Boron nitride is a thermally and chemically resistant refractory compound of boron and nitrogen with the chemical formula BN. It exists in various crystalline forms that are isoelectronic to a similarly structured carbon lattice. The hexagonal form corresponding to graphite is the most stable and soft among BN polymorphs, and is therefore used as a lubricant and an additive to cosmetic products. The cubic variety analogous to diamond is called c-BN; it is softer than diamond, but its thermal and chemical stability is superior. The rare wurtzite BN modification is similar to lonsdaleite but slightly softer than the cubic form.
Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are a class of devices integrating electrical and mechanical functionality on the nanoscale. NEMS form the next logical miniaturization step from so-called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS devices. NEMS typically integrate transistor-like nanoelectronics with mechanical actuators, pumps, or motors, and may thereby form physical, biological, and chemical sensors. The name derives from typical device dimensions in the nanometer range, leading to low mass, high mechanical resonance frequencies, potentially large quantum mechanical effects such as zero point motion, and a high surface-to-volume ratio useful for surface-based sensing mechanisms. Applications include accelerometers and sensors to detect chemical substances in the air.
Pulickel Madhavapanicker Ajayan, known as P. M. Ajayan, is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering at Rice University. He is the founding chair of Rice University's Materials Science and NanoEngineering department and also holds joint appointments with the Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Prior to joining Rice, he was the Henry Burlage Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering and the director of the NYSTAR interconnect focus center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute until 2007. Known for his pioneering work of designing and carrying out the first experiments to make nanotubes intentionally.
Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blanket terms for various related technologies.
Phaedon Avouris is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
As the world's energy demand continues to grow, the development of more efficient and sustainable technologies for generating and storing energy is becoming increasingly important. According to Dr. Wade Adams from Rice University, energy will be the most pressing problem facing humanity in the next 50 years and nanotechnology has potential to solve this issue. Nanotechnology, a relatively new field of science and engineering, has shown promise to have a significant impact on the energy industry. Nanotechnology is defined as any technology that contains particles with one dimension under 100 nanometers in length. For scale, a single virus particle is about 100 nanometers wide.
Alex K. Zettl is an American experimental physicist, educator, and inventor.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:
Alexander A. Balandin is an electrical engineer, solid-state physicist, and materials scientist best known for the experimental discovery of unique thermal properties of graphene and their theoretical explanation; studies of phonons in nanostructures and low-dimensional materials, which led to the development of the field of phonon engineering; investigation of low-frequency electronic noise in materials and devices; and demonstration of the first charge-density-wave quantum devices operating at room temperature.
Nanoneedles may be conical or tubular needles in the nanometre size range, made from silicon or boron-nitride with a central bore of sufficient size to allow the passage of large molecules, or solid needles useful in Raman spectroscopy, light emitting diodes (LED) and laser diodes.
Potential graphene applications include lightweight, thin, and flexible electric/photonics circuits, solar cells, and various medical, chemical and industrial processes enhanced or enabled by the use of new graphene materials.
In materials science, the term single-layer materials or 2D materials refers to crystalline solids consisting of a single layer of atoms. These materials are promising for some applications but remain the focus of research. Single-layer materials derived from single elements generally carry the -ene suffix in their names, e.g. graphene. Single-layer materials that are compounds of two or more elements have -ane or -ide suffixes. 2D materials can generally be categorized as either 2D allotropes of various elements or as compounds.
Graphene-Boron Nitride nanohybrid materials are a class of compounds created from graphene and boron nitride nanosheets. Graphene and boron nitride both contain intrinsic thermally conductive and electrically insulative properties. The combination of these two compounds may be useful to advance the development and understanding of electronics.
Boron nitride nanosheet is a two-dimensional crystalline form of the hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has a thickness of one to few atomic layers. It is similar in geometry as well as physical and thermal properties to its all-carbon analog graphene, but has very different chemical and electronic properties – contrary to the black and highly conducting graphene, BN nanosheets are electrical insulators with a band gap of ~5.9 eV, and therefore appear white in color.
A graphene morphology is any of the structures related to, and formed from, single sheets of graphene. 'Graphene' is typically used to refer to the crystalline monolayer of the naturally occurring material graphite. Due to quantum confinement of electrons within the material at these low dimensions, small differences in graphene morphology can greatly impact the physical and chemical properties of these materials. Commonly studied graphene morphologies include the monolayer sheets, bilayer sheets, graphene nanoribbons and other 3D structures formed from stacking of the monolayer sheets.
Mahmooda Sultana is a Bangladeshi-American scientist working for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She leads a team which won a $2 million technology development award for a nanomaterial-based detector platform in 2019. Sultana became a NASA research engineer in 2010. She received her PhD in chemical engineering in 2010 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and BSc in chemical engineering and mathematics from University of Southern California summa cum laude. She joined NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2010. She has led the development of graphene-based detectors at NASA Goddard. Her research interests include graphene, nanomaterials, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMs) devices, and sensors.
Two dimensional hexagonal boron nitride is a material of comparable structure to graphene with potential applications in e.g. photonics., fuel cells and as a substrate for two-dimensional heterostructures. 2D h-BN is isostructural to graphene, but where graphene is conductive, 2D h-BN is a wide-gap insulator.
Sarah Jane Haigh is a Professor in the School of Materials at the University of Manchester. She investigates nanomaterials using transmission electron microscopy, including two-dimensional materials such as graphene.
Jagdish Narayan is an Indian-born American engineer. Since 2001, he has been the John C. C. Fan Family Distinguished Chair Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at North Carolina State University. He is also the distinguished visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Narayan has published above 500 high-impact journal articles, with his discoveries covered in over 40 US and international patents. His body of work can be segregated into highly non-equilibrium laser processing of novel nanomaterials, including Q-carbon, Q-BN, diamond and c-BN related materials. These research articles have received over 31,000 Google citations with h-index >85. Narayan and his students discovered Q-carbon asa new allotrope, thereby finding a new route to fabricate diamond and related materials in ambient conditions, resulting in properties and applications ranging from high-temperature superconductivity in boron-doped Q-carbon to hardness than diamond in Q-carbon to enhanced field-emission in Q-carbon to nitrogen-doped nanodiamonds for quantum computing, nanosensing and solid-state devices.
Oded Hod is an Israeli chemist. He is a full professor at the School of Chemistry of Tel Aviv University, and is the Heinemann Chair of Physical Chemistry.
