Researchers use Chemical Vapor Deposition to Create Self-Assembled Nanowires
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a way to make self-assembled nanowires of transition metal chalcogenides
at scale using chemical vapor deposition.
By changing the substrate where the wires form, they can tune how these wires are arranged, from aligned configurations of atomically thin sheets to random networks of bundles. This paves the way to industrial deployment in next-gen industrial electronics, including energy harvesting, and transparent, efficient, even flexible devices.
Electronics is all about making things smaller. Smaller features on a chip, for example, means more computing power in the same amount of space and better efficiency, essential to feeding the increasingly heavy demands of a modern IT infrastructure powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence. And as devices get smaller, the same demands are made of the intricate wiring that ties everyt
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IMAGE: (a) Illustration of a TMC nanowire (b) Chemical vapor deposition. The ingredients are vaporized in a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere and allowed to deposit and self-assemble on a substrate. Reprinted with permission. view more
Credit: Copyright 2020 American Chemical Society (ACS)
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a way to make self-assembled nanowires of transition metal chalcogenides
at scale using chemical vapor deposition. By changing the substrate where the wires form, they can tune how these wires are arranged, from aligned configurations of atomically thin sheets to random networks of bundles. This paves the way to industrial deployment in next-gen industrial electronics, including energy harvesting, and transparent, efficient, even flexible devices.
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Simple and Cost-effective Extraction of Rare Metals from Industrial Waste
Researchers from Kanazawa University developed a protocol to efficiently purify palladium and silver ions from industrial waste, and convert the ions into pure metallic elements. This will help increase global stock of valuable elements that are widely needed yet in scarce supply.
Kanazawa, Japan – Many rare metals are in scarce supply, yet demand for use in electronics, medical instrumentation, and other purposes continues to increase. As waste, these metals pollute the environment and harm human health. Ideally, we would recycle the metals from waste for reuse. Unfortunately, current recycling methods are some combination of complex, expensive, toxic, wasteful, and ultimately inefficient.
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IMAGE: Photo of a piece of the Murchison meteorite that was used in this study. view more
Credit: NASA
Scientists from Japan and NASA have confirmed the presence in meteorites of a key organic molecule which may have been used to build other organic molecules, including some used by life. The discovery validates theories of the formation of organic compounds in extraterrestrial environments.
The chemistry of life runs on organic compounds, molecules containing carbon and hydrogen, which also may include oxygen, nitrogen and other elements. While commonly associated with life, organic molecules also can be created by non-biological processes and are not necessarily indicators of life. An enduring mystery regarding the origin of life is how biology could have arisen from non-biological chemical processes, called prebiotic chemistry. Organic molecules from meteorites may be one of the sources of organic compounds that led to the emergence of life on Earth.
The bull s eye: New modified stem cells can deliver drugs specifically to tumor cells
As humans evolve, cancer also evolves in parallel, making the race for finding efficient treatment methods for cancer patients challenging and constant. In addition to designing drugs for treatment, the delivery of these drugs to targeted organs is also a major challenge faced by the cancer research community.
Many research groups have tried to develop techniques to efficiently deliver anti-cancer drugs to tumors. An interesting way utilizes a distinct group of cells in our body, the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which have a special ability to find and move towards tumors. This means that theoretically, we can load these tumor-homing MSCs with anti-cancer drugs and use them to hinder cancer progression. However, pilot studies show that the anti-cancer drug loading capacity of MSCs is limited, and they tend to lose their ability to target and reach tumor cells upon drug loading.