Tag Archives: OSU

Silver nanoparticle production at room temperature

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I hadn’t thought silver nanoparticles were important to electronics but it seems I was wrongish. A July 2, 2015 news item on Nanowerk describes a breakthrough in silver nanoparticle production, which could increase its possible impact on electronics,

Engineers at Oregon State University [OSU] have invented a way to fabricate silver, a highly conductive metal, for printed electronics that are produced at room temperature.

There may be broad applications in microelectronics, sensors, energy devices, low emissivity coatings and even transparent displays.

A patent has been applied for on the technology, which is now available for further commercial development. The findings were reported in Journal of Materials Chemistry C. …

A July 1, 2015 OSU news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme of silver nanoparticles and electronics,

Silver has long been considered for the advantages it offers in electronic devices. Because of its conductive properties, it is efficient and also stays cool. But manufacturers have often needed high temperatures in the processes they use to make the devices, adding to their cost and complexity, and making them unsuitable for use on some substrates, such as plastics that might melt or papers that might burn.

This advance may open the door to much wider use of silver and other conductors in electronics applications, researchers said.

“There’s a great deal of interest in printed electronics, because they’re fast, cheap, can be done in small volumes and changed easily,” said Chih-hung Chang, a professor in the OSU College of Engineering. “But the heat needed for most applications of silver nanoparticles has limited their use.”

OSU scientists have solved that problem by using a microreactor to create silver nanoparticles at room temperatures without any protective coating, and then immediately printing them onto almost any substrate with a continuous flow process.

“Because we could now use different substrates such as plastics, glass or even paper, these electronics could be flexible, very inexpensive and stable,” Chang said. “This could be quite important and allow us to use silver in many more types of electronic applications.”

Among those, he said, could be solar cells, printed circuit boards, low-emissivity coatings, or transparent electronics. A microchannel applicator used in the system will allow the creation of smaller, more complex electronics features.

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

Room temperature fabrication and patterning of highly conductive silver features using in situ reactive inks by microreactor-assisted printing by Chang-Ho Choi, Elizabeth Allan-Cole, and Chih-hung Chang. J. Mater. Chem. C, 2015, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C5TC00947B First published online 26 May 2015

I believe this paper is behind a paywall.

Combining optical technology with nanocomposite films at Oregon State University (OSU)

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There is a lot of pressure in the US to commercialize nanotechnology-enabled products—a perfectly understandable stance after investing over $22B since 2000. Engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) are hoping to attract industry partners to improve and commercialize their gas sensors (from an April 2, 2015 OSU news release also on EurekAlert),

Engineers have combined innovative optical technology with nanocomposite thin-films to create a new type of sensor that is inexpensive, fast, highly sensitive and able to detect and analyze a wide range of gases.

The technology might find applications in everything from environmental monitoring to airport security or testing blood alcohol levels. The sensor is particularly suited to detecting carbon dioxide, and may be useful in industrial applications or systems designed to store carbon dioxide underground, as one approach to greenhouse gas reduction.

Oregon State University has filed for a patent on the invention, developed in collaboration with scientists at the National Energy Technology Lab or the U.S. Department of Energy, and with support from that agency. The findings were just reported in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C.

University researchers are now seeking industrial collaborators to further perfect and help commercialize the system.

“Optical sensing is very effective in sensing and identifying trace-level gases, but often uses large laboratory devices that are terribly expensive and can’t be transported into the field,” said Alan Wang, a photonics expert and an assistant professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“By contrast, we use optical approaches that can be small, portable and inexpensive,” Wang said. “This system used plasmonic nanocrystals that act somewhat like a tiny lens, to concentrate a light wave and increase sensitivity.”

This approach is combined with a metal-organic framework of thin films, which can rapidly adsorb gases within material pores, and be recycled by simple vacuum processes. After the thin film captures the gas molecules near the surface, the plasmonic materials act at a near-infrared range, help magnify the signal and precisely analyze the presence and amounts of different gases.

“By working at the near-infrared range and using these plasmonic nanocrystals, there’s an order of magnitude increase in sensitivity,” said Chih-hung Chang, an OSU professor of chemical engineering. “This type of sensor should be able to quickly tell exactly what gases are present and in what amount.”

That speed, precision, portability and low cost, the researchers said, should allow instruments that can be used in the field for many purposes. The food industry, for industry, uses carbon dioxide in storage of fruits and vegetables, and the gas has to be kept at certain levels.

Gas detection can be valuable in finding explosives, and new technologies such as this might find application in airport or border security. Various gases need to be monitored in environmental research, and there may be other uses in health care, optimal function of automobile engines, and prevention of natural gas leakage.

The paper can be found here,

Plasmonics-enhanced metal–organic framework nanoporous films for highly sensitive near-infrared absorption by Ki-Joong Kim, Xinyuan Chong, Peter B. Kreider, Guoheng Ma,  Paul R. Ohodnicki, John P. Baltrus, Alan X. Wang, and Chih-Hung Chang. J. Mater. Chem. C, 2015,3, 2763-2767 DOI: 10.1039/C4TC02846E First published online 09 Feb 2015

It is behind a paywall.

Is there a supercapacitor hiding in your tree?

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I gather the answer is: Yes, there is a supercapacitor in your tree as researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) have found a way to use tree cellulose as a building component for supercapacitors. From an April 7, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

Based on a fundamental chemical discovery by scientists at Oregon State University, it appears that trees may soon play a major role in making high-tech energy storage devices.

OSU chemists have found that cellulose — the most abundant organic polymer on Earth and a key component of trees — can be heated in a furnace in the presence of ammonia, and turned into the building blocks for supercapacitors.

An April 7, 2014 OSU news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item portrays great excitement (Note: Links have been removed),

These supercapacitors are extraordinary, high-power energy devices with a wide range of industrial applications, in everything from electronics to automobiles and aviation. But widespread use of them has been held back primarily by cost and the difficulty of producing high-quality carbon electrodes.

The new approach just discovered at Oregon State can produce nitrogen-doped, nanoporous carbon membranes – the electrodes of a supercapacitor – at low cost, quickly, in an environmentally benign process. The only byproduct is methane, which could be used immediately as a fuel or for other purposes.

“The ease, speed and potential of this process is really exciting,” said Xiulei (David) Ji, an assistant professor of chemistry in the OSU College of Science, and lead author on a study announcing the discovery in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was funded by OSU.

“For the first time we’ve proven that you can react cellulose with ammonia and create these N-doped nanoporous carbon membranes,” Ji said. “It’s surprising that such a basic reaction was not reported before. Not only are there industrial applications, but this opens a whole new scientific area, studying reducing gas agents for carbon activation.

“We’re going to take cheap wood and turn it into a valuable high-tech product,” he said.

The news release includes some technical information about the carbon membranes and information about the uses to which supercapacitors are put,

These carbon membranes at the nano-scale are extraordinarily thin – a single gram of them can have a surface area of nearly 2,000 square meters. That’s part of what makes them useful in supercapacitors. And the new process used to do this is a single-step reaction that’s fast and inexpensive. It starts with something about as simple as a cellulose filter paper – conceptually similar to the disposable paper filter in a coffee maker.

The exposure to high heat and ammonia converts the cellulose to a nanoporous carbon material needed for supercapacitors, and should enable them to be produced, in mass, more cheaply than before.

A supercapacitor is a type of energy storage device, but it can be recharged much faster than a battery and has a great deal more power. They are mostly used in any type of device where rapid power storage and short, but powerful energy release is needed.

Supercapacitors can be used in computers and consumer electronics, such as the flash in a digital camera. They have applications in heavy industry, and are able to power anything from a crane to a forklift. A supercapacitor can capture energy that might otherwise be wasted, such as in braking operations. And their energy storage abilities may help “smooth out” the power flow from alternative energy systems, such as wind energy.

They can power a defibrillator, open the emergency slides on an aircraft and greatly improve the efficiency of hybrid electric automobiles.

Besides supercapacitors, nanoporous carbon materials also have applications in adsorbing gas pollutants, environmental filters, water treatment and other uses.

“There are many applications of supercapacitors around the world, but right now the field is constrained by cost,” Ji said. “If we use this very fast, simple process to make these devices much less expensive, there could be huge benefits.”

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

Pyrolysis of Cellulose under Ammonia Leads to Nitrogen-Doped Nanoporous Carbon Generated through Methane Formation by Wei Luo, Bao Wang, Christopher G. Heron, Marshall J. Allen, Jeff Morre, Claudia S. Maier, William F. Stickle, and Xiulei Ji. Nano Lett., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/nl500859p Publication Date (Web): March 28, 2014
Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society

The article is behind a paywall.

One final observation, one of the researchers, William F. Stickle is affiliated with HewLett Packard and not Oregon State University as are the others.

Little skates, mermaid purses, nature, and writers

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GrrlScientist has written a fascinating ;piece about skates (fish), poetry, and Twitter for her Dec. 5, 2013 posting on the Guardian Science Blog network (Note: A link has been removed),

Twitter is a wonderful medium. For example, a couple days ago, I met University of Washington Biology Professor Adam Summers on twitter. It turns out that he is Associate Director of Friday Harbor Labs, where I spent a summer taking an intensive molecular neurobiology course during my graduate training in zoology. …

…

“Skates are fabulous animals”, Professor Summers writes in email.

“They make up a quarter of the diversity of cartilaginous fishes and every darn one of the 250 species looks pretty much exactly like every other one.”

Thus, studies into the anatomy and development of one species may provide insight into these processes for other, rarer, species.

“The little skate, also called the hedgehog skate, was one of my go-to organisms for many years”, writes Professor Summers in email.

These studies provide the basis for a physical or a mathematical model that may help understand function. This model is of course tested both against its inspiration and as a predictive tool. For example, the skate’s tail is very important, even for the developing embryo.

“I figured out that it can’t survive on the oxygen that diffuses through the capsule. Instead it has to pump water through by vibrating its tail.”

Perhaps this is the reason that the tail muscles differ from what’s considered normal.

“A wonderful muscle physiologist showed that the muscle in the tail is cardiac muscle rather than the striated muscle it should be”, Professor Summers writes.

While colleagues thought Summers’ specimens were good enough to be compared to visual art, his little skate specimens also inspired a poet (from the posting),

“I got chatting with a friend who teaches a poetry class up here [at Friday Harbor]. Sierra Nelson and I had several long conversations about the similarity of the lens that poets and scientists bring to the world.”

“I think the poem does a much better job of engaging the viewer than my dry prose on the critter.”

Little Skate
Leucoraja erinacea

Littlest of little skates, just barely hatched!
You can still see the remnants
of my yellow egg sac.

And my tail’s a little longer
than my whole body
(I’ll grow into it more eventually).

….

Adam Summers shared one of his images of his ‘stained’ little skate specimens on his twitter feed (pic.twitter.com/UWCKeVMmYB)

Here's an embryo of the little skate, Leucoraja erinacea. pic.twitter.com/UWCKeVMmYB

Here’s an embryo of the little skate, Leucoraja erinacea. pic.twitter.com/UWCKeVMmYB

I recommend reading GrrlScientist’s posting (Inside a mermaid’s purse; A poetic intersection between life and science, art and photography) for the whole story and, for that matter, the whole poem. As for the mermaid purse, this is the name for the little skate’s egg sack when found on the beach.

This all reminded me of Aileen Penner, a writer, poet, and science communications specialist located in Vancouver, Canada and her work in science and creative writing. She wrote a Nov. 19, 2013 posting about the intersection of nature and writing titled: US Forest Service Scientist Says Writers Help Gather “Cultural Data” on our Relationship With the Natural World (Note: Links have been removed),

Who is Fred Swanson you ask? Yes he is a retired U.S. Forest Service scientist and yes he is a Forest Ecology Professor at Oregon State University (OSU), but he is also a key figure in the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. This is a program I have been following since 2006 and greatly admire for their commitment to bring together “the practical wisdom of the environmental sciences, the clarity of philosophical analysis, and the creative, expressive power of the written word, to find new ways to understand and re-imagine our relation to the natural world.”

In April of 2012, I went to OSU to interview the Director of the Spring Creek Project, Charles Goodrich. I wanted to know how to fund such a long-term interdisciplinary project. Charles talked a lot about Fred Swanson and his enthusiasm for having writers as part of the inquiry process and about Swanson’s personal commitment to writing the arts into scientific funding proposals for his work at the H.J. Andrew Experimental Forest.

Penner was inspired by an Andrew C. Gottleib article (About Earth Scientist Fred Swanson) in Terrain’s Fall 2013 issue and quotes from it throughout her own posting. She also notes this (Note: Links have been removed),

Terrain interviewer Andrew Gottlieb will moderate a panel “Artists in the Old-Growth” with Alison Hawthorne Deming, Fred Swanson, Charles Goodrich and Spring Creek Project Founder, Kathleen Dean Moore at the upcoming AWP conference in Seattle on February 27, 2014. If you are in Seattle for this – go see it!

Before investigating the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) 2014 conference and the special session any further, here’s a bit more information about the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, from the homepage,

Spring Creek Project engages the most daunting and urgent environmental issues of our times while remembering and sharing our perennial sources of joy, wonder, and gratitude. We are a convening organization that sponsors writers’ residencies, readings, lectures, conversations, and symposia on issues and themes of critical importance to the health of humans and nature. We believe sharing insights, inspiration, and methods from many perspectives increases our understanding of the place of humans in nature. Our goal is to include participants and audience members from every discipline and persuasion, from creative writing and the other arts, from the environmental and social sciences, from philosophy and other humanistic disciplines.

The AWP conference seems mainly focused on fiction and literary nonfiction (at least, that’s what the video highlights [on the 2014 conference homepage] of the 2013 conference would suggest). Here’s more from the 2014 AWP conference homepage,

Each year, AWP holds its Annual Conference & Bookfair in a different city to celebrate the authors, teachers, students, writing programs, literary centers, and publishers of that region. More than 12,000 writers and readers attended our 2013 conference, and over 650 exhibitors were represented at our bookfair. AWP’s is now the largest literary conference in North America. We hope you’ll join us in 2014.
2014 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Washington State Convention Center &
Sheraton Seattle Hotel
February 26 – March 1, 2014
Key Dates:

November 8, 2013: deadline for purchasing a conference program ad
November 15, 2013: offsite event schedule opens
January 22, 2014: preregistration rates end
January 23, 2014: will-call registration begins
February 26, 2014: onsite registration begins

Here are some details about the R231 Artists in the Old-Growth: OSU’s Spring Creek Project & the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest
AWP 2014 conference session,

Room 602/603, Washington State Convention Center, Level 6
Thursday, February 27, 2014
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
How can a residency program empower and generate inquiry and creative responses to our astonishing world? How can a long-term, place-based program affect the way we see our relation to the forest? The world? Join this discussion with the founders and participants of the Oregon State University-based Spring Creek Project that brings writers to a place of old-growth forest and ground-breaking forest science.

Andrew Gottlieb Moderator

Andrew C. Gottlieb is the Book Reviews Editor for Terrain.org, and his writing has appeared in journals like Ecotone, ISLE, Poets & Writers, and Salon.com. He’s the author of a chapbook of poems, Halflives, and he won the 2010 American Fiction Prize.
Fred Swanson

Fred Swanson co-directs the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program based at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascade Range, which has hosted more than forty writers in residence and a variety of humanities-science interactions. He is a retired US Forest Service scientist.
Kathleen Dean Moore

Kathleen Dean Moore is an essayist and environmental ethicist, author of Riverwalking, Holdfast, Pine Island Paradox, and Wild Comfort, and co-editor of the climate ethics book, Moral Ground. She is co-founder and now Senior Fellow of the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University.
Alison Deming

Alison Hawthorne Deming is author of four poetry books, most recently Rope, and three nonfiction books with Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit forthcoming. She is Director and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.
Charles Goodrich

Charles Goodrich is the author of three books of poetry, A Scripture of Crows; Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden; and Insects of South Corvallis; and a collection of essays, The Practice of Home. He serves as Director for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word

One last note about nature and writing, I interviewed Sue Thomas, author of Technobiophilia: nature and cyberspace, in a Sept. 20,,2013 posting about her book and other projects.

WHALE of a concert on the edge of Hudson Bay (northern Canada) and sounds of icebergs from Oregon State University

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Both charming and confusing (to me), the WHALE project features two artists (or is it musicians?) singing to and with beluga whales using a homemade underwater sound system while they all float on or in Hudson Bay. There’s a July 10, 2013 news item about the project on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news website,

What began as an interest in aquatic culture for Laura Magnusson and Kaoru Ryan Klatt has turned into a multi-year experimental project that brings art to the marine mammals.

Since 2011, Magnusson and Klatt have been taking a boat onto the Churchill River, which flows into Hudson Bay, with a home-made underwater sound system.

….

Last week, the pair began a 75-day expedition that involves travelling aboard a special “sculptural sea vessel” to “build a sustained but non-invasive presence to foster bonds between humans and whales,” according to the project’s website.

Ten other musicians and interdisciplinary artists are joining Klatt and Magnusson to perform new works they’ve created specifically for the whales.

…

The latest expedition will be the focus of Becoming Beluga, a feature film that Klatt is directing.

Magnusson and Klatt are also testing a high-tech “bionic whale suit” that would enable the wearer to swim and communicate like a beluga whale.

Klatt has produced a number of WHALE videos including this one (Note: This not a slick production nor were any of the others I viewed on YouTube),

In addition to not being slick, there’s a quirky quality to this project video that I find charming and interesting.

My curiosity aroused, I also visited Magnusson’s and Klatt’s WHALE website and found this project description,

WHALE is an interdisciplinary art group comprised of Winnipeg-based artists Kaoru Ryan Klatt and Laura Magnusson. Their vision is to expand art and culture beyond human boundaries to non-human beings. Since 2011, they have been traveling to the northern edge of Manitoba, Canada to forge connections with thousands of beluga whales. From a canoe on the Churchill River, they have collaborated with these whales through sound, movement, and performative action. Now, aboard the SSV Cetus – a specially crafted sculptural sea vessel – they will embark on a 75-day art expedition throughout the Churchill River estuary, working to build a sustained but non-invasive presence to foster bonds between humans and whales. This undertaking – Becoming Beluga – is the culmination of a three-year integrated arts project with the belugas of this region, taking place between July 2 and September 14, 2013.

While the word ‘artist’ suggests visual arts rather than musical arts what I find a little more confounding is that this is not being described an art/science or art/technology project as these artists are clearly developing technology with their underwater sound system, sculptural sea vessel, and bionic whale suit. In any event, I wish them good luck with WHALE and their Becoming Beluga film.

In a somewhat related matter and for those interested in soundscapes and the ocean (in Antarctica), there is some research from Oregon State University which claims that melting icebergs make a huge din. From a July 11, 2013 news item on phys.org,

There is growing concern about how much noise humans generate in marine environments through shipping, oil exploration and other developments, but a new study has found that naturally occurring phenomena could potentially affect some ocean dwellers.

Nowhere is this concern greater than in the polar regions, where the effects of global warming often first manifest themselves. The breakup of ice sheets and the calving and grounding of icebergs can create enormous sound energy, scientists say. Now a new study has found that the mere drifting of an iceberg from near Antarctica to warmer ocean waters produces startling levels of noise.

The Oregon State University July 10, 2013 news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail (Note: A link has been removed),

A team led by Oregon State University (OSU) researchers used an array of hydrophones to track the sound produced by an iceberg through its life cycle, from its origin in the Weddell Sea to its eventual demise in the open ocean. The goal of the project was to measure baseline levels of this kind of naturally occurring sound in the ocean, so it can be compared to anthropogenic noises.

“During one hour-long period, we documented that the sound energy released by the iceberg disintegrating was equivalent to the sound that would be created by a few hundred supertankers over the same period,” said Robert Dziak, a marine geologist at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., and lead author on the study. [emphasis mine]

“This wasn’t from the iceberg scraping the bottom,” he added. “It was from its rapid disintegration as the berg melted and broke apart. We call the sounds ‘icequakes’ because the process and ensuing sounds are much like those produced by earthquakes.”

I encourage anyone who’s interested to read the entire news release (apparently the researchers were getting images of their iceberg from the International Space Station) and/or the team’s published research paper,

Robert P. Dziak, Matthew J. Fowler, Haruyoshi Matsumoto, DelWayne R. Bohnenstiehl, Minkyu Park, Kyle Warren, and Won Sang Lee. 2013. Life and death sounds of Iceberg A53a. Oceanography 26(2), http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2013.20.

Memristors and transparent electronics in Oregon

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The Sept. 14, 2012 news release from Oregon State University (OSU) features some very careful wording around the concept of a memristor.  First, here’s the big picture news,

The transparent electronics that were pioneered at Oregon State University may find one of their newest applications as a next-generation replacement for some uses of non-volatile flash memory, a multi-billion dollar technology nearing its limit of small size and information storage capacity.

Researchers at OSU have confirmed that zinc tin oxide, an inexpensive and environmentally benign compound, has significant potential for use in this field, and could provide a new, transparent technology where computer memory is based on resistance, instead of an electron charge.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting,

This resistive random access memory, or RRAM, is referred to by some researchers as a “memristor.”  [emphasis mine] Products using this approach could become even smaller, faster and cheaper than the silicon transistors that have revolutionized modern electronics – and transparent as well.

Transparent electronics offer potential for innovative products that don’t yet exist, like information displayed on an automobile windshield, or surfing the web on the glass top of a coffee table.

“Flash memory has taken us a long way with its very small size and low price,” said John Conley, a professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “But it’s nearing the end of its potential, and memristors are a leading candidate to continue performance improvements.”

Memristors have a simple structure, are able to program and erase information rapidly, and consume little power. They accomplish a function similar to transistor-based flash memory, but with a different approach. Whereas traditional flash memory stores information with an electrical charge, RRAM accomplishes this with electrical resistance. Like flash, it can store information as long as it’s needed.

Flash memory computer chips are ubiquitous in almost all modern electronic products, ranging from cell phones and computers to video games and flat panel televisions.

I like how they note that some scientists call these devices memristors thereby sidestepping at least some of the controversy as to what exactly constitute a memristor (my latest piece which mentions a critique of the memristor concept was posted Sept. 6, 2012).

The news release gets a little confusing here,

Some of the best opportunities for these new amorphous oxide semiconductors are not so much for memory chips, but with thin-film, flat panel displays, researchers say. [emphasis mine] Private industry has already shown considerable interest in using them for the thin-film transistors that control liquid crystal displays, and one compound approaching commercialization is indium gallium zinc oxide.

But indium and gallium are getting increasingly expensive, and zinc tin oxide – also a transparent compound – appears to offer good performance with lower cost materials. The new research also shows that zinc tin oxide can be used not only for thin-film transistors, but also for memristive memory, Conley said, an important factor in its commercial application.

More work is needed to understand the basic physics and electrical properties of the new compounds, researchers said.

There was no mention of amorphous oxide semiconductors until the portion I’ve highlighted . If I’ve understood what follows correctly, there’s a new class of semiconductor for use in thin film applications (transparent electronics): an amorphous oxide semiconductor and the most promising material for commercial purposes is indium gallium zinc oxide. The other oxide mentioned in the excerpt, zinc tin oxide, can be used both for thin film applications and memristive applications.

This memristor story has certainly moved some interesting directions as it continues to develop.