Breakthrough in converting heat waste to electricity

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Northwestern University have placed nanocrystals of rock salt into lead telluride, creating a material that can harness electricity from heat-generating items such as vehicle exhaust systems, ...

Parabolic mirrors concentrate sunlight to power lasers

Legend tells of Greek engineer and inventor Archimedes using parabolic mirrors to create "heat rays" to burn the ships attacking Syracuse. Though the underpinnings of that claim are speculative at best, a modern-day team ...

Non-aqueous solvent supports DNA nanotechnology

Scientists around the world are using the programmability of DNA to assemble complex nanometer-scale structures. Until now, however, production of these artificial structures has been limited to water-based environments, ...

3-D view of 1-D nanostructures

Semiconductor gallium nitride nanowires show great promise in the next generation of nano- and optoelectronic systems. Recently, researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering have found new piezoelectric properties of ...

Confining light for use in nanophotonic devices

"There is a strong drive to make smaller and smaller devices," Hui Cao tells PhysOrg.com. "However, there are limitations to what we can do. We want faster devices than what we can get from electronics, so we are looking ...

A new way to build nanostructures

The making of three-dimensional nanostructured materials -- ones that have distinctive shapes and structures at scales of a few billionths of a meter -- has become a fertile area of research, producing materials that are ...

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