Tools for Measuring Nanostructures Scanning Probe Instruments
Some of the first tools to help launch the nanoscience revolution were the so-called scanning probe instruments. All types of scanning probe instruments are based on an idea first developed at the IBM Laboratory in Zurich in the 1980s. Essentially, the idea is a simple one if you rub your finger along a surface, it is easy to distinguish velvet from steel or wood from tar. The different materials exert different forces on your finger as you drag it along the different surfaces. In these...
Nanobricks and Building Blocks
Nanostructures must be assembled from components. The fundamental building blocks are atoms of the 91 naturally occurring elements. Usually, though, it is inefficient to start with individual atoms. We saw both the strength and the slowness of this approach when we discussed building atomic scale nanostructures using scanning probe microscopy, especially if we are trying to make a macroscopic amount of a material rather than build a single nanoscale machine. Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel...
Nanosphere Liftoff Lithography
If marbles are placed together on a board as tightly as possible, they will form a tight group, with each marble surrounded by six others. If this array were spray painted from the top, and then the marbles were tipped off the board, the paint would appear as a set of painted dots, each shaped like a triangle but with concave sides see Figure 4.5 . Now if the marbles are nanoscale, so are the paint dots. In fact, Figure 4.5 shows dots of silver metal prepared by Rick Van Duyne's group at...
Chapter 6 Smart Materials
Nano-scale science and engineering most likely will produce the strategic technology breakthroughs of tomorrow. Our ability to work at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create something new, something we can manufacture from the bottom up, opens up huge vistas for many of us This technology may be the key that turns the dream David Swain Senior Vice President of Engineering amp Technology, The Boeing Company Heterogeneous Nanostructures and Composites Suppose that corrosion processes could...
Nanoscale Biostructures
Sam Stupp teaches chemistry, materials science, and medicine at Northwestern University. Stupp grew up in Costa Rica and studied materials science and dental materials early in his career. He speaks several languages, is serious about literature and gourmet food, and is a scientific visionary. He heads an institute at Northwestern devoted to human repair, which means that one of his major research aims is the utilization of self-assembly and nanostructures to repair, rather than to remove or...