toxic white phosphorus, the more stable red phosphorus known from match heads, or the crystalline, semi-conducting black phosphorus. The latter has numerous applications in electronic devices.

Understanding the dynamics of neuronal communication is crucial for advancing neuroscience research and developing effective therapies for neurological disorders.

Stirring allows for homogenization and efficient gas exchange—this fact has been known for decades. Controlling the stirring rate during the nanocluster synthesis is pivotal in achieving nanostructures with well-defined sizes, structures, optical properties, and stability.

Pesticides and herbicides are critical to ensuring food security worldwide, but these substances can present a safety risk to people who unwittingly ingest them. Protecting human health, therefore, demands sensitive analytical methods to identify even trace levels of potentially harmful substances. Now, researchers reporting in Nano Letters have developed a high-tech imaging method to detect pesticide contamination at low levels, and its application on fruits reveals that current food safety practices may be insufficient.

Flexible electronic devices based on electrospun nanofiber membranes (ENM) are attracting significant attention due to their high biocompatibility and excellent mechanical performance. However, patterning conductive materials on fiber substrates typically requires expensive vacuum equipment or additional processes to create separate masks.

A complex interplay of energetics and dynamics governs the behavior of nanocrystals in solution. These dynamics are usually interpreted in terms of the theory developed by Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek (DVLO), and understanding these forces is particularly important for controlling oriented attachment (OA), where individual nanocrystals fuse together in specific alignments.

With the continuous development of nanotechnology, more artificial chiral nanomaterials have been constructed. As one of the most representative optical properties of these chiral nanomaterials, circular dichroism (CD) is a powerful sensing technology. Compared with other analytical methods, CD signal has higher sensitivity, but it cannot achieve in-situ imaging in vivo.

Gold does not readily lend itself to being turned into long, thin threads. But researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now managed to create gold nanowires and develop soft electrodes that can be connected to the nervous system. The electrodes are soft as nerves, stretchable and electrically conductive, and are projected to last for a long time in the body.

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team has found that pure metallic carbon nanotubes are best at transporting molecules.

Have you ever considered how nanotechnology could transform our approach to clean energy? In recent research, we've been exploring nanoscale covalent organic frameworks (nano-COFs) that show exceptional potential for enhancing photocatalytic hydrogen production.

Manufacturing cars with strong, lightweight aluminum alloys rather than steel could improve fuel efficiency and extend electric vehicle range, but the material's instability at high temperatures has held the alloys back from widespread adoption.

Inspired by the cell membrane structure, researchers, led by Dr. Xiaoqing Huang (State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University) and Dr. Qi Shao (College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University), propose a biomimetic strategy for synthesis of nanovesicles by utilizing the interfacial strain as the driving force to curl the ultrathin nanosheets into nanovesicles.

A study, published in National Science Review, reveals the existence of naturally formed few-layer graphene, a substance consisting of carbon atoms in a special, thin-layered structure.

In electronic technologies, key material properties change in response to stimuli like voltage or current. Scientists aim to understand these changes in terms of the material's structure at the nanoscale (a few atoms) and microscale (the thickness of a piece of paper). Often neglected is the realm between the mesoscale—spanning 10 billionths to 1 millionth of a meter.

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists confirm the identification of a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, a significant advancement in the field of optoelectronics, in an article published in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal ACS Nano.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created sheets of transition metal chalcogenide "cubes" connected by chlorine atoms. While sheets of atoms have been widely studied, e.g. graphene, the team's work breaks new ground by using clusters instead. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have developed cutting-edge nanoscale optical imaging techniques to provide unprecedented insights into the ultrafast carrier dynamics in advanced materials.

In traditional Japanese basket-weaving, the ancient "Kagome" design seen in many handcrafted creations is characterized by a symmetrical pattern of interlaced triangles with shared corners. In quantum physics, the Kagome name has been borrowed by scientists to describe a class of materials with an atomic structure closely resembling this distinctive lattice pattern.

Putting 50 billion transistors into a microchip the size of a fingernail is a feat that requires manufacturing methods of nanometer level precision—layering of thin films, then etching, depositing, or using photolithography to create the patterns of semiconductor, insulator, metal, and other materials that make up the tiny working devices within the chip.

Organic thermoelectric materials hold great promise as flexible energy sources for the Internet of Things and wearable electronics. However, their relatively low dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) compared to traditional materials has been a major obstacle, limiting their use in thermoelectric power generation and solid-state cooling.