#nanowires

Real-time microscopy reveals how semiconductor nanowires grow, and how bismuth seeds can speed their formation

Scientists captured tellurium nanowire growth in liquid in real time, showing seed formation, material competition and bismuth-assisted deposition.

(Nanowerk News) Scientists from the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester and Sun Yat-sen University, have captured the growth of semiconducting tellurium nanostructures in liquid in real time, revealing how tiny seed particles form, grow into nanowires and compete for material as the structures develop. The study, published in Matter ("In situ liquid-phase TEM electrodeposition of tellurium nanostructures"), also shows that adding bismuth seed particles can make tellurium easier to deposit under specific electrodeposition conditions used in the experiments.

What Makes Nanotechnology so Valuable for Industrial Innovation?

A practical answer is this: nanotechnology allows engineers and researchers to work with materials at a scale where performance changes are not just smaller versions of bulk behavior.

At the nanoscale, surface area, particle interaction, optical response, conductivity, and reactivity can shift in ways that help companies design stronger, lighter, more efficient, and more functional products.

That is why nanoproducts are now relevant far beyond academic laboratories. They are being evaluated and used in electronics, energy systems, chemical processing, coatings, composites, healthcare research, agriculture, and advanced manufacturing.

For B2B buyers, the discussion is less about novelty and more about measurable performance.

Where Nanomaterials Create Value

Area

How It Creates Value

Electronics Sensors, conductive films, displays, semiconductor support materials, flexible circuits

Energy Battery materials, supercapacitors, solar cells, fuel cells, conductive additives

Chemicals Catalysts, process additives, high-reactivity powders, functional fillers

Materials Science Composites, protective coatings, polymers, ceramics, reinforcement additives

Medicine and Biotech Imaging research, diagnostics, drug delivery research, biosensing platforms

Agriculture and Environment Controlled release research, nanosensors, photocatalytic, and filtration materials

Why MKnano is Positioned For This Market

MKnano, a division of M K Impex Corp., was established in 2007 and is based in Mississauga, Canada. The company serves global markets across 35+ countries and supports industrial buyers, researchers, and technical procurement teams with a wide nanotechnology product portfolio.

Its product categories include Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, fullerenes, buckyballs, nanoparticles, nanopowders, quantum dots, nanowires, nanorods, nano additives, nano fillers, magnetic nanoparticles, nanolubricants, and dispersions.

This breadth is important because B2B nanotechnology projects rarely depend on a single material only. Engineers often compare purity, particle size, surface chemistry, dispersion needs, and end-use requirements before choosing the right nanomaterial.

Let's talk about nanowires!

Wallpaper can transform the look of a room. A new type could also do double-duty as a 24/7 fire sentry. This novel “paper” is all but unburnable. And if it gets really hot, the paper will trigger warning lights and sound an alarm.

Researchers in China described their new wall covering March 13 in ACS Nano. They hope the product’s traits will make it attractive for use in homes. One added benefit: It’s nontoxic.

Explainer: How and why fires burn

Ying-Jie Zhu works for the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He led a team that developed the new technology. As a nanostructured-materials scientist, he develops useful materials that contain tiny parts. How tiny? Some parts have a height, width or length that is less than 100 nanometers — or one thousandth the width of a human hair.

Regular paper, including wallpaper, contains cellulose. (Wood is an abundant source of this plant-based product.) But cellulose catches fire easily. So Zhu’s team designed their wall covering be fire resistant. That means it takes a long heating or very hot temperatures to ignite.

Key to the new wallpaper is a network of nanowires inside it. They’re made from hydroxyapatite (Hy-DROX-ee-APP-eh-tyte). It’s a mineral found in bones and teeth. The scientists chose this mineral because it is highly flexible and fire resistant. To make the tiny wires, they added three chemicals — calcium chloride, monosodium phosphate and sodium hydroxide — to a mix of water, an alcohol (methanol) and a dietary fat (oleic acid). Then they heated this recipe for a whole day.

The nanowires are about 10 nanometers wide and at least 100 micrometers long (which is about the thickness of a sheet of printer paper). Those wires naturally weave together. The researchers strengthened the weave by adding glass particles. To make the paper, the scientists pour a liquid containing the nanowires through a paper-making machine. Like regular wallpaper, the end product is smooth and flexible. And though it starts out white, people can dye it different colors or print attractive patterns on it.

Cell-like nanorobots clear bacteria and toxins from blood 

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny ultrasound-powered robots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria along with the toxins they produce. These proof-of-concept nanorobots could one day offer a safe and efficient way to detoxify and decontaminate biological fluids.

Researchers built the nanorobots by coating gold nanowires with a hybrid of platelet and red blood cell membranes. This hybrid cell membrane coating allows the nanorobots to perform the tasks of two different cells at once -- platelets, which bind pathogens like MRSA bacteria (an antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus), and red blood cells, which absorb and neutralize the toxins produced by these bacteria. The gold body of the nanorobots responds to ultrasound, which gives them the ability to swim around rapidly without chemical fuel. This mobility helps the nanorobots efficiently mix with their targets (bacteria and toxins) in blood and speed up detoxification.

Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, Pavimol Angsantikul, Doris E. Ramírez-Herrera, Fernando Soto, Hazhir Teymourian, Diana Dehaini, Yijie Chen, Liangfang Zhang, Joseph Wang. Hybrid biomembrane–functionalized nanorobots for concurrent removal of pathogenic bacteria and toxins. Science Robotics, 2018; 3 (18): eaat0485 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat0485

Researchers from the University of Hyderabad, India, have, they explain, developed a method for improved molecular detection at low concentration levels.

The team arranged nanoparticles on nanowires to enhance Raman spectroscopy – a technique that uses the scattering of laser light to identify molecules. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) uses electromagnetic fields to improve Raman scattering and boost sensitivity in standard dyes, such as R6G.

Vertically aligned silicon nanowires with varying densities of silver nanoparticles were used, enhancing the structure's 3-D shape. Results, published in the Journal of Applied Physics, show that the device was able to enhance the Raman signals for cytosine protein and ammonium perchlorate by a factor of 100,000.

Soma Venugopal Rao, one of the paper's authors, said, ‘The beauty is that we can improve the density of these nanowires using simple chemistry. If you have a large density of nanowires, you can put more silver nanoparticles into the substrate and can increase the sensitivity of the substrate.’

Rao and colleagues used electroless etching to make a wide range of nanowires, before adding silver nanoparticles with variable and controlled densities.

‘Optimising these vertically aligned structures took a lot of time in the beginning,’ added Nageswara Rao, another author. ‘We increased the surface area and to do this we needed to change the aspect ratio.’

One tiny diode could shrink image sensors by adding memory and processing

P-n diodes are two-terminal devices that consist of two types of semiconductor materials (i.e., a p-type and an n-type material) joined together. These components allow electric current to only move in one direction, which is central to the functioning of many electronic circuits. Conventional p-n diodes only perform a single function, namely that of enabling the flow of current in one direction. This means that other components are required to also perform computations, store data or detect specific signals. Researchers at University of Science and Technology of China and McGill University in Canada recently designed a new p-n diode that can perform three different functions without the need to be integrated with additional components. Their device, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, is based on one-dimensional (1D), gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum gallium nitride (AlGAN)-based structures known as nanowires.