Monthly Archives: September 2011

Nanotechnology-enabled mining

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Robert Pelton, Songtao Yang, and colleagues at McMaster University (in Hamilton, Ontario) have devised a means of recovering almost 100% of the mining ores being separated in a process called froth flotation.  Here’s a description of the usual froth flotation process (from the Sept. 15, 201 news item in Science Daily),

Robert Pelton and colleagues explain that companies use a technique termed froth flotation to process about 450 million tons of minerals each year. The process involves crushing the minerals into small particles, and then floating the particles in water to separate the commercially valuable particles from the waste rock.

Currently, mining companies add a ‘collector’ particle which attaches to the valuable mineral particles, repels water, and causes the mineral to rise to the surface of the water for easy separation from the rocks.

The team from McMaster has developed a new collector particle, a hydrophobic (water-repelling) nanoparticle which ensures, in laboratory tests, almost 100% ore recovery.

Cameron Chai at Azonano offers a little more detail in his Sept. 17, 2011 article about the new technology. I haven’t seen mention in either article as to what happens to the waste resulting from froth flotation.

Some of the McMaster team’s funding came from Vale, formerly Inco a 100 year old nickel mining Canadian company.

Nanotechnology technician at your door who’s 75; Australian 16 year old graduates with nanotech university degree

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Here’s my caveat: I did not see this item carried on any site that I am familiar with and I was unable to track down a news release from the educational institution cited. Still, this item tickled my fancy so I’m including it. According to a Sept. 14, 2011 article by Robert Tidwell in the News Junky Journal,

Margaret D. Villegas, a 75-year-old grandmother, will graduate Tuesday after completing a 90-hour technician training program through the Center for the Advancement of Nanotechnology in San Bernardino.

The San Bernardino resident describes herself as a life-long learner. She decided to sign up for the nanotechnology program after a friend mentioned it to her.

“I don’t believe age is a number,” Villegas said. “Your brain is the last thing to age. You can keep learning and learning. I believe it keeps you younger.”

Villegas said she has no background in the hard sciences, but she was interested to learn how nanotechnology has been able to make scientific devices cheaper and smaller, using new materials.

Villegas graduated from the Donald E. Averill Applied Technology Training Center (ATTC).

At the other end of the spectrum, a 16 year Australian graduates with a nano degree. From the Sept. 18,2011 news item in The Australian,

LIKE most 16-year-olds Michael Kelly likes computer games, going to the movies and hanging out with his friends but unlike his peers, he is about to graduate from an Australian university with a degree in nanotechnology and photonics.

Michael started studying at Queensland’s Griffith University when he was 12 and is believed to be the youngest Australian ever to be accepted into university.

Within days of each other, a 75 year old woman in California graduates as a nanotechnology technician while the youngest Australian ever accepted into university graduates with a nanotechnology and photonics degree at 16 years old.

University of Toronto, KAUST, Pennsylvania State University and quantum colloidal dots

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I’ve written about colloidal quantum dot solar cells and University of Toronto professor Ted Sargent’s work before (June 28, 2011). He and his team have been busy again. From the Sept. 18, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T), King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) and Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) have created the most efficient colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cell ever.

The discovery is reported in the latest issue of Nature Materials.

The first time (June 28)  I wrote about the colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cells, the team had made a breakthrough with the architecture of the solar cell by creating what they called a ‘graded recombination layer’ allowing infrared and visible light harvesters to be linked without compromising either layer. The next time I wrote about Sargent’s work  (July 11, 2011),  it concerned self-assembling quantum dots and DNA.

The very latest work is focussed on making the CQD solar cells more efficient by packing them closer together,

Until now, quantum dots have been capped with organic molecules that separate the nanoparticles by a nanometer. On the nanoscale, that is a long distance for electrons to travel.

To solve this problem, the researchers utilized inorganic ligands, sub-nanometer-sized atoms that bind to the surfaces of the quantum dots and take up less space. The combination of close packing and charge trap elimination enabled electrons to move rapidly and smoothly through the solar cells, thus providing record efficiency.

I gather this last breakthrough has made commercialization possible,

As a result of the potential of this research discovery, a technology licensing agreement has been signed by U of T and KAUST, brokered by MaRS Innovations (MI), which will enable the global commercialization of this new technology.

Here’s the competitive advantage that a CQD solar cell offers,

Quantum dots are nanoscale semiconductors that capture light and convert it into electrical energy. Because of their small scale, the dots can be sprayed onto flexible surfaces, including plastics. This enables the production of solar cells that are less expensive than the existing silicon-based version.

Congratulations!

There are more details about this latest breakthrough both in the Nanowerk news item and in this University of Toronto Sept.19, 2011 news release credited to Liam Mitchell. For anyone who’s curious about MaRS, it’s located in Toronto, Ontario and seems to be some sort of technology company incubator or here’s how they describe themselves (from their How did MaRS get started page?),

A charitable organization could be created to better connect the worlds of science, business and government. A public-private partnership with a mission to remove the barriers between silos. Nurture a culture of innovation. And help create global enterprises that would contribute to Canada’s economic and social development.

A*STAR and University of Washington joint optoelectronics project

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At the University of Washington located in Seattle, a joint project with A*STAR, Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research is about to get underway. From the Sept. 16, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics (IME) and the University of Washington announce that they will join forces to provide shared Silicon Photonics processes as part of the Optoelectronics Systems Integration in Silicon programme (OpSIS). This will help the research and development (R&D) community significantly reduce the fabrication cost of silicon photonics integrated circuits.

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The silicon photonics integrated circuits to be created under this programme will be immediately available to the photonic research community worldwide, and in the process, facilitate technological advancements and proliferate creative ideas for the development of the next generation devices. As the platform will be offered through multi-project wafer (MPW) runs, which allow users from multiple projects to share the costs of a single fabrication run, research costs are lowered significantly for individual projects.

More information at A*STAR’s Institute of Microeletronics (IME) can be found here and about the University of Washington’s OpSIS programme here.

Memristors and proteins

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The memristor, a two-terminal circuit element joining the resistor, capacitor, and inductor, has until now been demonstrated using nonbiological materials such as metal oxides, carbon, etc. Researchers in Singapore have reported in a paper (in the Sept. 5, 2011 online edition of Small, Protein-Based Memristive Nanodevice)  that a memristive nanodevice can be based on a protein. From the Sept. 15, 2011 Spotlight article by Michael Berger on Nanowerk,

Memristors – the fourth fundamental two-terminal circuit element following the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor – have attracted intensive attention owing to their potential applications for instance in nanoelectronic memories, computer logic, or neuromorphic computer architectures.

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“Previous work on memristors were based on man-made inorganic/organic materials, so we asked the question whether it is possible to demonstrate memristors based on natural materials,” Xiaodong Chen, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Nanyang University, tells Nanowerk. “Many activities in life exhibit memory behavior and substantial research has focused on biomolecules serving as computing elements, hence, natural biomaterials may have potential to be exploited as electronic memristors.”

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This work provides a direct proof that natural biomaterials, especially redox proteins, could be used to fabricate solid state devices with transport junctions, which have potential applications in functional nanocircuits.

My last posting about memristors was April 13, 2011, Blood, memristors, cyborgs plus brain-controlled computers, prosthetics, and art.

ETA Sept. 21, 2011: Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast (on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers website) offers another take on memristors in his Sept. 20,2011 posting, Memristors Go Biological. I particularly liked this bit,

It’s been just three years since the memristor was identified so if statistical norms of commercialization are in place we can expect another four years of waiting before we see this material in our smart phones. In fact, this timeline is pretty close to HP’s expectations of 2014 as a target date for its incorporation into electronic devices.

During this time researchers have not been and will not be sitting on their hands while engineers work out scalability and yields.

Rebuilding Haiti, science, and science education

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Here’s how the story starts (from the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s [AAAS] June 2011 report, Science for Haiti: a report on advancing Haitian science and science education,

In July 2010, exactly six months after Haiti was devastated by a tragic earthquake, a small group of scientists, engineers and educators from that nation traveled to Puerto Rico for a meeting with colleagues from the Caribbean, the United States, Africa and the Haitian diaspora. There they began a remarkable project: Over two days, they identified what Haiti would need to build scientific strength that could help speed recovery from the quake and support long-term, sustainable human and economic development.

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The document is important as well for what it says about science in the 21st century—not just in Haiti, but globally. Nations such as Rwanda and Vietnam, which have en­dured historic disasters, have made focused investment in science and education and today are achieving remarkable advances. And because many of our most pressing challenges in public health, food security and environmental protection are regional, it is essential that we establish partnerships and work together to address them.

For that reason, this report offers an important model for the world. Haitian scientists, teachers, and policy leaders took the lead in defining their nation’s science-related needs and goals. Their international colleagues brought their own perspectives and energy to support the effort. Through this collaboration, they have developed a road­map for building Haiti’s prosperity and improving the lives of its people. (p. 2 PDF)

Sept. 19-20, 2011, there’ll be a meeting in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince (from the Sept. 15, 2011 news item on Science Daily),

Science for Haiti will be a central topic as the report’s authors meet in the Haitian capital 19-20 September with representatives of Haiti’s scientific community, universities and high schools and private sector. On 20 October, AAAS will host a meeting in Washington, D.C., of U.S. organizations interested in advancing Haitian science and science education capacity.

Here’s a little more about the project from the Science Daily news item,

The project is founded on a key principle: Haitians must chart their own future and their own goals for science, while the international science community must provide collaborative partnerships and other support.

“Haiti needs to integrate science into the process of reconstruction and renewal,” said Fritz Deshommes, vice rector of research at l’Université d’État d’Haiti. “This report will help build the scientific community in Haiti and strengthen bonds with the regional and global scientific community.”

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Nations such as Rwanda and Vietnam have endured historic disasters, but are successfully pursing science-for-development strategies to build economic vitality. The new report suggests that Haiti could follow a similar path.

Among the specific proposals for achieving those goals:

  • Set national policies to build science capacity as an “integral element of social and economic development”;
  • Develop science education at every level, while training and hiring more teachers and improving curriculum and textbooks to support that effort;

Promote more working engagement between Haitian scientists and their international peers through research programs in key disciplines and a program that identifies opportunities for collaboration.

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The authors include Gary Machlis, professor of conservation at the University of Idaho and a AAAS Fellow; AAAS Caribbean Division President Jorge Colón, professor of chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras; and Jean McKendry, senior researcher at the Association of American Geographers.

“Science for Haiti reflects the resilience of the Haitian people and their strong desire for science and science education as a pathway towards sustainable development, even under the most challenging circumstances,” said Colón.

Good luck to them all and I hope we hear more about this at the AAAS 2012 annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

Smart glass, curling electrodes and a business opportunity

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Boris Lamontagne (boris.lamontagne@nrc.ca) at Canada’s National Research Council is looking for a business partner or two to commercialize his smart glass which features ‘micro blinds’. Here’s a demonstration complete with illustrations of the technology,

I found more technical details about the ‘micro blinds’ (from the abstract of a paper, The next generation of switchable glass : the Micro-Blinds, by Boris Lamontagne, Pedro Barrios and Christophe Py at Glassfiles.com (you will need to register at the website to view the full text of the paper),

The micro-blinds are composed of invisible and electrostatically activated curling electrodes of 100 micrometers size. They can be deposited on flat glass by magnetron sputtering like regular low-E coatings, and then patterned by laser. They possess several advantages such as switching speed, UV durability, customized appearance and transmission, and do not employ costly ITO, relative to the current smart windows technologies: electrochromic, suspended particles and liquid crystals.

Let’s get this smart glass commercialized. As regular readers know, I’m very interested in smart glass/windows and I would very much like to see the technology enter the marketplace. My most recent posting on smart windows was Sept. 7, 2011 about some research done by the  US Dept. of Energy.

ETA Sept. 22, 2011: There’s a Sept. 22, 2011 news item about Lamontagne’s smart glass on Nanowerk.

Canadian commercialization survey

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CATA stands for Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance. I haven’t heard much about this group since they closed down their British Columbia office. It turns out they are still active and their latest project is a survey on commercialization in Canada. From the CATA commercialization project page,

The objective of this study, administered by CATAAlliance in partnership with University of Waterloo and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, is to identify what are the views of Canadian industry concerning effective commercialization of innovations – what works and what does not in Canadian industry attempts at being more effective in the global marketplace.

The performance of Canadian firms in commercializing innovation is a more essential economic factor than quantity of innovation if a large part of it is left sterile in the labs. Commercialization is perceived as the underperforming aspect of Canadian industry performance – especially among SMEs who need better ways and means to enhance their positions in the global marketplace.

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Product innovation and new product commercialization receive the bulk of attention from researchers and policy makers. However, service innovations (whether production processes, marketing innovations, or organizational innovation) are just as important, especially that the service sector accounts for more than 70% of the GDP and more than 75% of Canadians are employed in the service sector. The results of this study will help Canadian Executives – in Industry as well as in Government – to assess their organizations impacts in matters of commercialization of innovation and to develop better practices and programs for ensuring Canadian industry competitiveness in the global marketplace.

The effort does seem to be heavily Ontario-inflected with one Alberta agency (Alberta Council of Technologies) listed as a sponsor and no other province represented. I suspect this has something to do with the difficulties of organizing any sort of effort across our very large country.

The survey part of the project remains open until October 1, 2011. A report based on the survey results and roundtable discussions (taking place Sept. 19, 2011) will be released October 24, 2011.

Human enhancement, brains, and transhumanism: what does nano have to do with it?

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A Sept. 14, 2011 conversation on Slate.com about Extreme Human Enhancement started with this provocative title, Should We Use Nanotech, Genetics, Pharmaceuticals, and Augmentations To Go Above and Beyond Our Biology? The official discussants are Kyle Munkittrick, Brad Allenby, and Nicholas Agar. Here’s a little more about Kyle, Brad, and Nicholas, from page one of the the Slate discussion,

Nicholas Agar is an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He is the author, among other things, of Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (2010) and Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement (2004).

Brad Allenby is the Lincoln professor of engineering and ethics; a professor of civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering; and the founding director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management at Arizona State University. He is co-author with Daniel Sarewitz of The Techno-Human Condition.

Kyle Munkittrick is a bioethicist and a program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. He blogs at Pop Bioethics and Discover magazine’s Science Not Fiction. [Note: I have made some formatting changes.]

Nanotechnology and the other technologies are mentioned in passing, the focus of the discussion is ‘should we or shouldn’t we enhance ourselves’ along with some comments as to whether or not humans have a biological imperative to create and apply technology to the planet and to ourselves.

This Slate discussion is a way of publicizing a Future Tense event in Washington, DC being held today, Sept. 15, 2011.

This conversation is part of a Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State. On Thursday, Sept. 15, Future Tense will be hosting an event in Washington, D.C., on the boundaries between humans and machines, “Is Our Techno-Human Marriage in Need of Counseling?” [I removed the RSVP]

You can watch the livestreamed event here.

Coincidentally, Brain Gear is opening today. From the host’s (University of Groningen in The Netherlands) website page,

BRAIN GEAR, A conference in Groningen on September 15 and 16.
Neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, regulators and artists discuss the available and emerging technologies to repair and enhance the brain.

Professor Andy Miah, one of the invited speakers at Brain Gear, has made his presentation, Neurodevices for the Posthuman Mind,  available for viewing at Prezi.

I find all this quite exciting given my paper, Whose electric brain? about memristors, artificial synapses, and cognitive entanglement. I have currently raised $460 towards my presentation at ISEA 2011 (International Symposium Electronic Arts). Thank you to everyone who has given funds toward my dream at DreamBank.

Funding competition for nanotechnology-enabled healthcare solutions in UK

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This UK funding competition for nanotechnology-enabled healthcare projects is the first time I’ve seen where they offer the academic and business funding together.  From the Sept. 14, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

The Technology Strategy Board in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is to invest up to £9m in grant funding to support highly innovative, business led collaborative research projects focussed on nanoscale technology-enabled solutions for the healthcare sector.

The competition encourages applications for business-led projects focussing on the targeted delivery of therapeutic agents and diagnostics, where nanoscale technologies are at the heart of the innovation.

Here are some more details from the Technology Strategy Board Competition page,

Up to £3m will be invested by the Technology Strategy Board for business and up to £6m by EPSRC for academia.

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All projects must be business-led and collaborative, with at least one partner drawn from large or small businesses, academia, research and technology organisations, or not-for-profit organisations. We will invest in projects requiring a public sector funding contribution of typically between £500,000 and £2m over the whole project. We intend to invest in projects that, in the main, will contain a mix of applied research (attracting up to 50% public funding), and industry-orientated basic research (attracting up to 75% public funding).

The competition opens on 1 November 2011 and the deadline for registration is noon on 6 December 2011. A briefing day will be held on 15 November 2011.

To clarify my initial statement, I have seen situations where they cobble together funds from various agencies to cover the research and the business aspects of a project but I haven’t seen a joint offering here in Canada, at the federal level.