Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: In the near future, we’ll be able to build machines that learn, reason, and even emote their way to solving problems, the way people do.  If you’ve ever been interested in artificial intelligence, you’ve seen that promise broken countless times.  Way back in the 1960s, the relatively [...]

Integration of individual nanoparticles into desired spatial arrangements over large areas is a prerequisite for exploiting their unique electrical, optical, and chemical properties.  However, positioning single sub-10-nm nanoparticles in a specific location individually on a substrate remains challenging.  Herein we have developed a unique approach, termed scanning probe block copolymer lithography, which enables one to [...]

The National Science Foundation’s Dynamical Systems program supports innovative research on the theories of dynamical systems, including new analytical and computational tools, as well as the novel application of dynamical systems to engineered systems.  The program is especially interested in transformative research in the area of complex systems, uncertain or stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems, model [...]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of enhancements to Near-Junction Thermal Transport in high-power electronic devices.  Proposed research should investigate innovative thermal management approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.  Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state [...]

Organic semiconductors will have a large impact on consumer electronics.  Organic LEDs are now widely used in cell-phone displays and have potential for use in solid-state lighting.  Organic solar cells recently entered the market in consumer products such as Konarka’s Power Plastic for solar bags.  Following this first wave of organic photonics products, there is [...]

The use of paper as a material for various device applications is very attractive given its flexibility, versatility, and low cost.  Here we demonstrate that electrowetting (EW) devices can be readily fabricated on paper substrates.  Several categories of paper have been investigated for this purpose, with the surface coating, roughness, thickness, and water uptake, among [...]

Chirality at the molecular level is found in diverse biological structures, such as polysaccharides, proteins and DNA, and is responsible for many of their unique properties.  Introducing chirality into porous inorganic solids may produce new types of materials that could be useful for chiral separation, stereospecific catalysis, chiral recognition (sensing) and photonic materials.  Template synthesis [...]

We have demonstrated a new method for the large-area graphene growth, which can lead to a scalable low-cost high-throughput production technology.  The method is based on growing single-layer or few-layer graphene films from a molten phase.  The process involves dissolving carbon inside a molten metal at a specified temperature and then allowing the dissolved carbon [...]

We have measured the frequency-dependent, complex impedance of thin metal strips in a broad range of microwave frequencies.  The spectra are in good agreement with theoretical predictions of an RCL model.  The resistance, inductance, and capacitance, which govern the microwave response, depend on the strip width and thickness as well as on the strip and [...]

It is demonstrated based on continuum mechanics modeling and simulation that it is possible to obtain polycrystalline ceramic ferroelectric materials which beggars single crystals in electromechanical properties.  The local inhomogeneities at the ferroelectric domain-scale level due to spontaneous polarization and the underlying anisotropy are taken into consideration in the framework of mathematical homogenization of physical [...]