SouthWest NanoTechnologies Inc. (SWeNT) has received the prestigious Frost & Sullivan 2010 North American Technology Innovation Award in Carbon Nanotubes.  The company was honored with this highly coveted award for its innovative CoMoCAT® nanotube production process by this global research organization, which monitors more than 300 industries and 250,000 companies with more than 1,800 analysts.

Molecular Imprints, Inc., the market and technology leader for nanopatterning systems and solutions, introduced the NuTera HD7000—its next-generation Jet and Flash™ Imprint Lithography (J-FIL™) platform for the hard disk drive (HDD) industry.  Representing the industry's first nanopatterning system specifically designed for patterned media pilot- and volume-manufacturing, the NuTera HD7000 enables sub-20nm lithography at production speeds and provides the low cost of ownership (CoO) that HDD manufacturers require in order to economically extend their areal density roadmaps to well beyond one terabit per square inch.

Nanowerk, the leading information provider for all areas of nanotechnologies, added to its nanotechnology information portal a new free service for buyers and vendors of micro- and nanotechnology equipment and services. The new application, called nanoBIDS, is now available. nanoBIDS facilitates the public posting of Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for equipment and services from procurement departments in the micro- and nanotechnologies community. nanoBIDS is open to all research organizations and companies.

Two teams of Iowa State University researchers will receive a total of $8 million over three years from a $78 million U.S. Department of Energy program to research and develop advanced biofuels. Victor Lin - professor of chemistry, director of the Institute for Physical Research and Technology's Center for Catalysis at Iowa State, program director for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and chief technologist and founder of Catilin Inc. - will lead a team embarking on a $5.3 million study of biodiesel production from algae.

Stacey Harper, a nationally recognized leader in the interactions of nanomaterials with biological systems, has been named as the sixth “signature research faculty fellow” of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, or ONAMI.

Brewer Science, ® Inc., and SouthWest NanoTechnologies, Inc. (SWeNT), announced that they have received a $6.5M award under NIST’s Technology Innovation Program (TIP). The funding is in support of research and development programs that focus upon methodologies to attain the cost-effective production of high-purity, high-quality metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) inks. These advancements will enable production of a wide variety of high-performing electronic devices incorporating CNTs.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have found a new way to use a synthetic form of DNA to control the assembly of nanoparticles — this time resulting in switchable, three-dimensional and small-cluster structures that might be useful, for example, as biosensors, in solar cells, and as new materials for data storage. The work is described in Nature Nanotechnology, published online December 20, 2009.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a $10.1 million, five-year grant to an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madison mechanical engineering professor Xiaochun Li.

Scientists at Georgia Tech have developed a nanolithographic technique that can produce high-resolution patterns of at least three different chemicals on a single chip at writing speeds of up to one millimeter per second.  The chemical nanopatterns can be tailor-designed with any desired shape and have been shown to be sufficiently stable so that they can be stored for weeks and then used elsewhere. The technique, known as Thermochemical Nanolithography is detailed in the December 2009 edition of the journal Advanced Functional Materials. The research has applications in a number of scientific fields from electronics to medicine.

Porifera led team will develop carbon nanotube membranes for energy efficient carbon capture.  The research and development will be funded by the newly formed Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy. ARPA-E will fund development of carbon nanotube membranes with fluxes up to 100x higher than the conventional membranes.

A global database of government documents on nanotechnology is being launched by three law professors at Arizona State University who, with their colleagues in Australia and Belgium, have corralled and organized a massive number of regulatory documents dealing with the rapidly advancing technology.

A University of Pittsburgh team overcame a major hurdle plaguing the development of nanomaterials such as those that could lead to more efficient catalysts used to produce hydrogen and render car exhaust less toxic. The researchers reported Nov. 29 in “Nature Materials” the first demonstration of high-temperature stability in metallic nanoparticles, the vaunted next-generation materials hampered by a vulnerability to extreme heat.

PureLux, a Winston-Salem-based nanotechnology company has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the NC Green Business Fund. A spin-out from the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, PureLux is focused on commercializing next generation light sources that are 10 times more efficient than incandescents and three times more efficient than fluorescents. Founded in March 2007, PureLux is located in the Piedmont Triad Research Park. 

A panel of venture capitalists and industry specialists named Nanoengineered Concrete, an entry in the Energy category, the winner of the 2009 MIT Elevator Pitch Contest. This three-year-old contest, which is open to MIT students from across its five schools, neighboring colleges, and Boston-area entrepreneurs, allows competing teams 60 seconds to deliver a persuasive elevator pitch to the panel of judges.

Rutgers researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices. The new findings, previously considered possible by physicists but only now being seen in the laboratory, show that electrons in graphene can interact strongly with each other.

Recently, at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, N.J. Tao and collaborators have found a way to make a key electrical component on a phenomenally tiny scale. Their single-molecule diode is described in the October issue of Nature Chemistry.

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering ("CNSE") and the School of Business of the University at Albany announced a further expansion of the pioneering Nano+MBA program, highlighted by the development of the world's first Masters of Business Administration ("MBA") program to include an elective track in nanotechnology.

Researchers have overcome a major obstacle in efforts to use tiny structures called carbon nanotubes to create a new class of electronics that would be faster and smaller than conventional silicon-based transistors. Carbon nanotubes, which were discovered in the early 1990s, could make possible more powerful, compact and energy-efficient computers, as well as ultra-thin "nanowires" for electronic circuits. The nanotubes might be ideal for future electronics because they conduct electricity more efficiently than any other metal, but their practical application requires that they be manufactured to specific standards.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a new ruler, and even for an organization that routinely deals in superlatives, it sets some records. Designed to be the most accurate commercially available “meter stick” for the nano world, the new measuring tool—a calibration standard for X-ray diffraction—boasts uncertainties below a femtometer. That’s 0.000 000 000 000 001 meter, or roughly the size of a neutron.

Natcore Technology, a New Jersey-based company which is using Rice-born research to revolutionize the manufacture of solar panels, signed a deal with the university last week to provide $100,000 to help the lab of Rice professor Andrew Barron advance the technology.