Electric vehicles offer a green transportation alternative. There have been great advances in the sector after the launch of popular models such as Nissan’s LEAF, which recently won the car the of year award at the Tokyo Motor Show.

However, electric car battery technology is one (more…)

Yesterday, Science Magazine hosted a debate about the application of nanotechnology to the development of solar cells. There are hopes that nanotechnology can bring solar power’s prices down to fossil fuel price level.

On the discussion panel were Alan Heeger, a (more…)

Modern electronics as we know them, from televisions to computers, depend on conducting materials that can control electronic properties. As technology shrinks down to pocket sized communications devices and microchips that can fit on the head of a pin, nano-sized conducting (more…)

Wendy Jameson’s life slogan is “Fear Mediocrity: don’t be afraid to be bold”; a motto that Wendy and her partner in Colnatec, Scott Grimshaw (whom she met on Twitter), established. Wendy has always been an individual who stands out from the crowd and takes risks each and every day, the epitome of an (more…)

One of the biggest challenges for the solar power industry is to boost the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells. In response to that, a duo of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Research) researchers have found a little helper in a virus called M13.

Graduate students Xiangnan Dang and Hyunjung Yi (more…)

Bing Energy, a company that manufactures components for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), which recently entered a partnership with Florida State University (FSU), has been subcontracted by the University of Central Florida (UCF) to develop a low-cost and high-efficiency 500 W portable PEMFC system. (more…)

Stanford University scientists have created a tiny electrode that can harness an electric current from a single algae cell, a breakthrough they hope will one day lead to the creation of an inexpensive source of renewable energy.

The nanoelectrode, made of gold and specifically designed to probe inside cells, is so sharp that it is able to penetrate the algae cell membrane without killing the cell.

And once inside the cell, it can intercept electrons just after they are energized by sunlight by the photosynthesis process.

Researchers hope it is the first step toward developing a “high efficiency” form of bioelectricity. (more…)

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have created a synthetic “gene” they say can capture carbon dioxide emissions.

Omar M. Yaghi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has developed thousands of so-called crystal sponges that absorb gases and have proven effective in the lab at storing CO2.

The synthetic crystals, which code information in a “DNA-like manner,” have nanoscale-sized pores that Yaghi says allow molecules to go in and out.

(more…)

Shrink Nanotechnologies is one of several companies that is using bioplastics to find a new way of making devices that will minimize the use of increasingly-scarce rare metals.

The company’s OptiSol Solar Concentrator is billed as a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar film. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar radiation potential, with a majority of the light either reflected or converted to thermal energy.

(more…)

It’s cleaning up space junk, and is giving us lab-on-chip biofilters for detecting contamination. Now nanotechnology has produced a coating for windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt. Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car could be within reach too.

New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years.

Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter) and even smaller, graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have found a novel way to control the atoms and molecules of peptides so that they “grow” to resemble small forests of grass.

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