National Institute of Standards & Technology NIST

NRI to lead new five-year effort to develop post-CMOS electronics

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced the selection of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, a collaboration of several key firms in the semiconductor industry, to support university-centered research for the development of after-the-next-generation "nanoelectronics" technology.

Nanodevice builds electricity from tiny pieces

A team of scientists at the National Physical Laboratory and University of Cambridge has made a significant advance in using nano-devices to create accurate electrical currents.

UK nanodevice builds electricity from tiny pieces

The device drives electrical current by manipulating individual electrons, one-by-one at very high speed.

NIST Announces $2.6 million funding for novel semiconductor research

To launch the effort, NIST plans to provide up to $2.6 million in federal cost-shared funding for a project's first year, with the potential for continued funding for up to five years.

DOE awards over $7 million to advance hydrogen storage technologies

Energy department awards more than $7 mllion for inovative hydrogen storage technologies in fuel cell electric vehicles.

Zhong Lin Wang receives recognition for innovative technology

Wang, a physicist who joined Georgia Tech in 1995, has almost single handedly launched a new field of research that takes advantage of the unique properties of zinc oxide nanostructures.

Giant piezoelectric effect to improve energy harvesting devices

Researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute at Penn State are part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers from universities and national laboratories across the U.S. who have fabricated piezoelectric thin films with record-setting properties.

Microfabrication breakthrough for piezoelectric material

Integrating a complex, single-crystal material with "giant" piezoelectric properties onto silicon, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and physicists can fabricate low-voltage, near-nanoscale electromechanical devices that could lead to improvements in high-resolution 3-D imaging, signal processing, communications, energy harvesting, sensing, and actuators for nanopositioning devices, among others.

Findings could lead to better hydrogen storage

New research by a team from MIT and several other institutions analyzes the performance of a class of materials considered a promising candidate for such storage: activated carbon that incorporates a platinum catalyst, so hydrogen atoms can bond directly to the surface of carbon particles and then be released when needed.

Grant for SWeNT for printed thin film transistors

Southwest Nanotechnologies Has Received A $500,000 Oklahoma Research Grant To Commercialize Printed Thin Film Transistors Using Single-walled Carbon Nanotube Inks In Collaboration With Panasonic Boston Laboratory

Northeast Ohio's FlexMatters Cluster attracts $14 million in 2010

Northeast Ohio's flexible electronics cluster experienced significant growth in 2010 by attracting $14 million in capital from public and private sources, according to a recent analysis by NorTech.

Epitaxial graphene shows promise for replacing silicon in electronics

Move over silicon. There's a new electronic material in town, and it goes fast.

Flexible graphene memristors

Graphene oxide is the latest flavor of memristor, and it works on bendable plastic

Water could hold answer to graphene nanoelectronics

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed a new method for using water to tune the band gap of the nanomaterial graphene, opening the door to new graphene-based transistors and nanoelectronics.

NIST Arrays Are Step Toward Mass Production of Nanowires

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have cultivated many thousands of nanocrystals in what looks like a pinscreen or "pin art" on silicon, a step toward reliable mass production of semiconductor nanowires for millionths-of-a-meter-scale devices such as sensors and lasers.

Energy harvesting and the smart grid

The term Smart Grid has been used for decades to mean anything from "a ring main for a country" to the far more responsive, interactive and intrusive electricity distribution systems of the future. These will become fractal in nature because they will seamlessly incorporate home networks, smart meters, electricity generation on your house and maybe even personal generation and use of electricity as reported in Energy Harvesting Journal.

Electric Vehicles and the Smart Grid

The term Smart Grid has been used for decades to mean anything from "a ring main for a country" to the far more responsive, interactive, scalable and intrusive electricity distribution systems of the future.

ZigBee for Energy Harvesting and Very Low Power

The ZigBee standards lead to electronic systems that are inherently self organizing (self calibrating) and self healing and such devices use much less power and can be deployed in larger numbers than the original WiFi and Bluetooth options. However, we now have low power WiFi and Bluetooth and many proprietary protocols for wireless sensor networks that use much less power than ZigBee, power being a constant worry because WSN needs so much electricity and yet the devices usually need to be small. So what are the ZigBee enthusiasts doing to stay relevant?

Scientists address 'Wrinkles' in Transparent Film Development

A closer look at a promising nanotube coating that might one day improve solar cells has turned up a few unexpected wrinkles, according to new research* conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and North Dakota State University (NDSU)—research that also may help scientists iron out a solution.

Paintable electronics

This airbrush technique deposits a well-studied material called P3HT to create spray-on transistors, which perform comparably to lab-standard equivalents made by spin coating. A multidisciplinary research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found* that an organic semiconductor may be a viable candidate for creating large-area electronics, such as solar cells and displays that can be sprayed onto a surface as easily as paint.