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TINY NANOCABLES COULD FIGURE IN TOXIN DETECTION
16 November 2004 - University of California, Davis
| Tiny nanocables, 1000 times smaller than a human hair, could become key parts of toxin detectors, miniaturised solar cells and powerful computer chips. The work is published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. |
A technique for making the nanocables has been invented by a team of UC Davis chemical engineers led by Pieter Stroeve, professor of chemical engineering and materials science. They manufacture the cables in the nano-sized pores of a template membrane. The insides of the pores are coated with gold. Layers of other semiconductors, such as tellurium, cadmium sulphide or zinc sulphide, are electrochemically deposited in the gold tube until a solid cable forms, then the membrane is dissolved, leaving finished cables behind. Stroeve envisions many uses for these nanocables. For example, the cables' ability to conduct electricity changes when they are exposed to different chemicals or toxins. Earlier nano-devices could only detect whether a toxin was present, said Ruxandra Vidu, a postdoctoral scholar working with Stroeve. But nanocables will go further, measuring the quantity of toxins. Stroeve's team can also construct arrays of nanocables. 'You put a copper tape on the tops of the nanocables before the template is dissolved,' Stroeve said. 'You're left with nanocables sticking up at right angles from the tape.' These arrays have a very large surface area - 1000 times greater than on a flat device of the same size. They could be used to efficiently capture sunlight in a tiny solar cell. Nanocables could also be used to make computer chips more powerful by packing transistors closer together. Computers now contain silicon chips with metal transistors affixed to the surface. 'With our new technique, we could embed transistors into the silicon chips to begin with,' Stroeve said.
http://www.ucdavis.edu
About: University of California, Davis
Set between the Coast Range to the west and the towering Sierra Nevada to the east in the heart of the Central Valley, UC Davis is close to California’s thriving state capital and the San Francisco Bay Area UC Davis is one of 10 campuses of the University of California, which was chartered as a land grant college in 1868 and now constitutes the pre-eminent system of public higher education in the country. Together, the 10 campuses have an enrollment of some 173,000 students, 90 percent of them California residents. Some 150 laboratories, extension centers, research and field stations strengthen teaching and research while providing public service to California and the nation. The collections of the more than 100 UC campus libraries are surpassed in size in the United States only by that of the Library of Congress. The Davis campus has undergraduate colleges of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. Located off-campus are numerous laboratories, extension centers and facilities, including the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, the Lake Tahoe Center for Environmental Research, the Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center in Tulare, Bodega Marine Laboratory at Bodega Bay, the College of Engineering’s applied science department at Livermore and the UC Davis Washington Center in Washington, DC. UC Davis faculty ranks 16th in quality among comprehensive public universities nationwide, according to a multi-year study of US doctoral programs reported in 1995 by the National Research Council. Creative teaching and academic innovation are encouraged by several programs, including the $30,000 Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, believed to be the largest award of its kind in the US. |
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