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64 articles from ScienceNOW

Aligned, high-density semiconducting carbon nanotube arrays for high-performance electronics

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) may enable the fabrication of integrated circuits smaller than 10 nanometers, but this would require scalable production of dense and electronically pure semiconducting nanotube arrays on wafers. We developed a multiple dispersion and sorting process that resulted in extremely high semiconducting purity and a dimension-limited self-alignment (DLSA) procedure...

Bumble bees damage plant leaves and accelerate flower production when pollen is scarce

Maintaining phenological synchrony with flowers is a key ecological challenge for pollinators that may be exacerbated by ongoing environmental change. Here, we show that bumble bee workers facing pollen scarcity damage leaves of flowerless plants and thereby accelerate flower production. Laboratory studies revealed that leaf-damaging behavior is strongly influenced by pollen availability and that...

Coherent optical clock down-conversion for microwave frequencies with 10-18 instability

Optical atomic clocks are poised to redefine the Système International (SI) second, thanks to stability and accuracy more than 100 times better than the current microwave atomic clock standard. However, the best optical clocks have not seen their performance transferred to the electronic domain, where radar, navigation, communications, and fundamental research rely on less stable microwave...

DNA-directed nanofabrication of high-performance carbon nanotube field-effect transistors

Biofabricated semiconductor arrays exhibit smaller channel pitches than those created using existing lithographic methods. However, the metal ions within biolattices and the submicrometer dimensions of typical biotemplates result in both poor transport performance and a lack of large-area array uniformity. Using DNA-templated parallel carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays as model systems, we developed a...