Items Tagged With Materials Science

Regulatory oversight of nanotechnology is urgently needed and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should act now, reports a new study released today. In EPA and Nanotechnology: Oversight for the 21st Century, former EPA assistant administrator for policy, planning and evaluation, J. Clarence (Terry) Davies, provides a roadmap for a new EPA to better handle the challenges of nanotechnology. New nanomaterials and nanotechnology products are entering the market each week, and an adequate oversight system is necessary to identify and minimize any adverse effects of nano materials and products on health or the environment. Davies’ report sets out an agenda for creating an effective oversight system as nanotechnology advances—the technology that some have hailed as “the next industrial revolution.”

Finding affordable ways to make technology available to everyone is a common challenge. Now, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, MD, has done that with the process that creates “nanotubes.”

A nanotube is a tiny, hollow, long, thin and strong tube with an outside diameter of a nanometre that is formed from atoms such as carbon.

NaturalNano, Inc., a nanotechnology and materials science company that commercialises naturally occurring nanotubes, today announced that it has filed a US patent application for advances in the production of nanocomposites in the polymers and plastics industry.

New implantable biomedical devices that can act as artificial nerve cells, control severe pain, or allow otherwise paralysed muscles to be moved might one day be possible thanks to developments in materials science. Writing today in Advanced Materials, Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan, USA, and colleagues describe how they have used hollow, submicroscopic strands of carbon, carbon nanotubes, to connect an integrated circuit to nerve cells. The new technology offers the possibility of building an interface between biology and electronics.

Nanoscience Instruments announces the release of the Nanosurf® Nanite automated Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). Innovators and makers of the most compact and easy-to-use AFMs on the market, Swiss-based Nanosurf AG, have applied their inventive designs to the challenge of automated multiple measurements—the result, a new easy to use AFM that provides true walk-away time. The Nanite is designed for use in a variety of nanoscale surface analysis applications ranging from coatings, polymers, fabrics and fibres—to semiconductors, wafers, optical and holographic surfaces, and data storage.