Tag Archives: MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology

Memory material with functions resembling synapses and neurons in the brain

This work comes from the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology according to a July 8, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

Our brain does not work like a typical computer memory storing just ones and zeroes: thanks to a much larger variation in memory states, it can calculate faster consuming less energy. Scientists of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology of the University of Twente (The Netherlands) now developed a ferro-electric material with a memory function resembling synapses and neurons in the brain, resulting in a multistate memory. …

A July 8, 2016 University of Twente press release, which originated the news item, provides more technical detail,

The material that could be the basic building block for ‘brain-inspired computing’ is lead-zirconium-titanate (PZT): a sandwich of materials with several attractive properties. One of them is that it is ferro-electric: you can switch it to a desired state, this state remains stable after the electric field is gone. This is called polarization: it leads to a fast memory function that is non-volatile. Combined with processor chips, a computer could be designed that starts much faster, for example. The UT scientists now added a thin layer of zinc oxide to the PZT, 25 nanometer thickness. They discovered that switching from one state to another not only happens from ‘zero’ to ‘one’ vice versa. It is possible to control smaller areas within the crystal: will they be polarized (‘flip’) or not?

In a PZT layer without zinc oxide (ZnO) there are basically two memorystates. Adding a nano layer of ZnO, every state in between is possible as well.

Multistate

By using variable writing times in those smaller areas, the result is that many states can be stored anywhere between zero and one. This resembles the way synapses and neurons ‘weigh’ signals in our brain. Multistate memories, coupled to transistors, could drastically improve the speed of pattern recognition, for example: our brain performs this kind of tasks consuming only a fraction of the energy a computer system needs. Looking at the graphs, the writing times seem quite long compared to nowaday’s processor speeds, but it is possible to create many memories in parallel. The function of the brain has already been mimicked in software like neurale networks, but in that case conventional digital hardware is still a limitation. The new material is a first step towards electronic hardware with a brain-like memory. Finding solutions for combining PZT with semiconductors, or even developing new kinds of semiconductors for this, is one of the next steps.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Multistability in Bistable Ferroelectric Materials toward Adaptive Applications by Anirban Ghosh, Gertjan Koster, and Guus Rijnders. Advanced Functional Materials DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201601353 Version of Record online: 4 JUL 2016

© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

Computer chips derived in a Darwinian environment

Courtesy: University of Twente

Courtesy: University of Twente

If that ‘computer chip’ looks a brain to you, good, since that’s what the image is intended to illustrate assuming I’ve correctly understood the Sept. 21, 2015 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

Researchers of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology and the CTIT Institute for ICT Research at the University of Twente in The Netherlands have demonstrated working electronic circuits that have been produced in a radically new way, using methods that resemble Darwinian evolution. The size of these circuits is comparable to the size of their conventional counterparts, but they are much closer to natural networks like the human brain. The findings promise a new generation of powerful, energy-efficient electronics, and have been published in the leading British journal Nature Nanotechnology (“Evolution of a Designless Nanoparticle Network into Reconfigurable Boolean Logic”).

A Sept. 21, 2015 University of Twente press release, which originated the news item, explains why and how they have decided to mimic nature to produce computer chips,

One of the greatest successes of the 20th century has been the development of digital computers. During the last decades these computers have become more and more powerful by integrating ever smaller components on silicon chips. However, it is becoming increasingly hard and extremely expensive to continue this miniaturisation. Current transistors consist of only a handful of atoms. It is a major challenge to produce chips in which the millions of transistors have the same characteristics, and thus to make the chips operate properly. Another drawback is that their energy consumption is reaching unacceptable levels. It is obvious that one has to look for alternative directions, and it is interesting to see what we can learn from nature. Natural evolution has led to powerful ‘computers’ like the human brain, which can solve complex problems in an energy-efficient way. Nature exploits complex networks that can execute many tasks in parallel.

Moving away from designed circuits

The approach of the researchers at the University of Twente is based on methods that resemble those found in Nature. They have used networks of gold nanoparticles for the execution of essential computational tasks. Contrary to conventional electronics, they have moved away from designed circuits. By using ‘designless’ systems, costly design mistakes are avoided. The computational power of their networks is enabled by applying artificial evolution. This evolution takes less than an hour, rather than millions of years. By applying electrical signals, one and the same network can be configured into 16 different logical gates. The evolutionary approach works around – or can even take advantage of – possible material defects that can be fatal in conventional electronics.

Powerful and energy-efficient

It is the first time that scientists have succeeded in this way in realizing robust electronics with dimensions that can compete with commercial technology. According to prof. Wilfred van der Wiel, the realized circuits currently still have limited computing power. “But with this research we have delivered proof of principle: demonstrated that our approach works in practice. By scaling up the system, real added value will be produced in the future. Take for example the efforts to recognize patterns, such as with face recognition. This is very difficult for a regular computer, while humans and possibly also our circuits can do this much better.”  Another important advantage may be that this type of circuitry uses much less energy, both in the production, and during use. The researchers anticipate a wide range of applications, for example in portable electronics and in the medical world.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Evolution of a designless nanoparticle network into reconfigurable Boolean logic by S. K. Bose, C. P. Lawrence, Z. Liu, K. S. Makarenko, R. M. J. van Damme, H. J. Broersma, & W. G. van der Wiel. Nature Nanotechnology (2015) doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.207 Published online 21 September 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Final comment, this research, especially with the reference to facial recognition, reminds me of memristors and neuromorphic engineering. I have written many times on this topic and you should be able to find most of the material by using ‘memristor’ as your search term in the blog search engine. For the mildly curious, here are links to two recent memristor articles, Knowm (sounds like gnome?) A memristor company with a commercially available product in a Sept. 10, 2015 posting and Memristor, memristor, you are popular in a May 15, 2015 posting.

Opals, Diana Ross, and nanophotonic hybridization

It was a bit of a stretch to include Diana Ross in a Jan. 12, 2015 news item on Nanowerk about nanophotonic research at the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nano­technology  but I’m glad they did,

Ever since the early 1900s work of Niels Bohr and Hendrik Lorentz, it is known that atoms display characteristic resonant behavior to light. The hallmark of a resonance is its characteristic peak-trough behavior of the refractive index with optical frequency. Scientists from the Dutch MESA+ Institute for Nano­technology at the University of Twente have recently infiltrated cesium atoms in a self-assembled opal to create a hybrid nanophotonic system. By tuning the opal’s forbidden gap relative to the atomic resonance, dra­matic changes are observed in reflectivity. In the most extreme case, the atomic reflection spectrum is turned upside down[1] compared to the traditional case. Since dispersion is crucial in the control of optical signal pulses, the new results offer opportunities for optical information manipulation. As atoms are exquisite storage de­vices for light quanta, the results open vistas on quantum information processing, as well as on new nanoplasmonics.

A Jan. 12, 2015 MESA+ Institute for Nano­technology at the University of Twente press release, which originated the news item, provides an illustrative diagram and a wealth of technical detail about the research,

Courtesy of the University of Twente

Courtesy of the University of Twente

While the speed of light c is proverbial, it can readily be modified by sending light through a medium with a certain refractive index n. In the medium, the speed will be decreased by the index to c/n. In any material, the refractive index depends on the frequency of the light. Usually the refractive index increases with frequency, called normal dispersion as it prevails at most frequencies in most materials such as a glass of water, a telecom fiber, or an atomic vapor. Close to the resonance frequency of the material, the index strongly decreases, called anomalous dispersion.

Dispersion is essential to control how optical bits of information – encoded as short pulses – is manipulated optical circuits. In modern optics at the nanoscale, called nanophotonics, dispersion is controlled with classes of complex nanostruc­tures that cause novel behavior to emerge. An example is a photonic crystal fiber, which does not consist of only glass like a traditional fiber, but of an intricate arrange­ment of holes and glass nanostructures.

The Twente team led by Harding devised a hybrid system consisting of an atomic vapor infiltrated in an opal photonic crystal. Photonic crystals have attracted considerable attention for their ability to radically control propagation and emission of light. These nanostructures are well-known for their ability to control the emission and propagation of light. The opals have a periodic variation of the refractive index (see Figure 1) that ensures that a certain color of light is forbidden to exist inside the opal. The light cannot enter the opal as it is reflected, which is called a gap (see Figure 1). In an analogy to semiconductors, such an effect is called a “photonic band gap”. Photonic gaps are at the basis of tiny on-chip light sources and lasers, efficient solar cells, invisibility cloaks, and devices to process optical information.

The Twente team changed the index of refraction of the voids in a photonic crystal by substituting the air by a vapor of atoms with a strong resonance, as shown in Figure 1. The contrast of the refractive index between the vapor and the opal’s silica nano­spheres was effectively used as a probe. The density of the cesium vapor was greatly varied by changing the temperature in the cell up to 420 K. At the same time, the photonic gap of the opal shifted relative to the atomic resonance due to a slow chemical reaction between the opal’s backbone material (silica) and the cesium.

On resonance, light excites an atom to a higher state and subsequently the atom reemits the light. Hence, an atom behaves like a little cavity that stores light. Simultaneously the index of refraction changes strongly for colors near resonance. For slightly longer wavelengths the index of refraction is high, on resonance it is close to one, and slightly shorter wavelengths it can even decrease below one. This effect of the cesium atoms is clearly visible in the reflectivity spectra, shown in Figure 2 [not included here], as a sharp increase and decrease of the reflectivity near the atomic resonance. Intriguingly, the characteristic peak-and-trough behavior of atoms (seen at 370 K) was turned upside down at the highest temperature (420 K), where the ce­sium reso­nance was on the red side of the opal’s stopgap.

In nanophotonics, many efforts are currently being devoted to create arrays of nanoresonators in photonic crystals, for exquisite optical signal control on a chip. Unfortunately, however, there is a major challenge in engineering high-quality pho­tonic resonators: they are all different due to inevitable fabrication variations. Hence, it is difficult to tune every resonator in sync. “Our atoms in the opal may be consid­ered as the equivalent of an carefully engineered array of nano-resonators” explains Willem Vos, “Nature takes care that all resonators are all exactly the same. Our hy­brid system solves the variability problem and could perhaps be used to make pho­tonic memories, sensors or switches that are naturally tuned.” And leading Spanish theorist Javier Garcia de Abajo (ICFO) enthuses: “This is a fine and exciting piece of work, initiating the study of atomic resonances with photonic modes in a genuinely new fashion, and suggesting many exciting possibilities, for example through the extension of this study towards combinations with metal nanoplasmonics.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper published in Physical Review B,

Nanophotonic hybridization of narrow atomic cesium resonances and photonic stop gaps of opaline nanostructures by Philip J. Harding, Pepijn W. H. Pinkse, Allard P. Mosk, and Willem L. Vos. Phys. Rev. B 91, 045123 – Published 20 January 2015 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.045123

This paper is behind a paywall but there is an earlier iteration of the paper available on the open access arXiv.org website operated by Cornell University,

Nanophotonic hybridization of narrow atomic cesium resonances and photonic stop gaps of opaline nanostructures by Philip J. Harding, Pepijn W.H. Pinkse, Allard P. Mosk, Willem L. Vos. (Submitted on 11 Sep 2014) arXiv:1409.3417

As I understand it, the arXiv.org website is intended to open up access to research and to offer an informal peer review process.

Finally, for anyone who’s nostalgic or perhaps has never heard Diana Ross sing ‘Upside Down’,

Cleaning water with palladium nanoparticle catalysts

A Jan. 16, 2015 news item on Nanowerk describes research into using palladium as a catalyst for water remediation efforts,

One way of removing harmful nitrate from drinking water is to catalyse its conversion to nitrogen. This process suffers from the drawback that it often produces ammonia. By using palladium nanoparticles as a catalyst, and by carefully controlling their size, this drawback can be partially eliminated. It was research conducted by Yingnan Zhao of the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology that led to this discovery.

A Jan. 14, 2015 University of Twente press release, which originated the news item, describes the problem and suggested solution; this was research for a PhD thesis,

Due to the excessive use of fertilizers, our groundwater is contaminated with nitrates, which pose a problem if they enter the mains water supply. Levels have fallen significantly in recent years, as a result of various European directives. In addition, the Integrated Approach to Nitrogen programme was launched in various Dutch nature reserves at the start of January. Tackling the problem at source is one thing, but it will still be necessary to treat the mains water supply. While this can be achieved through biological conversion – bacteria convert the nitrate to nitrogen gas-, this is a slow process. Using palladium to catalyse the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen speeds up the process enormously. However, this reaction suffers from the drawback that it produces a harmful by-product – ammonia.

Exposed surface

The amount of ammonia produced appears to depend on the method used to prepare the palladium and on the catalyst’s physical structure. Yingnan Zhao decided to use nanometre-sized colloidal palladium particles, as their dimensions can be easily controlled. These particles are fixed to a surface, so they do not end up in the mains water supply. However, it is important to stop them clumping together, so stabilizers such as polyvinyl alcohol are added. Unfortunately, these stabilizers tend to shield the surface of the palladium particles, which reduces their effectiveness as a catalyst. By introducing additional treatments, Yingnan Zhao has managed to fully expose the catalytic surface once again or to manipulate it in a controlled manner. This has resulted in palladium nanoparticles that can catalyse the conversion to nitrogen, while producing very little ammonia. This has brought the further development of catalytic water treatment (in compact devices for home use, for example) one step closer.

Yingnan Zhao, who is from Heze, Shandong, China, conducted his research in Prof. Leon Lefferts’ Catalytic Processes and Materials group. He defended his thesis, which is entitled “Colloidal Nanoparticles as Catalysts and Catalyst Precursors for Nitrite Hydrogenation” on Thursday 15 January [2015].

I trust Zhao successfully defended this thesis and perhaps more importantly helped to develop a new and better method for water remediation made necessary by the effects of fertilizers.

Suicide at the nanoscale: the truth about silicene

Researchers at the University of Twente (Netherlands) have shown that silicene, a material of great interest to the semi-conductor industry, has a serious drawback according to a Jan. 14, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

The semiconductor industry of the future had high expectations of the new material silicene, which shares a lot of similarities with the ‘wonder material’ graphene. However, researchers of the MESA+ Research Institute of the University of Twente – who recently managed to directly and in real time film the formation of silicene – are harshly bursting the bubble: their research shows that silicene has suicidal tendencies.

The Jan. 8, 2014 University of Twente news release, which originated the news item, describes the problem in detail starting with an explanation of silicene,

The material silicene was first created in 2010. Just like graphene, it consists of a single layer of atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Graphene consists of carbon atoms, silicene of silicon atoms.

Because of their special properties – both materials are very strong, thin and flexible and have good electrical conductivity – graphene and silicene seem very well suited for the semiconductor industry of the future. After all, the parts on computer chips have to become smaller and smaller and the limits of the miniaturization of parts made of silicon are drawing closer and closer. The material silicene seems to be several steps ahead of graphene, because the semiconductor industry has been using silicon (which, like silicene, consists of silicon atoms) for many years now. In addition, it is easier to realize a so-called bandgap in silicene, which is a prerequisite for a transistor.

Researchers of the MESA+ Research Institute of the University of Twente have, for the first time, managed to directly and in real time capture the formation of silicene on film. They let evaporated silicon atoms precipitate on a surface of silver, so that a nice, almost closed, singular layer of silicene was formed.

So far so good, but the moment that a certain amount of silicon atoms fall on top of the formed silicene layer, a silicon crystal (silicon in a diamond crystal structure instead of in a honeycomb structure) is formed, which triggers the further crystallization of the material; an irreversible process. From that moment, the newly formed silicon eats the silicene, so to speak.

The reason for this is that the regular crystal structure (diamond) of silicon is energetically more favourable than the honeycomb structure of silicene and therefore more stable. Because of this property, the researchers did not succeed in covering more than 97 per cent of the silver surface with silicene, nor were they able to create multi-layered silicene. In other words: the moment a surface is almost completely covered with silicene, the material commits suicide and simple silicon is formed. The researchers do not expect it to be possible to create multi-layered silicene on a different type of surface, because the influence of the surface on the formation of the second layer of silicene is negligible.

The researchers have produced a video demonstrating their findings,

SiliceneDeposition from University of Twente on Vimeo.

 Caption: Formation of silicene on a silver surface (grey, start of the film). On top of the silver, silicene islands gradually start to form (black, halfway through the film). When the surface is almost completely covered, these collapse into silicon crystals again (black dots in grey areas, end of the film).

The news release ends on a personal note,

The research has been conducted by Adil Acun, Bene Poelsema, Harold Zandvliet and Raoul van Gastel of the department of Physics of Interfaces and Nanomaterials (PIN) of the University of Twente’s MESA+ Research Institute. The research has been published by the renowned academic journal Applied Physics Letters.  What’s even more special about this publication is that it has resulted from the final thesis research of Adil Acun, who was following the master’s programme Applied Physics at the time. He is now working as a PhD candidate at the PIN department.

Here’s link to and a citation for the paper,

The instability of silicene on Ag(111) by A. Acun, B. Poelsema, H. J. W. Zandvliet, and R. van Gastel.  Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 263119 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4860964

This paper is open access as of Jan. 14, 2014.

Artificial ‘cricket hair’ sensors from the Dutch

What do you do when the very phenomenon you’re trying to sense (low frequency signals) frustrates your efforts? Scientists at the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology responded by moving the signals into the frequency range for the sensors, which are modeled on cricket hairs. From the June 6, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

An “artificial cricket hair” used as a sensitive flow sensor has difficulty detecting weak, low-frequency signals – they tend to be drowned out by noise. But now, a bit of clever tinkering with the flexibility of the tiny hair’s supports has made it possible to boost the signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 25. This in turn means that weak flows can now be measured. Researchers at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology of the University of Twente (NL) have presented details of this technology in the New Journal of Physics (“Uncovering signals from measurement noise by electro mechanical amplitude modulation”).

The University of Twente June 6, 2013 news release, which originated the news item, describes how  biomimicry (copying cricket hairs) combined with technology in old AM radios were combined to solve the problem,

These tiny hairs, which are manufactured using microtechnology techniques, are neatly arranged in rows and mimic the extremely sensitive body hairs that crickets use to detect predators. When a hair moves, the electrical capacitance at its base changes, making the movement measurable. If there is an entire array of hairs, then this effect can be used to measure flow patterns. In the same way, changes in air flow tell crickets that they are about to be attacked.

Tiny “hairs” of the polymer SU-8 are applied to a flexible, moving surface, the capacitance of which changes with each movement.

Mechanical AM radio

In the case of low-frequency signals, the noise inherent to the measurement system itself tends to throw a spanner in the works by drowning out the very signals that the system was designed to measure. One very appealing idea is to “move” these signals into the high frequency range, where noise is a much less significant factor. The MESA+ researchers achieve this by periodically changing the hairs’ spring rate. They do so by applying an electrical voltage.

The original signal (top), the signal at a sensor vibrating at a higher frequency (centre), and the reconstructed signal (bottom)

This adjustment also causes the hairs to vibrate at a high frequency. This resembles the technology used in old AM radios, where the music signal is encoded on a higher frequency wave. In the case of the sensor, its “radio” is a mechanical device. Low frequency flows are measured by tiny hairs vibrating at a higher frequency. The signal can then be retrieved, with significantly less noise. Suddenly, a previously unmeasurable signal emerges, thanks to this “up-conversion”.

This electromechanical amplitude modulation (EMAM) expands the hair sensors’ range of applications enormously. Now that the signal-to-noise ratio has been improved by a factor of 25, it is possible to measure much weaker signals. According to the researchers, this technology could be a very useful way of boosting the performance of many other types of sensors.

You can find out more about the paper here,

The article by Harmen Droogendijk, Remco Sanders and Gijs Krijnen, entitled “Uncovering signals from measurement noise by electromechanical amplitude modulation” has been published in the New Journal of Physics, an open-access journal.

After reading about this research I got a little curious about crickets and found an online set of instructions for drawing them. From the How to Draw a Cricket webpage on the DragonArt.com website, here’s step 6,

STEP 6. This is what your cricket should end up looking like this. Color him/her in and you have just finished this lesson on "how to draw a cricket insect step by step". Credit: Dawn

STEP 6.
This is what your cricket should end up looking like this. Color him/her in and you have just finished this lesson on “how to draw a cricket insect step by step”. Credit: Dawn

Thanks to Dawn for uploading her cricket (insect) drawing instructions.

University of Twente (Holland) researchers love their metaphors: ‘bed of nails’ and ‘soccer balls’

In the last week there have been a couple of news releases from Dutch researchers at the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology which feature some metaphors. The first was a Sept. 20, 2012 news item on Nanowerk (Note: I have removed a link),

Nanotechnology researchers develop ‘bed of nails’ material for clean surfaces

Scientists at the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology have developed a new material that is not only extremely water-repellent but also extremely oil-repellent. It contains minuscule pillars which retain droplets. What makes the material unique is that the droplets stay on top even when they evaporate (slowly getting smaller). This opens the way to such things as smartphone screens that really cannot get dirty. The study appears today in the scientific journal Soft Matter (“Absence of an evaporation-driven wetting transition on omniphobic surfaces”).

The University of Twente Sept. 12, 2012 news release, which originated the news item explores the metaphor and the technology,

Water-repellent surfaces can be used as a coating for windows, obviating the need to clean them ever again. These surfaces have an orderly arrangement of tiny pillars less than one-hundredth of a millimetre high (similar to a bed of nails but on an extremely small scale). Water droplets stay on the tips of the pillars, retaining the shape of perfectly round tiny pearls. As a result they can roll off the surface like marbles, taking all the dirt with them.

Nanotechnologists at the University of Twente have now managed to create a silicon surface that retains not only water droplets but also oil droplets like tiny pearls …. What makes the material unique is that the droplets remain in place even when they evaporate (get smaller).

With existing materials, evaporating droplets drop down between the pillars onto the surface after a while, changing in shape to hemispheres which can no longer simply roll off the surface. The surface can therefore still get dirty. By modifying the edges and the roughness of the minuscule pillars the UT scientists have managed to create a surface on which the droplets do not drop down even when they evaporate but stay neatly on top.

The Sept. 27, 2012 news item on Nanowerk features another metaphor, one which is well known amongst followers of the nanotechnology scene,

Nanotechnologists create miniscule soccer balls

Nanotechnologists at the University of Twente’s MESA+ research institute have developed a method whereby minuscule polystyrene spheres, automatically and under controlled conditions, form an almost perfect ball that looks suspiciously like a football, but about a thousand times smaller. The spheres organize themselves in such a way that they approach the densest arrangement possible, known as ‘closest packing of spheres’. The method provides nanotechnologists with a new way of creating minuscule 3D structures.

Soccer balls usually reference buckminster fullerenes (bucky balls). The news item explains this new use further,

The method developed by the University of Twente scientists involves placing a drop of water containing thousands of polystyrene spheres one micrometre in size (a thousand times smaller than a millimetre) on a superhydrophobic surface. As the drop is allowed to evaporate very slowly under controlled conditions the distances between the spheres become smaller and smaller and surprisingly they form a highly organized 3D structure. The spheres were found to organize themselves of their own accord in such a way that the ball they form approaches the most compact arrangement possible (‘closest packing of spheres’), with 74% of the space filled by the spheres. Like a football, the structures that form are almost perfectly spherical, consisting of a large number of planes. The researchers have therefore dubbed their material ‘microscopic soccer balls’. The minuscule footballs are a hundred to a thousand micrometres in size, containing from ten thousand to as much as a billion of the tiny polystyrene spheres.

There’s more on the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology website but you will need to have Dutch language skills.

It’s always good to see metaphors and I like when scientists (or whoever’s writing the news releases) get create that way.