Etichetă: tehnologii noi

Introducerea celei mai mari fabrici de producere a nanomaterialelor din lume

 Am avut deja mult interes din partea companiilor dintr-o gamă diversă de sectoare. De la asistența medicală, unde nanoparticulele pot fi utilizate în acoperiri pe dispozitive medicale, la țesături îmbunătățite, unde nanomaterialele pot adăuga rezistență și flexibilitate la textile și în electronică tipărită, deoarece putem imprima materiale precum cuprul

Posted: Aug 01, 2016

Introducing the world’s biggest nanomaterial production plant

(Nanowerk News) The European SHYMAN project aims to establish continuous hydrothermal synthesis as the most flexible and sustainable process to create nanomaterials at industrial scale. After demonstrating this potential in the lab, the project has now announced the opening of its first facility in Nottingham.
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‘This new facility opens up a significant amount of new opportunities for us,’ says Professor Ed Lester, Technical Coordinator of Promethean Particles. This spin-out of the University of Nottingham is in charge of operating the new plant, which is expected to produce over 1 000 tonnes of nanomaterials every year. The production cost is lower than that of other facilities and the chosen production method – continuous hydrothermal synthesis – is expected to impact even markets for which sale prices had so far been an obstacle.
‘We have already had a lot of interest from companies in a diverse range of sectors. From healthcare, where nano-particles can be used in coatings on medical devices, to enhanced fabrics, where nano-materials can add strength and flexibility to textiles, and in printed electronics, as we are able to print materials such as copper,’ Prof. Lester continues. Solvay, Fiat, PPG and Repsol are among the major companies already set to benefit from the plant’s products.
To reach these impressive levels of production, the plant notably relies on high pressure triplex plunger pumps manufactured by Cat Pumps. These pumps have helped the 18-strong consortium to overcome engineering issues related to the mixing of the heated fluid and the aqueous metal salt flow, by creating the continuous pressure and fluid flow necessary to achieve continuous production.
Another enabling technology is the Nozzle Reactor, a customised design that uses buoyancy-induced eddies to produce an ‘ideal’ mixing scenario in a pipe-in-pip concentric configuration in which the internal pipe has an open-ended nozzle. This technology allows Promethean Particles to dramatically improve reproducibility and reliability whilst controlling particles properties such as size, composition and shape.
Betting on hydrothermal synthesis
Started in 2012, SHYMAN built upon the observation that hydrothermal synthesis had numerous advantages compared to alternatives: it doesn’t resort to noxious chemicals, uses relatively simple chemistry relying on cheap precursors, allows straightforward downstream processing, can avoid agglomeration and allows for narrow and well-controlled size and shape distribution.
The optimisation of hydrothermal synthesis has been a key objective of the University of Nottingham for the past 14 years, and SHYMAN is the pinnacle: the project began with the development of bench scale reactors, followed by a 30-times-larger pilot scale reactor. The reactor at the heart of the new production plant is 80 times larger than the latter and features four Cat Pumps Model 3801 high pressure triplex plunger pumps.
‘These are very exciting times for Promethean Particles,’ said Dr Susan Huxtable, Director of Intellectual Property and Commercialisation at the University of Nottingham. ‘The new facility opens up a myriad of opportunities for them to sell their services into new markets right across the world. It is a great example of how many of the technologies developed by academics here at the University of Nottingham have the potential to benefit both industry and society.’
Source: Cordis

Read more: Introducing the world’s biggest nanomaterial production plant

Camera de atracție pentru nanostructuri

O tehnologie care ar putea transfera și de a salva datele codificate pe undele de lumina ar fi de 100.000 de ori mai rapid decât sistemele actuale. O interacțiune materie de lumină, care ar putea deschide calea de a căuta produse electronice bazate pe lumina a fost investigata de catre oamenii de stiinta de la Laboratorul de Attosecond Fizica (PLA) Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) și Institutul Max Planck de Optică Cuantică (MPQ ), în colaborare cu colegii de la Catedra de fizica cu laser de la Universitatea din Erlangen-Nuremberg. Cercetatorii au trimis impulsuri laser intens pe un nanofire mic din aur. Cele ultrascurte impulsului laser excitat vibrația electronilor se deplasează liber în metal.
Acest lucru a dus la electromagnetic „lângă câmpuri“ la suprafața firului. Cvasi-câmpuri a oscilat cu o schimbare de câteva sute de attoseconds în ceea ce privește câmpul cu laser interesant (un Attosecond este o miliardime de miliardime de secundă). Această schimbare ce Măsurat folosind impulsuri de lumina Attosecond pe care oamenii de știință trimis ulterior Onto nanowire.
Atunci când lumina se aprinde metale, aceasta poate duce la lucruri curioase în microcosmos la suprafață. Câmpul electromagnetic al luminii excită vibratii ale electronilor din metal. Această interacțiune determină formarea „aproape-câmpuri“ – câmpuri electromagnetice localizate în apropierea suprafeței metalului.

Posted: May 31, 2016

Attosecond camera for nanostructures

(Nanowerk News) Physicists of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich in collaboration with scientists from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg have observed a light-matter phenomenon in nano-optics, which lasts only attoseconds („Attosecond nanoscale near-field sampling”).
The interaction between light and matter is of key importance in nature, the most prominent example being photosynthesis. Light-matter interactions have also been used extensively in technology, and will continue to be important in electronics of the future.
When laser light interacts with a nanoneedle (yellow), electromagnetic near-fields are formed at its surface
When laser light interacts with a nanoneedle (yellow), electromagnetic near-fields are formed at its surface. A second laser pulse (purple) emits an electron (green) from the needle, permitting to characterize the near-fields. (Image: Christian Hackenberger)
A technology that could transfer and save data encoded on light waves would be 100.000-times faster than current systems. A light-matter interaction which could pave the way to such light-driven electronics has been investigated by scientists from the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), in collaboration with colleagues from the Chair for Laser Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The researchers sent intense laser pulses onto a tiny nanowire made of gold. The ultrashort laser pulses excited vibrations of the freely moving electrons in the metal.
This resulted in electromagnetic ‘near-fields’ at the surface of the wire. The near-fields oscillated with a shift of a few hundred attoseconds with respect to the exciting laser field (one attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second). This shift was measured using attosecond light pulses which the scientists subsequently sent onto the nanowire.
When light illuminates metals, it can result in curious things in the microcosm at the surface. The electromagnetic field of the light excites vibrations of the electrons in the metal. This interaction causes the formation of ‘near-fields’ – electromagnetic fields localized close to the surface of the metal.
How near-fields behave under the influence of light has now been investigated by an international team of physicists at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in close collaboration with scientists of the Chair for Laser Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
The researchers sent strong infrared laser pulses onto a gold nanowire. These laser pulses are so short that they are composed of only a few oscillations of the light field. When the light illuminated the nanowire it excited collective vibrations of the conducting electrons surrounding the gold atoms. Through these electron motions, near-fields were created at the surface of the wire.
The physicists wanted to study the timing of the near-fields with respect to the light fields. To do this they sent a second light pulse with an extremely short duration of just a couple of hundred attoseconds onto the nanostructure shortly after the first light pulse. The second flash released individual electrons from the nanowire. When these electrons reached the surface, they were accelerated by the near-fields and detected. Analysis of the electrons showed that the near-fields were oscillating with a time shift of about 250 attoseconds with respect to the incident light, and that they were leading in their vibrations. In other words: the near-field vibrations reached their maximum amplitude 250 attoseconds earlier than the vibrations of the light field.
“Fields and surface waves at nanostructures are of central importance for the development of lightwave-electronics. With the demonstrated technique they can now be sharply resolved.”, explained Prof. Matthias Kling, the leader of the team carrying out the experiments in Munich.
The experiments pave the way towards more complex studies of light-matter interaction in metals that are of interest in nano-optics and the light-driven electronics of the future. Such electronics would work at the frequencies of light. Light oscillates a million billion times per second, i.e. with petahertz frequencies – about 100.000 times faster than electronics available at the moment. The ultimate limit of data processing could be reached.
Source: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

Read more: Attosecond camera for nanostructures