Nano News: 06/19/15

First solar cell made of highly ordered molecular frameworks

Researchers at KIT have developed a material suited for photovoltaics. For the first time, a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFs). The material is highly elastic and might also be used for the flexible coating of clothes and deformable components....

A bundled attraction

The magnetically driven, reversible bundling of one-dimensional (1D) arrays of superparamagnetic nanoparticles has been demonstrated for the first time by a RIKEN-led research team ("Tailoring Micrometer-Long High-Integrity 1D Array of Superparamagnetic Nanoparticles in a Nanotubular Protein Jacket and Its Lateral Magnetic Assembling Behavior"). The...

Explained: chemical vapor deposition

In a sense, says MIT chemical engineering professor Karen Gleason, you can trace the technology of chemical vapor deposition, or CVD, all the way back to prehistory: “When the cavemen lit a lamp and soot was deposited on the wall of a cave,” she says, that was a rudimentary form of CVD. Today, CVD is a basic tool of manufacturing — used in everything...