Filed in archive
Computing & Infotech
by george elvin on July 17, 2006
"Traditional ways of making computer chips, fiber-optic lasers, digital camera image sensors - the building blocks of the information age - are costly in time, money, and energy," says Professor Ted Sargent, leader of the research group.
Conventional semiconductors have produced spectacular results, but they rely on growing atomically-perfect crystals at 1,000 degrees Celsius and above.
The Toronto team instead cooked up semiconductor nanoparticles particles in a flask containing extra-pure oleic acid, the main ingredient in olive oil. They then placed a drop of solution on a glass slide patterned with gold electrodes and forced the drop to spread out into a smooth, continuous semiconductor film using a process called spin-coating. They then gave their film a two-hour bath in methanol. Once the solvent evaporated, it left an 800 nanometer-thick layer of the light-sensitive nanoparticles.
At room temperature, the paint-on photodetectors were about ten times more sensitive to infrared rays than the sensors that are currently used in military night-vision and biomedical imaging.
"These are exquisitely sensitive detectors of light," says Sargent. "It's now clear that solution-processed electronics can combine outstanding performance with low cost." (photo University of Toronto)
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/29407
Mr Wong
Vote for Paint-on nanoparticles outperform computer chips:
|
Rating: 7.00 out of 3 vote(s) cast.
|
Subscribe
Use the search to look for other interesting posts
| RSS | See all blog subscribe options |
|
What is RSS? | |
| Yahoo! |
|
| Addthis |
|
| Bloglines |
|
| Newsletter | |
| Follow us on Twitter! |










