Nanotechnology

Sandia National Laboratories researchers are ready to commercialize tiny, gold antennas to help cameras and sensors deliver clearer pictures of thermal infrared radiation for everything from stars and galaxies to people, buildings and items requiring security, lab officials announced today. In a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, a team of researchers developed a nanoantenna-enabled detector that can boost the signal of a thermal infrared camera by up to 3 times and improve image quality by reducing dark current, a major component of image noise, by 10 to 100 times.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing the vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers.

The size of the world’s smallest ant, these “micro-bristle-bots” could sense changes in the environment and swarm together to move materials—or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.

A research team at the University of Texas at Arlington may one day cover robots and prosthetic devices with nanotechnology skin to provide them with a sense of touch far superior to humans.

A sense of touch could allow for greater precision and control. A robot needs to know, for example, how much pressure to apply when picking up an elderly patient from a bed, an airplane engine from a factory floor, or a glass of champagne from a tabletop.

Alion Science and Technology Corp., Burr Ridge, Illinois, has been awarded a $10,027,721 cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order (0067) on the AMMTIAC indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity cost-plus-fixed-fee sole-source (FA4600-06-D-0003) for nanotechnology development and technology transfer. AMMTIAC will provide technical, engineering, and expertise in nanotechnology applications in materials, manufacturing and testing of interest to the military. Air Force Installation Contracting Agency, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, is the contracting activity.

Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University have discovered methods to control folding pathways and enable sequential folding on a millimeter scale using a low-intensity laser beam. Lasers at a low intensity worked as a trigger for tagging applications. Developers are fabricating sheets of millimeter-size structures that serve as battery-free wireless actuators that fold when exposed to a laser operating at eye-safe infrared wavelengths. The metallic structures may respond even to high-powered LED lighting.

That's the idea, anyway, and it encompasses all manpack equipment across the board. A dismounted soldier now carries approximately 140 pounds of equipment or more, and that's still not enough to handle the tasks at hand or to protect him in combat. In this month's issue of SIGNAL Magazine, George I. Seffers turns his focus on the U.S.

The NNI was launched in 2001 to coordinate the U.S. federal government's nanotechnology research and development. Its mission is to provide a guiding vision for the long term opportunities and benefits of nanotechnology and to serve as a center for communication, cooperation and collaboration between all the participating government agencies. The NNI's home page provides information about federal advisory groups such as the National Science and Technology Council and its Nanoscale Science Engineering and Technology subcommittee. Visitors can download the NNI's fiscal year 2009 budget documents and a variety of papers, brochures and reports from the initiative's home page.

This academic institution is heavily involved in nanotechnology research and hosts the National Science Foundation's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on its campus. The Institute is especially active with carbon nanotubes-tiny tubelike structures that possess unique physical, thermal and electrical properties. Visitors can learn about integrating nanotubes into electronics, incorporating nanotubes into composite materials for enhanced strength and forming nanotubes into tiny springs, rods and beams for nanomachines.

Visit the site at
www.rpi.edu/research/nanotechnology/index.html.

Scientists need tools to study, measure and manipulate nanoscale objects. NSRG, a collection of research groups associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is poised to develop these tools. The NSRG's work explores three areas: nanoscale sciences, biomedical research and tools research. Information is available on a number of the group's projects, such as work on carbon nanotube paddle oscillators-extremely small actuators for optical switching and sensing technologies. The group's biomedical work seeks to develop tiny tools capable of studying and manipulating individual viruses and bacteria. Researchers are also studying biomotors for use in nanostructures.

The U.S. Army is preparing—for the first time—to develop and field micro robotic systems under programs of record, indicating confidence that the technology has matured and years of research are paying off. The small systems will provide individual soldiers and squads with critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data in jungles, buildings and caves that larger systems can’t reach. Ideally, they will become valued combat team members.

A prototype nanotechnology-based sensor offers the possibility for ubiquitous, networked, real-time chemical agent detection and tracking. By using easily produced super-small components, the devices potentially can be installed in a variety of devices, such as smartphones, robots or commercial appliances.

Physical movement stored as memory in a microchip could lead to advances in touch screens, robot control devices and medical implants. Researchers are arraying nanowires on a microchip to form a write-read memory cell as part of ongoing work that could convert motions, such as a hand in a glove or pressing a display, into memory. Moving or putting pressure on the nanowires creates an electrical current that can be read and recorded as memory. Arrays of such cells offer the potential for a variety of user interface applications and for new ways to convert mechanical or biological actions into electronic data.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory intend to launch two additional pathfinder nanosatellites later this year. The goal is to develop a constellation of inexpensive satellites to avoid collisions in space.

Academic, research and industry teams join forces to improve uniform materials.

New fabrics now under development will one day relieve troops from the burden of wearing additional garments to protect from chemical and biological attack. The effort, dubbed Second Skin, is being led by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Chemical and Biological Technologies Department. The goal is to weave a new generation of multifunctional materials that can be manufactured into everyday military uniforms but use molecular-level technologies to protect against such attacks as soon as the wearer enters a contaminated area. The program is budgeted for $30 million over the next five years.