Nano News: 06/16/15

Research team fuses art, engineering to create stretchable batteries (w/video)

Origami, the centuries-old Japanese paper-folding art, has inspired recent designs for flexible energy-storage technology. But energy-storage device architecture based on origami patterns has so far been able to yield batteries that can change only from simple folded to unfolded positions. They can flex, but not actually stretch. Now an Arizona State...

Designer electronics out of the printer

They are thin, light-weight, flexible and can be produced cost- and energy-efficiently: printed microelectronic components made of synthetics. Flexible displays and touch screens, glowing films, RFID tags and solar cells represent a future market. In the context of an international cooperation project, physicists at the Technische Universität München...

Stacking semiconductors for artificial photosynthesis

A new material with light absorption characteristics ideally suited for making chemical fuels from sunlight was created via a nanowire growth strategy that fused the semiconductors silicon (Si) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) together in a new way. The GaAs nanowire array increases optical absorption by trapping the incident light and has potential for...