Monday, 18 July 2011

Harvesting Energy from Water Flow over Graphene

Prashant Dhiman, Fazel Yavari, Xi Mi, Hemtej Gullapalli§, Yunfeng Shi, Pulickel M. Ajayan§, and Nikhil Koratkar*


Nano Lett., Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/nl2011559
Publication Date (Web): July 12, 2011

Water flow over carbon nanotubes has been shown to generate an induced voltage in the flow direction due to coupling of ions present in water with free charge carriers in the nanotubes. However, the induced voltages are typically of the order of a few millivolts, too small for significant power generation. Here we perform tests involving water flow with various molarities of hydrochloric acid (HCl) over few-layered graphene and report order of magnitude higher induced voltages for graphene as compared to nanotubes. The power generated by the flow of 0.6 M HCl solution at 0.01 m/sec was measured to be 85 nW for a 30 × 16 μm size graphene film, which equates to a power per unit area of 175 W/m2. Molecular dynamics simulations indicate that the power generation is primarily caused by a net drift velocity of adsorbed Cl ions on the continuous graphene film surface.


Wednesday, 13 July 2011

13 July - Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Devices with Electroluminescence Tunable over the Entire Visible Spectrum

Today Krisztian is presenting the paper:


Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Devices with Electroluminescence Tunable over the Entire Visible Spectrum


Polina O. Anikeeva, Jonathan E. Halpert§, Moungi G. Bawendi§ and Vladimir Bulovi*

Nano Lett.20099 (7), pp 2532–2536
DOI: 10.1021/nl9002969
Publication Date (Web): June 10, 2009

Improvements in quantum dot light-emitting device (QD-LED) performance are achieved by the choice of organic charge transporting layers, by use of different colloidal QDs for the different parts of the visible spectrum, and by utilizing a recently demonstrated robust QD deposition method. Spectrally narrow electroluminescence of our QD-LEDs is tuned over the entire visible wavelength range from λ = 460 nm (blue) to λ = 650 nm (deep red). By printing close-packed monolayers of different QD types inside an identical QD-LED structure, we demonstrate that different color QD-LEDs with QDs of different chemistry can be fabricated on the same substrate. We discuss mechanisms responsible for efficiency increase for green (4-fold) and orange (30%) QD-LEDs as compared to previous reports and outline challenges associated with achieving high-efficiency blue QD-LEDs.


Wednesday, 6 July 2011

06 July - Electrically Induced Ferromagnetism at Room Temperature in Cobalt-Doped Titanium Dioxide

  1. Today Peiman is presenting the following paper:

  1. Science 27 May 2011: 
    Vol. 332 no. 6033 pp. 1065-1067 
    DOI: 10.1126/science.1202152
  1. Y. Yamada1,*
  2. K. Ueno2,3,*
  3. T. Fukumura3,4,
  4. H. T. Yuan5,6
  5. H. Shimotani5,6
  6. Y. Iwasa5,6
  7. L. Gu2
  8. S. Tsukimoto2,
  9. Y. Ikuhara2,7,8, and 
  10. M. Kawasaki1,2,5,6

The electric field effect in ferromagnetic semiconductors enables switching of the magnetization, which is a key technology for spintronic applications. We demonstrated electric field–induced ferromagnetism at room temperature in a magnetic oxide semiconductor, (Ti,Co)O2, by means of electric double-layer gating with high-density electron accumulation (>1014 per square centimeter). By applying a gate voltage of a few volts, a low-carrier paramagnetic state was transformed into a high-carrier ferromagnetic state, thereby revealing the considerable role of electron carriers in high-temperature ferromagnetism and demonstrating a route to room-temperature semiconductor spintronics.


Monday, 4 July 2011

Experimental Acoustic Ground Cloak in Air


Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 253901 (2011) [4 pages]


We present the design, fabrication, and performance analysis for a class of two-dimensional acoustic cloaking coatings in air. Our approach takes advantage of transformation acoustics and linear coordinate transformations that result in shells which are homogeneous, broadband, and compact. The required material parameters are highly anisotropic; however, we show that they are easily achievable in practice in metamaterials made of perforated plastic plates. The good performance of the fabricated design is assessed from measurements of the sound field produced around the cloak by a broadband source. The remarkably low complexity of the device made of perforated plastic plates shows that sound in air can be fully and effectively manipulated using realizable transformation acoustics devices.


Friday, 1 July 2011

Pen-on-Paper Flexible Electronics


  1. Analisa Russo1
  2. Bok Yeop Ahn1
  3. Jacob J. Adams3
  4. Eric B. Duoss1
  5. Jennifer T. Bernhard3
  6. Jennifer A. Lewis1,2,*
Article first published online: 20 JUN 2011
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201101328


Pen-on-paper flexible electronics are fabricated using a conductive silver ink-filled rollerball pen. This approach provides a low-cost, portable route for fabricating conductive text, electronic art, interconnects for light emitting diode (LED) arrays, and three-dimensional (3D) antennas on paper.