(NanoRealm) - Will we soon be plugging our mobile phone into our t-shirt instead of putting in a battery? This vision is not totally out of reach: the first steps in this direction have already been taken.

Now a team led by Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA) and Jong Min Kim of Samsung Electronics in South Korea is introducing a prototype for a flexible energy storage device that can be worked into textiles. As the scientists report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, this supercapacitor is made of a very special arrangement of zinc oxide nanowires grown on conventional fibers.

Although smaller, lighter components are constantly being developed, most devices for energy generation and storage are much too bulky and heavy for increasingly miniaturized electronic devices of the future. Supercapacitors are an interesting alternative to batteries and rechargeable batteries for energy storage. They can be recharged almost endlessly and extremely fast; however, previous examples have not been flexible or light enough.

The research team has now developed a prototype for a high-efficiency fiber-based electrochemical micro-supercapacitor that uses zinc oxide nanowires as electrodes. The substrate for one of the electrode is a flexible, fine plastic wire; for the other electrode it is a fiber made of Kevlar. Kevlar is the material used to make bulletproof vests. The researchers were able to grow zinc oxide nanowires on each of these substrates. Additional coatings with materials like gold and manganese oxide could further improve the charge capacitance. Using tweezers, the researchers then wrapped each of the plastic wires with a Kevlar fiber. This assembly was then embedded in a solid gel electrolyte that separates the two electrodes and allows for the necessary charge transport. A bundle of these fibers could be processed to form a thread.


Zinc oxide has special advantages over conventional supercapacitor materials,: it can be grown on any desired substrate in any form at low temperature (below 100 °C) and it is both biocompatible and environmentally friendly.

A particularly intriguing application would be the use of these new charge-storage media in combination with flexible fiber nanogenerators, which Wang and his team have previously developed. The wearer’s heartbeat and steps, or even a light wind, would be enough to move the piezoelectric zinc oxide nanowires in the fibers, generating electrical current.

In the form of a "power shirt" such a system could deliver enough current for small electronic devices, such as mobile phones or small sensors like those used to warn firemen of toxins.

For More information: Zhong Lin Wang, Fiber Supercapacitors Made of Nanowire-Fiber Hybrid Structures for Wearable/Flexible Energy Storage, Angewandte Chemie International Edition,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201006062

(NanoRealm) - A researcher at North Carolina State University has developed a computer chip that can store an unprecedented amount of data - enough to hold an entire library's worth of information on a single chip. The new chip stems from a breakthrough in the use of nanodots, or nanoscale magnets, and represents a significant advance in computer-memory technology.

"We have created magnetic nanodots that store one bit of information on each nanodot, allowing us to store over one billion pages of information in a chip that is one square inch," says Dr. Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and author of the research.
The breakthrough is that these nanodots are made of single, defect-free crystals, creating magnetic sensors that are integrated directly into a silicon electronic chip. These nanodots, which can be made uniformly as small as six nanometers in diameter, are all precisely oriented in the same way - allowing programmers to reliably read and write data to the chips.

The chips themselves can be manufactured cost-effectively, but the next step is to develop magnetic packaging that will enable users to take advantage of the chips - using something, such as laser technology, that can effectively interact with the nanodots.

The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, was presented as an invited talk April 7 at the 2011 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco.


More information: “Self Assembly of epitaxial magnetic nanostructures”, Author: J. Narayan, North Carolina State University, Presented: April 7, 2010, 2011 MRS Spring Meeting, San Francisco.

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Source: http://www.physorg.com/news191668936.html

(NanoRealm) - A team of scientists has developed a way to control the direction of light on the nanoscale, by developing miniaturized television aerials made from gold nanorods, which can pave the way for quantum computing networks in the future.

At the moment, quantum physicists use cumbersome apparatus to try to keep track of photons, for instance, building large vacuum cavities with mirrored walls to guide light.

"It's funny that to control the small quantum world, you need huge pieces of equipment," said Holger Hofmann, at the Department of Quantum Matter at Hiroshima University in Japan.

Now, according to a report in Nature News, Hofmann and his colleagues have developed a way to control the direction of light on the nanoscale.

Their technique is based on the workings of the 'Yagi-Uda' antenna commonly used to transmit and detect radio waves and often seen on rooftops as television aerials.

Hofmann stumbled on the idea by accident, while teaching his electromagnetism class how antennas work.

"The textbook didn't explain it well, and while trying to come up with my own picture, I realized that the same technique could work on the nanoscale," he said.

A standard Yagi-Uda antenna is made up of a set of parallel metal rods that gradually decrease in length.

An electrical signal is fed into the second longest rod, setting it vibrating and producing a driving electromagnetic wave that spreads out in all directions.

This stimulates the neighbouring rods to oscillate and emit secondary waves.

Both the length and spacing of adjacent rods are carefully set at fractions of the wavelength of the driving wave, so that the secondary waves interfere with the driving wave, amplifying it along the forward direction and reducing it along the sideways and backward directions.

Hofmann and his colleagues realized that gold nanorods should produce the same effect on the nanoscale - but here, the length-to-width ratio of the rods, rather than their length and spacing, is important.

The team etched their mini gold antenna into a glass substrate and drove it directly with red laser light.

The tricky part was to ensure that just one nanorod was driven by the incoming light, just as only one metal rod is in the Yugi-Uda antenna.

To ensure this, the team tilted the chosen nanorod by 45 degrees relative to its neighbours and stimulated it using laser light that was polarized at the same angle.

They then monitored the direction of light transmitted out of the glass substrate.

The result was actually better than their theory predicted, according to Hoffman, with roughly two-thirds of the input light being directed largely forwards. (ANI)

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Provdied by ANI
Souce: Sifynews (http://sify.com/news/nano-antennas-could-pave-way-for-quantum-computing-networks-news-international-kdpn4ddagfc.html)

(NanoRealm) - Most polymers -- materials made of long, chain-like molecules -- are very good insulators for both heat and electricity. But an MIT team has found a way to transform the most widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a material that conducts heat just as well as most metals, yet remains an electrical insulator.

The new process causes the polymer to conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction, unlike metals, which conduct equally well in all directions. This may make the new material especially useful for applications where it is important to draw heat away from an object, such as a computer processor chip. The work is described in a paper published on March 7 in Nature Materials.

The key to the transformation was getting all the polymer molecules to line up the same way, rather than forming a chaotic tangled mass, as they normally do. The team did that by slowly drawing a polyethylene fiber out of a solution, using the finely controllable cantilever of an atomic force microscope, which they also used to measure the properties of the resulting fiber.
This fiber was about 300 times more thermally conductive than normal polyethylene along the direction of the individual fibers, says the team's leader, Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and director of MIT's Pappalardo Micro and Nano Engineering Laboratories.


The high thermal conductivity could make such fibers useful for dissipating heat in many applications where metals are now used, such as solar hot water collectors, heat exchangers and electronics.

Chen explains that most attempts to create polymers with improved thermal conductivity have focused on adding in other materials, such as carbon nanotubes, but these have achieved only modest increases in conductivity because the interfaces between the two kinds of material tend to add thermal resistance. "The interfaces actually scatter heat, so you don't get much improvement," Chen says. But using this new method, the conductivity was enhanced so much that it was actually better than that of about half of all pure metals, including iron and platinum.
Producing the new fibers, in which the polymer molecules are all aligned instead of jumbled, required a two-stage process, explains graduate student Sheng Shen, the lead author of the paper. The polymer is initially heated and drawn out, then heated again to stretch it further. "Once it solidifies at room temperature, you can't do any large deformation," Shen says, "so we heat it up twice."


Even greater gains are likely to be possible as the technique is improved, says Chen, noting that the results achieved so far already represent the highest thermal conductivity ever seen in any polymer material. Already, the degree of conductivity they produce, if such fibers could be made in quantity, could provide a cheaper alternative to metals used for heat transfer in many applications, especially ones where the directional characteristics would come in handy, such as heat-exchanger fins (like the coils on the back of a refrigerator or in an air conditioner), cell-phone casings or the plastic packaging for computer chips. Other applications might be devised that take advantage of the material's unusual combination of thermal conductivity with light weight, chemical stability and electrical insulation.

So far, the team has just produced individual fibers in a laboratory setting, Chen says, but "we're hoping that down the road, we can scale up to a macro scale," producing whole sheets of material with the same properties.

Ravi Prasher, an engineer at Intel, says that "the quality of the work from Prof. Chen's group has always been phenomenal," and adds that "this is a very significant finding" that could have many applications in electronics. The remaining question, he says, is "how scalable is the manufacturing of these fibers? How easy is it to integrate these fibers in real-world applications?"

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More information: Shen S, Henry A, Tong J, Zheng R, Gang Chen G. Polyethylene nanofibres with very high thermal conductivities. Nature Materials. 7 March 2010.

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://web.mit.edu/)

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news187187249.html

(NanoRealm) - A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say.

The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials on March 7. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.

Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave — a moving pulse of heat — traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current.

The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes — submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a chicken-wire-like lattice of carbon atoms. These tubes, just a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) in diameter, are part of a family of novel carbon molecules, including buckyballs and graphene sheets, that have been the subject of intensive worldwide research over the last two decades.

A previously unknown phenomenon

In the new experiments, each of these electrically and thermally conductive nanotubes was coated with a layer of a reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposing. This fuel was then ignited at one end of the nanotube using either a laser beam or a high-voltage spark, and the result was a fast-moving thermal wave traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube like a flame speeding along the length of a lit fuse. Heat from the fuel goes into the nanotube, where it travels thousands of times faster than in the fuel itself. As the heat feeds back to the fuel coating, a thermal wave is created that is guided along the nanotube. With a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, this ring of heat speeds along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heating produced by that combustion, it turns out, also pushes electrons along the tube, creating a substantial electrical current.

Combustion waves — like this pulse of heat hurtling along a wire — “have been studied mathematically for more than 100 years,” Strano says, but he was the first to predict that such waves could be guided by a nanotube or nanowire and that this wave of heat could push an electrical current along that wire.

In the group’s initial experiments, Strano says, when they wired up the carbon nanotubes with their fuel coating in order to study the reaction, “lo and behold, we were really surprised by the size of the resulting voltage peak” that propagated along the wire.

After further development, the system now puts out energy, in proportion to its weight, about 100 times greater than an equivalent weight of lithium-ion battery.

The amount of power released, he says, is much greater than that predicted by thermoelectric calculations. While many semiconductor materials can produce an electric potential when heated, through something called the Seebeck effect, that effect is very weak in carbon. “There’s something else happening here,” he says. “We call it electron entrainment, since part of the current appears to scale with wave velocity.”
The thermal wave, he explains, appears to be entraining the electrical charge carriers (either electrons or electron holes) just as an ocean wave can pick up and carry a collection of debris along the surface. This important property is responsible for the high power produced by the system, Strano says.

Exploring possible applications

Because this is such a new discovery, he says, it’s hard to predict exactly what the practical applications will be. But he suggests that one possible application would be in enabling new kinds of ultra-small electronic devices — for example, devices the size of grains of rice, perhaps with sensors or treatment devices that could be injected into the body. Or it could lead to “environmental sensors that could be scattered like dust in the air,” he says.

In theory, he says, such devices could maintain their power indefinitely until used, unlike batteries whose charges leak away gradually as they sit unused. And while the individual nanowires are tiny, Strano suggests that they could be made in large arrays to supply significant amounts of power for larger devices.

The researchers also plan to pursue another aspect of their theory: that by using different kinds of reactive materials for the coating, the wave front could oscillate, thus producing an alternating current. That would open up a variety of possibilities, Strano says, because alternating current is the basis for radio waves such as cell phone transmissions, but present energy-storage systems all produce direct current. “Our theory predicted these oscillations before we began to observe them in our data,” he says.

Also, the present versions of the system have low efficiency, because a great deal of power is being given off as heat and light. The team plans to work on improving that.

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Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://web.mit.edu/)
Source: http://www.physorg.com/news187186888.html

(NanoRealm) - A study published in the American Chemical Society's journal Nano Letters reveals that thermocells based on carbon nanotube electrodes might eventually be used for generating electrical energy from heat discarded by chemical plants, automobiles and solar cell farms.

The research was a joint collaboration between Baratunde Cola, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, and an international team of researchers from the U.S., Australia, China, India and the Philippines.
Cola, director of Georgia Tech’s NanoEngineered Systems and Transport Research Group (NEST), described the study as a breakthrough in efficiently harvesting electrical energy from various sources of exhaust or wasted heat.

"Our NEST Lab was fortunate to team with Dr. Ray Baughman's NanoTech Institute at UT Dallas and Dr. Gordon Wallace's Intelligent Polymer Research Institute in Wollongong, Australia, in the final year of a long collaboration that solved key technical problems,” he said. “We brought fresh eyes, as well as our knowledge and experience with heat transfer engineering from the nanoscale to the scale of practical devices to the problem, which provided a key missing link. The team will together work to enable additional breakthroughs that are required for this technology to reach its full commercial potential."

Efficiently harvesting the thermal energy currently wasted in industrial plants or along pipelines could also create local sources of clean energy that in turn could be used to lower costs and shrink an organization’s energy footprint.

The new thermocells use nanotube electrodes that provide a threefold increase in energy conversion efficiency over conventional electrodes.

One of the demonstrated thermocells looks just like the button cell batteries used in watches, calculators and other small electronics. One key difference, however, is that these new thermocells can continuously generate electricity, instead of running down like a battery. The research netted other thermocells, as well, including electrolyte-filled, textile-separated nanotube sheets that can be wrapped around pipes carrying hot waste streams from manufacturing or electrical power plants. The temperature difference between the pipe and its surroundings produces an electrochemical potential difference between the carbon nanotube sheets, which thermocells utilize to generate electricity.

The research team estimates that multi-walled carbon nanotubes in large thermocells could eventually produce power at a cost of about $2.76 per watt from freely available waste energy, compared with a cost of $4.31 per watt for solar cells, which can only be used when the sun is shining. On a smaller scale, button cell-sized thermocells could be used to power sensors or electronic circuits.

The new thermocells take advantage of the exceptional electronic, mechanical, thermal and chemical properties of carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes’ giant surface area and unique electronic structure afforded by their small diameter and nearly one-dimensional structure offer high current densities, which enhance the output of electrical power and the efficiency of energy harvesting.

"Georgians have worked with state support, and in partnership with initiatives such as the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech, to realize significant gains in renewable energy production,” Cola said. “But to become a leading energy state, we must increasingly explore new ways to extract and utilize all forms of energy. Harvesting waste heat as electricity is one direction our NEST Lab takes with international partners to help provide increased renewable energy options for Georgia and the world."

This research was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, The Welch Foundation and the Australian Research Council.

Cola recently received the 2009 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award for his work on solar energy conversion. As director of the NEST Lab, his research focuses on realizing the benefits of nanoscience in applications related to waste thermal energy harvesting, solar energy conversion, and thermal management of electronics and energy systems.

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Provided by Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: http://www.physorg.com/news186769267.html

(NanoRealm) - A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has developed a new approach for creating powerful nanodevices, and their discoveries could pave the way for other researchers to begin more widespread development of these devices.

The discoveries were published in the online edition of Nature Materials (Feb. 28). Chang-Beom Eom, a UW-Madison professor of materials science and engineering, leads the team, which includes UW-Madison graduate students and research associates and collaborators from Penn State University, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley.

Particular metal-oxide materials (including some ferrites) have a unique magneto-electric property that allows the material to switch its magnetic field when its polarization is switched by an electric field and vice versa. This property means these materials can be used as bases for devices that act like signal translators capable of producing electrical, magnetic or even optical responses, and the devices can store information in any of these forms.

This could produce a variety of magnetoelectric devices with a wide range of applications, such as new integrated circuits or tiny electronic devices with the information storage capacity of hard drives.

"We all have electric and magnetic devices that run independently, but sometimes we want these functions integrated into one device with one signal used for multiple responses," says Eom.
Essentially, Eom and his team have developed a road map to help researchers "couple" a material's electric and magnetic mechanisms. As researchers run a current through a magnetoelectric device, electric signals follow the electric field like a path. The signals' ultimate destination could be, as an example, a memory "bank" operated by a magnetic field. When the researchers switch the electric field, the signals encounter a fork in the path. Though both prongs of the fork head in a similar direction, one path is the correct one and will prompt the magnetic field to switch. This will allow the information carried by the signals to be stored in the bank. If the signals take the incorrect path, the magnetic state won't switch, the bank remains inaccessible, and the information is lost as soon as the electric field turns off.

In addition to determining the proper path for the electric signals, the team has developed a matrix that ensures the cross-coupling effect is stable, or non-volatile, which allows for long-term data storage. This matrix is then embedded in thin films.

These two discoveries — the correct path and the stabilizing matrix — will allow other researchers to study the fundamental physics of cross-coupling in materials and begin investigating how to turn the many possibilities of multifunctional devices into reality.

"People have been imagining multiple uses for cross-coupling," says Eom. "This work will allow us to make nonvolatile magnetoelectric devices at the nanoscale, meaning we can store the information even after the power is turned off."

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More information: Journal: http://www.nature.com/nmat/index.html
Provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison (http://www.wisc.edu/)

Source from: http://www.physorg.com/news186670513.html

(NanoRealm) - Malaysia’s pioneer in Nanotechnology research Professor Halimaton Hamdan is excited that things are picking up for Science and Technology in the country after a sluggish decade, writes SUZIEANA UDA NAGU

NANOTECHNOLOGY — an enabling science that has the potential for creating new knowledge and functional materials and systems — is set to shape and transform all areas of science in the future.

For example, it will revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry by changing the way drugs are produced and delivered.


Malaysia’s pioneer in Nanotechnology studies Professor Halimaton Hamdan says: “The content of a drug is less than 20 per cent of a tablet (drug carrier) — the rest are fillers and binding agents. But with Nanotechnology, we can encapsulate drugs in nanoparticles and use less binding agents.

“This requires further testing but, once proven, it will significantly improve the efficacy of drugs by reducing toxicity and increasing drug absorption, besides minimising costs.” Halimaton, who is the executive director of Enabling Science and Nanotechnology Research Alliance at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), lists the many potentials of Nanotechnology. “It has the prospect of producing clean water supply, greater agriculture production using less labour; and cheap and powerful energy generation.

“It is also a catalyst for green — clean, renewable and non-toxic — technology,” adds Halimaton during her recent talk on The Road Map of National Nanotechnology Initiatives at Universiti Industri Selangor, Shah Alam.

Halimaton is the recipient of the Merdeka Awards 2009 in the Health, Science and Technology category. She was the first awardee to kick off the second Merdeka Awards Lecture Series this year.

Established in 2007, the Merdeka Awards recognise individuals and organisations whose works have contributed to Malaysia’s growth and inspired greatness in its people (see accompanying report).

The 53-year-old made an outstanding contribution to the field of Nanotechnology for the discovery of Maerogel — Malaysian-made aerogel — a cost-effective material made from silica in rice husks, which produces high quality insulation material that can be applied to medicine and construction, among other areas.


The research on Maerogel is groundbreaking as it has significantly lowered the cost of producing commercial aeorogel — which looks like frozen smoke.


“Traditional aerogel costs about RM15,000 per kilogramme, whereas we can produce it for only RM5,000 per kilo,” says the Physical Chemistry professor.


Halimaton Hamdan made an outstanding contribution to Nanotechnology for the discovery of Maerogel — Malaysian-made aerogel.
The discovery had also earned her Product of the Year award from Britain’s International Clean Energy Circle in 2008.




Maerogel is just one of the many ventures Halimaton had helmed in her 10-year involvement in Nanotechnology research.


In the last decade alone, Halimaton had led 25 research programmes and 80 projects.


Halimaton considers the Merdeka prize the icing on to the cake as she prepares to commercialise Maerogel, which has been patented in Malaysia and 22 other countries, this year.


“We are in the midst of setting up our first plant in Nilai, Negri Sembilan under a spin-off company of UTM,” says Halimaton, who retires in 2013.


While Halimaton has enjoyed a productive decade, Nanotechnology research and development (R&D) in Malaysia is going through a sluggish phase.


At the turn of the 21st century, Malaysia was one of the first in Asia to advance in Nanotechnology research. However, local research on the area has been making little headway since.


In 2003, the Nanotechnology Technical Committee outlined a proposal to set up Malaysia’s own National Nanotechnology programme or centre.


It was only in 2005 that Nanotechnology was included in the Ninth Malaysia Plan, followed by the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2006.


The Initiative, among others, is to facilitate the formation of the National Nanotechnology Directorate — a central coordinating body which will drive Malaysia’s Nanotechnology policy and other R&D programmes.


“Attention on Nanotechnology died down after encouraging initial developments,” says Halimaton. Needless to say, Malaysia is currently at the bottom of the list of Asian countries which have made progress in Nanotechnology.


“If Malaysia aspires to be an advanced nation by 2020, it needs to venture into this fast-moving area of R&D to create its own products and know-how instead of being mere consumers of technology,” she adds.


But things are picking up for Science and Technology in Malaysia.


Last December, the National Innovation Council approved the setting up of the National Nanotechnology Directory, which compiles a list of Nanotechnology efforts in Malaysia.


Last month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched 2010 as the year for Innovation and Creativity in Malaysia. On top of that, the National Innovation Centre will be launched by April.


“The centre will oversee six focus areas and Nanotechnology is one of them,” says Halimaton, who also looks forward to the unveiling of the Nanotechnology Statement, which she hopes will happen soon.


The Statement comprises five core themes — promotion of Nanotechnology culture; tighter niches; enhanced networking; regulations and acts; and commercialisation and industrialisation.

“Hopefully, the Nanotechnology Statement will entice Malaysians to be a part of (the national) vision,” she adds.


Malaysia certainly stands to benefit from undertaking research efforts in Nanotechnology.


“The convergence of Nanotechnology with other fields, such as Biotechnology and Information and Communications Technology, can lead to significant economic, environmental and social opportunities and challenge,” says Halimaton.

Judging by the forward projections of the Nanotechnology market in 2014 — estimated to be worth US$2.6 trillion (RM9 trillion) — this area is a potential gold mine.


“Imagine if Malaysia captures only one per cent of the market; that is already US$26 billion!” What Malaysia needs to move forward is a well thought–out road map, which “will ensure a sustainable national development of Science and Technology”.


“We need not only political will but also a paradigm shift to succeed (in this). Scientists need to learn to work together, (despite their varied disciplines). So the onus is on the next generation to start this (interdisciplinary collaboration).


“Hopefully, this will allow Malaysia to compete with the best in the world on its own terms — by focusing on its strengths such as in Nanobiomedicine,” she adds.

Raise awareness with cartoons

LOCAL tertiary institutions are not be ready to offer degrees in Nanotechnology as there is no market for such graduates in the industry.

Malaysia’s pioneer in Nanotechnology studies Professor Halimaton Hamdan says: “It will be possible once industry has fully engaged in Nanotechnology.”

Halimaton, also executive director of Enabling Science and Nanotechnology Research Alliance at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), is the recipient of the Merdeka Awards 2009 in the Health, Science and Technology category.

The Professor of Physical Chemistry received her first degree in Chemistry from the United States’ Indiana University in Bloomington in 1979.

Upon graduating with a Master’s in Chemistry from Marshall University, Huntington in West Virginia, in 1981, Halimaton returned home to teach at UTM.

Four years later, she had the chance to pursue her doctorate in Physical
Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, the United Kingdom. It was at Cambridge that Halimaton developed an interest in Nanotechnology.

Awareness campaigns are crucial if local industries want to engage in nanotechnology.

“Everyone must know what Nanotechnology is about. Many still doubt the technology — whether or not it poses any health risks, for example,” she says.

Developing countries have been criticised for not taking into consideration public concerns over the use of Nanotechnology in manufacturing products, unlike in the West where awareness campaigns involve even preschool children.

“In Taiwan and the United States, cartoons are used to introduce the concept of Nanotechnology to kids,” says Halimaton, adding that Malaysia should do the same.

To pursue careers in Nanotechnology, students should pay attention to Science subjects.

“Identify which branch of Science — Physics, Chemistry or Biology — is your strength,” she adds.

Next week: UTM vice chancellor Professor Datuk Zaini Ujang, a recipient of the Merdeka Awards 2009 for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement

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Source: NST Online - http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/20100227215953/Article/index_html

(NanoRealm) - Researchers at Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland led by professor Jean-Pierre Colinge have reported in Nature Nanotechnology how they have designed and fabricated what is claimed to be the first junctionless transistor, which could significantly reduce power consumption and simplify the fabrication process for silicon chips, it is reckoned.

Existing transistors are based on junctions formed by adjacent layers of semiconductor material with different dopant-atom-induced polarities. Since controlling the junction allows current in the device to be turned on and off, it is the precise fabrication of this junction that determines the characteristics and quality of the transistor and is a major factor in production costs. However, as the distance between junctions drops below 10nm, extraordinarily high doping concentration gradients become necessary. Because of the laws of diffusion and the statistical nature of the distribution of the doping atoms, such junctions require increasingly complex and costly fabrication processes.

Tyndall’s new transistor consists of a silicon nanowire (about 30nm across just 10nm thick), and it has no junctions and no doping concentration gradients, since current flow is controlled by a ‘wedding ring’ gate structure around the wire. “These structures are easy to fabricate even on a miniature scale, which leads to the major breakthrough in potential cost reduction,” claims Colinge.

Another key challenge for the semiconductor industry is reducing the power consumption of complex transistors, with minimizing current leakage one of the main challenges. The new transistors — which can be made to have full CMOS functionality — have near-ideal subthreshold slope, extremely low leakage currents, and less degradation of mobility with gate voltage and temperature than classical transistors, Tyndall claims. “They have the potential of operating faster and using less energy than the conventional transistors used in today’s microprocessors,” says Colinge.

The junctionless transistor resembles the first ideal transistor structure, proposed in 1925, but to-date no-one had been able to fabricate it, continues Colinge. He attributes Tyndall’s junctionless transistor to the ability to fabricate a silicon nanowire with a diameter of just a few dozen atoms using electron-beam writing techniques and commercial silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers.

“We are beginning to talk about these results with some of the world’s leading semiconductor companies, and are receiving a lot of interest in further development and possible licensing of the technology,” says Tyndall’s CEO, professor Roger Whatmore.

The work was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, and is also underpinned by substantial investments in Tyndall by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment and the Higher Education Authority, comments Whatmore.

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Source: Semiconductor today - http://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2010/MARCH/TYNDALL_010310.htm

Visit: www.nature.com

Visit: www.tyndall.ie/control

(NanoRealm) - Iranian Engineers suggested a new method for lining internal surfaces of pipes, steel and aluminum tubes and bars to fight against common erosions and corrosions.

"First, the surface of aluminum metal was coated by nickel through mechanical alloying (MA) method. To do so, nickel powder together with aluminum samples of cubic form were ball-milled in a planetary ball-mill for various durations and different amounts of the powder.

Such different operational conditions led triggered chemical/diffusional interactions, alloying and formation of new intermetallic phases," Rasoul Pouriamanesh, a member of the research team at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) said to the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council, elaborating on the steps of the research.

Noting that intermetallic phases like Ni-Al, Al3Ni and Ni3Al were formed inside the coating layer, Pouriamanesh reiterated that it was revealed that the reactions involved (all of which are exothermic) caused local temperature increases and promoted a better cling of layer to target at the spots where the reactions occurred.

"The coating layers were consisted of nanoparticles with different size distributions. After annealing, the microstructures and sizes of the particles were investigated to find the optimal conditions for obtaining perfect coated metal surfaces," he added.

Pouriamanesh referred to "achieving a homogeneous, poreless and uniform nanostructure inside the coating layer (which facilitates metal diffusions and formation of intermetallic phases of Al-Ni" as the outcome of the research.

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Source: FarNews - http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8812030880

Stanford researcher Yi Cui and his team are re-conceptualizing batteries using nanotechnology

(NanoRealm) - By dipping ordinary paper or fabric in a special ink infused with nanoparticles, Stanford engineer Yi Cui has found a way to cheaply and efficiently manufacture lightweight paper batteries and supercapacitors (which, like batteries, store energy, but by electrostatic rather than chemical means), as well as stretchable, conductive textiles known as "eTextiles" – capable of storing energy while retaining the mechanical properties of ordinary paper or fabric.

While the technology is still new, Cui's team has envisioned numerous functional uses for their inventions. Homes of the future could one day be lined with energy-storing wallpaper. Gadget lovers would be able to charge their portable appliances on the go, simply plugging them into an outlet woven into their T-shirts. Energy textiles might also be used to create moving-display apparel, reactive high-performance sportswear and wearable power for a soldier's battle gear.

The key ingredients in developing these high-tech products are not visible to the human eye. Nanostructures, which can be assembled in patterns that allow them to transport electricity, may provide the solutions to a number of problems encountered with electrical storage devices currently available on the market.

The type of nanoparticle used in the Cui group's experimental devices varies according to the intended function of the product – lithium cobalt oxide is a common compound used for batteries, while single-walled carbon nanotubes, or SWNTs, are used for supercapacitors.

Cui, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, leads a research group that investigates new applications of nanoscale materials. The objective, said Cui, is not only to supply answers to theoretical inquiries but also to pursue projects with practical value. Recently, his team has focused on ways to integrate nanotechnology into the realm of energy development.

"Energy storage is a pretty old research field," said Cui. "Supercapacitors, batteries – those things are old. How do you really make a revolutionary impact in this field? It requires quite a dramatic difference of thinking."

While electrical energy storage devices have come a long way since Alessandro Volta debuted the world's first electrical cell in 1800, the technology is facing yet another revolution. Current methods of manufacturing energy storage devices can be capital intensive and environmentally hazardous, and the end products have noticeable performance constraints – conventional lithium ion batteries have a limited storage capacity and are costly to manufacture, while traditional capacitors provide high power but at the expense of energy storage capacity.


With a little help from new science, the batteries of the future may not look anything like the bulky metal units we've grown accustomed to. Nanotechnology is favored as a remedy both for its economic appeal and its capability to improve energy performance in devices that integrate it. Replacing the carbon (graphite) anodes found in lithium ion batteries with anodes of silicon nanowires, for example, has the potential to increase their storage capacity by 10 times, according to experiments conducted by Cui's team.

Silicon had previously been recognized as a favorable anode material because it can hold a larger amount of lithium than carbon. But applications of silicon were limited by its inability to sustain physical stress – namely, the fourfold volume increase that silicon undergoes when lithium ions attach themselves to a silicon anode in the process of charging a battery, as well as the shrinkage that occurs when lithium ions are drawn out as it discharges. The result was that silicon structures would disintegrate, causing anodes of this material to lose much if not all of their storage capacity.

Cui and collaborators demonstrated in previous publications in Nature, Nanotechnology and Nano Letters that the use of silicon nanowire battery electrodes, mechanically capable of withstanding the absorption and discharge of lithium ions, was one way to sidestep the problem.

The findings hold promise for the development of rechargeable lithium batteries offering a longer life cycle and higher energy capacity than their contemporaries. Silicon nanowire technology may one day find a home in electric cars, portable electronic devices and implantable medical appliances.

Cui now hopes to direct his research toward studying both the "hard science" behind the electrical properties of nanomaterials and designing real-world applications.

"This is the right time to really see what we learn from nanoscience and do practical applications that are extremely promising," said Cui. "The beauty of this is, it combines the lowest cost technology that you can find to the highest tech nanotechnology to produce something great. I think this is a very exciting idea … a huge impact for society."

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The Cui group's latest research on energy storage devices was detailed in papers published in the online editions of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2009 ("Highly Conductive Paper for Energy-Storage Devices") and Nano Letters in January 2010 ("Stretchable, Porous and Conductive Energy Textiles").

Cui's talk at the symposium "Nanotechnology: Will Nanomaterials Revolutionize Energy Applications?" is scheduled for 9:50 a.m. Feb. 20 in Room 1B of the San Diego Convention Center.

Video/photos:
Conductive eTextiles: Stanford finds a new use for cloth
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/february1/batteries-from-cloth-020510.html

At Stanford, nanotubes + ink + paper = instant battery
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december7/nanotubes-ink-paper-120709.html

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/su-nse021910.php

(NanoRealm)- Welding uses heat to join pieces of metal in everything from circuits to skyscrapers. But Rice University researchers have found a way to beat the heat on the nanoscale.

Jun Lou, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and materials science, and his group have discovered that gold wires between three-billionths and 10-billionths of a meter wide weld themselves together quite nicely – without heat.

They report in today's online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology that clean gold nanowires with identical atomic structures will merge into a single wire that loses none of its electrical and mechanical properties. The process works just as well with silver nanowires, which bond with each other or with gold.

This cold-welding process has been observed on the macro scale for decades, Lou said. Clean, flat pieces of similar metals can be made to bond under high pressure and in a vacuum. But only Lou and his colleagues have seen the process happen on the nanoscale, under an electron microscope.

As so often happens in basic research, that's not what they were looking for at all. Lou and Rice graduate student Yang Lu, with collaborators at Sandia National Laboratories and Brown University, were trying to determine the tensile strength of gold nanowires by attaching one end of a wire to a probe in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and the other to a tiny cantilever spring called an atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe.

Pulling the wire apart gave the team a measurement of its strength. What they didn't expect to see was the broken wire mending itself when its ends or sides touched. Measurements showed the reconnected wire was as strong as before.

"Before you can actually stretch something, you need to clamp it well," said Lou, who received a Young Investigators Research Program grant from the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research last year. "During the manipulation process, we observed this type of welding behavior all the time.

"Initially, we didn't pay attention to it because it didn't seem significant. But after doing a little research on the field, I realized we discovered something that may be useful."

In testing, Lou found the nanowires could be snapped and welded many times. Mended wires never broke again at the same spot; this attests to the strength of the new bond.

The wire's electrical properties also seemed unaffected by repeated breaking and welding. "We'd break a wire and reweld it 11 times and check the electrical properties every time. All the numbers were very close," he said.

The keys to a successful weld are the nanowire's single crystalline structure and matching orientation. "There are a lot of surface atoms, very active, that participate in the diffusion at the nanoscale," Lou said. "We tried gold and silver, and they weld in the same way as long as you satisfy the crystalline-orientation requirement."

Lou sees the discovery opening new paths for researchers looking at molecular-scale electronics. He said teams at Harvard and Northwestern are working on ways to pattern arrays of nanowires, and incorporating cold welding could simplify their processes. "If you're building high-density electronic devices, these kinds of phenomena will be very useful," he said, noting that heat-induced welds on the nanoscale run the risk of damaging the materials' strength or conductivity.

Lou said the discovery has caused a stir among the few he's told. "Different people see different aspects: Electrical engineers see the application side. Theory people see some interesting physics behind this behavior. We hope this paper will encourage more fundamental study."

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The paper's co-authors include Jian Yu Huang, a scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Sandia National Laboratories; and Professor Shouheng Sun and former graduate student Chao Wang of Brown University.

The National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research supported the project.

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Source: Rice University (web)

Paper: "Cold welding of ultrathin gold nanowires" by Yang Lu, Jian Yu Huang, Chao Wang, Shouheng Sun & Jun Lou

(NanoRealm) - A tiny scaffold-like titanium structure of Nanonets coated with silicon particles could pave the way for faster, lighter and longer-lasting Lithium-ion batteries, according to a team of Boston College chemists who developed the new anode material using nanotechnology.

The web-like Nanonets developed in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang offer a unique structural strength, more surface area and greater conductivity, which produced a charge/re-charge rate five to 10 times greater than typical Lithium-ion anode material, a common component in batteries for a range of consumer electronics, according to findings published in the current online edition of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

In addition, the Nanonets proved exceptionally durable, showing a negligible drop-off in capacity during charge and re-charge cycles. The researchers observed an average of 0.1% capacity fade per cycle between the 20th and the 100th cycles.

"As researchers pursue the next generation of re-chargeable Lithium-ion battery technology, a premium has been placed on increased power and a greater battery life span," said Wang. "In that context, the Nanonet device makes a giant leap toward those two goals and gives us a superior anode material."

Lithium-ion batteries are commonly used in consumer electronics devices. This type of rechargeable battery allows Lithium ions to move from the anode electrode to the cathode when in use. When charged, the ions move from cathode back to the anode.

The structure and conductivity of the Nanonets improved the ability to insert and extract Lithium ions from the particulate silicon coating, the team reported. Running at a charge/discharge rate of 8,400 milliamps per gram (mA/g) - which is approximately five to 10 times greater than similar devices - the specific capacity of the material was greater than 1,000 milliamps-hour per gram (mA-h/g). Typically, laptop Lithium-ion batteries are rated anywhere between 4,000 and 12,000 mA/h, meaning it would only take between four and 12 grams of the Nanonet anode material to achieve similar capacity.

Wang said the capability to preserve the crystalline titanium silicon core during the charge/discharge process was the key to achieving the high performance of the Nanonet anode material. Additional research in his lab will examine the performance of the Nanonet as a cathode material.

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News adapted from PhyOrg.com

More information: View the Nano Letters paper at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl903345f

Provided by Boston College (web)

Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of theUniversity of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

The results may provide a technological approach for higher efficiency energy harvesting with a nano-sized circuit that can power itself, potentially through sunlight. Recently, surface plasmons have been engineered into a variety of light-activated devices such as biosensors.

It is also possible that the system could be used for computer data storage. While the traditional computer processor represents data in binary form, either on or off, a computer that used such photovoltaic circuits could store data corresponding to wavelengths of light.

Because molecular compounds exhibit a wide range of optical and electrical properties, the strategies for fabrication, testing and analysis elucidated in this study can form the basis of a new set of devices in which plasmon-controlled electrical properties of single molecules could be designed with wide implications to plasmonic circuits and optoelectronic and energy-harvesting devices.

Dawn Bonnell, a professor of materials science and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at Penn, and colleagues fabricated an array of light sensitive, gold nanoparticles, linking them on a glass substrate. Minimizing the space between the nanoparticles to an optimal distance, researchers used optical radiation to excite conductive electrons, called plasmons, to ride the surface of the gold nanoparticles and focus light to the junction where the molecules are connected. The plasmon effect increases the efficiency of current production in the molecule by a factor of 400 to 2000 percent, which can then be transported through the network to the outside world.


In the case where the optical radiation excites a surface plasmon and the nanoparticles are optimally coupled, a large electromagnetic field is established between the particles and captured by gold nanoparticles. The particles then couple to one another, forming a percolative path across opposing electrodes. The size, shape and separation can be tailored to engineer the region of focused light. When the size, shape and separation of the particles are optimized to produce a “resonant” optical antennae, enhancement factors of thousands
might result.

Furthermore, the team demonstrated that the magnitude of the photoconductivity of the plasmon-coupled nanoparticles can be tuned independently of the optical characteristics of the molecule, a result that has significant implications for future nanoscale optoelectronic devices.

“If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a one-amp, one-volt sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long," Bonnell said.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal ACS Nano, was conducted by Bonnell, David Conklin and Sanjini Nanayakkara of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn; Tae-Hong Park of the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sceicnes at Penn; Parag Banerjee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland; and Michael J. Therien of the Department of Chemistry at Duke University.

This work was supported by the Nano/Bio Interface Center, National Science Foundation, the John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Fellowship and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Source: University of Pennsylvania(web)

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Medical Center are shaking up the world of materials science and cancer research on the cover of the February 2010 issue of the journal Nature Materials.

Brain cancer is notoriously difficult to treat with standard cancer-fighting methods, so scientists have been looking outside standard medicine and into nanomaterials as a treatment alternative.

"Our mission is to develop advanced 'smart' materials with unique properties," said Elena Rozhkova, a nanoscientist with Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials. "These efforts are directed to the improvement of the national quality of life, including creating novel medical technologies."

A team of scientists, including Rozhkova, Dong-Hyum Kim, Valentyn Novosad, Tijana Rajh and Samuel Bader from Argonne, and Maciej Lesniak and Ilya Ulasov from the University of Chicago Brain Tumor Center, developed a technique that uses gold-plated iron-nickel microdiscs connected to brain-cancer-seeking antibodies to fight cancer. The microdiscs are an example of a nanomagnetic material and can be used to probe cell mechanics and activate mechanosensitive ion channels, as well as to advance cancer therapies.
The discs posses a spin-vortex ground state and sit dormant on the cancer cell until a small alternating magnetic field is applied and the vortices shift, creating an oscillation. The energy from the oscillation is transferred to the cell and triggers apoptosis, or "cell suicide."
Since the antibodies are attracted only to brain cancer cells, the process leaves surrounding healthy cells unharmed. This makes them unlike traditional cancer treatment methods, such as chemotherapy and radiation, which negatively affect both cancer and normal healthy cells.


"We are very excited about this melding of materials and life sciences, but we are still in the very early research stages," materials scientist Valentyn Novosad said. "We are planning to begin testing in animals soon, but we are several years away from human trials. Everything is still experimental."

Along with continued testing and research of the treatment, scientists also have to examine any possible side effects that have been so far unseen in the laboratory.

"The use of nanomaterials for cancer treatment is not a new concept, but the ability to kill the cells without harming surrounding healthy cells has incredible potential," Rozhkova said. "Such a topic can only be approached with the expertise of markedly differing disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology and nanotechnology and can make a great impact in important areas of science and modern advanced technologies."

Source: Argone National Laboratory; Science Daily

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Information of Argone National Laboratory:
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

A world-renowned medical researcher discusses the key role that nanotechnology has begun to play in the detection and treatment of cancer in an article that will appear in the March 2010 edition of Mechanical Engineering magazine.

Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D., explains how advanced nanotech-based therapeutic agents possess characteristics that can effectively exploit the unique mechanical properties of cancer lesions and treat the various forms of the disease locally.

According to Ferrari, professor and chairman of the Department of Nanomedicine and Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas Health Science Center, some engineered nano-particles have demonstrated the capability to deliver drugs only to areas affected by disease, in the process protecting healthy cells and reducing debilitating side effects.


An important insight in understanding how to treat cancer, Ferrari says, is that aspects of the disease such as malignancy, metastasis, and angiogenesis (which is the growth of new arteries to feed tumors) are mechanical phenomena pertaining to the motion and transport of blood and cells. Nanotechnology-based therapies currently under experimentation for cancer treatment take advantage of some of these mechanical properties to find new ways to attack tumors.

This constitutes a new field that Ferrari and his medical colleagues refer to as “transport oncophysics.”

Formulations of drugs made from nano-particles have shown the ability to overcome biological barriers -- for example, by leaking through the blood vessels inside a tumor -- to concentrate on localized cancers. Because of this, nanotechnology-based drugs may be used in smaller doses and are less likely to disperse to healthy parts of the body. Ferrari and his team at The University of Texas also have designed nano-particles called Multi-Stage Vectors, which offer great promise in targeting individual cancer cells.

“We are on the brink of a new era in cancer treatment,” asserts Ferrari in the forthcoming article, titled “Infernal Mechanism.”

“The level of specificity that can be achieved through the use of the conceptual model of cancer as a mechanical disease – and through the power of the mechanical engineering design process – will result in greater therapeutic efficacy with reduced side effects,” he concludes.

Mauro Ferrari will speak on Feb. 8 at the First Global Congress on Nano-engineering for Medicine and Biology. The conference, sponsored by ASME, will open on Feb. 7 at the JW Marriott Houston, in Houston, Texas.

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Above information was sourced from ASME.

About ASME
ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world.

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