NanoBlog

Apparently the UK isn't leading any nanotechnology programs according to a blog by Richard Jones. He thinks that the UK has give up on nanotechnology for four main reasons.

• Prior high profile projects have been perceived as failures
• Lack if industry support
• Failure to address the health and safety issues of nanotechnology
• Science community does not have a strong proponents for nanotechnology

This all seems surprising since there seems to be a lot of good working going on in the field like the work on Graphene from the Manchester group, for example. Perhaps, this would be a good lesson learned for other countries in planning and going their own programs.

NIST is seeking comments on the Structure for Proposed Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) Program though September 11, 2011. The program seeks to foster public-private partnerships to facilitate innovated research of new manufacturing process technologies.

Researchers at Argone National Labs have created mini-robots from magnetic particles and are able to control them in a fluid. The video's remind a little of packman trying to bit a bubble. It's very cool. The full paper Magnetic manipulation of self-assembled colloidal asters is available at Nature.

The IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices has a special issue on the Characterization of Nano CMOS Variability by Simulation and Measurements.

Intel produced this short video on their new 22 nm finFET technology. The video is very cool and well done, but wish it included some SEM images of chip as well. Or better yet, if the speaker walked off screen at the end across a 3D landscape of 3D FETs. This would be my version of the Ark/warehouse storage scene at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie. Anyway, the 2D planer channel has been transformed into a 3D fin that allows the gate to wrap around three sides of the channel. This provides better on-off control and lower leakage.

The Japanese Journal of Applied Physics has issued a special issue on Selected Topics in Applied Physics Technology, Physics, and Modeling of Graphene Devices. This issue contains papers on many other topics. Some of the papers are open access so get them while you can.

I'm shocked to find an association between girl scout cookies and graphene depostion, but researchers at Rice University have demonstrated that graphene can be fabricated on copper sheets using most any carbon source. The paper Growth of Graphene from Food, Insects, and Waste describing the process can be found on the ACSNano website. I enjoyed seeing the short video demonstrating the process in the presence of actual girl scouts.

Cranfield University in the UK is offering a Masters and Ph.D. level nanomedicine course. The course can be completed in one year taken full time or three years taken part time.

The Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A has issued a special issue on graphene and carbon nanotubes.

Applied Materials has introduced a new ALD Centura Integrated Gate Stack system that can fabricate transistors at the 22nm node. The system employs a cluster arrangement so that the dielectric, k-dielectric, and metal gate stack can be fabricated in a vacuum without introducing an air break in the process. The two videos are quite interesting.