a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
Earlier this week I heard a quick piece on NPR's Marketplace called "75 years ago, the transistor ignited the fire of modern innovation," about how the transistor was "born" exactly 75 years ago today: December 16, 1947. It reminded me of a blog post written by CSN graduate student Diamond Jones (now Dr. Diamond Jones!) …
Continue reading "Happy 75th Birthday to the Transistor!"
In these days of social distancing, everyday electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops are more crucial than ever. But many of these devices, ubiquitous as they are, contain materials that are difficult to come by, called scarce rare earth and specialty elements (RESEs). For example, audio equipment such as speakers, headphones and microphones, …
Continue reading "Nano-enabled Recovery of Scarce Metals: From benchtop to startup"
Did you know that the worldās first computers filled entire rooms? Now we can carry even more computing power than those early machines in the palm of our hands, thanks to advancements in nano- and transistor technology. Transistors are the components in a computer that control the flow of electricity and therefore allow the computer …
Continue reading "Are transistors getting too small? (How small is too small?)"
The development of nanotechnology has been an exciting route to chemical innovation that has changed the way that we live. Fields as diverse as medicine, water treatment, and energy storage have all used nanoscale devices and nano-sized architectures to improve technologies related to human health, communications, and transportation. Nano is big business and projected to …
An acronym you have probably seen a whole lot of in recent years is LED, or Light Emitting Diode.Ā Long used only for low-intensity illumination (think of the blinking lights on the front of your computer), the new generations of LEDs are being used to replace all sorts of light sources from car head lights …
Continue reading "Explainer: How does an LED work?"
Sustainable Nano 