There are starting to be some interesting proposal being developed that use properties of nanomaterials.\u00a0 This blog will cover three recent published reports relating to 1) food; 2) non-toxic graphene; and, 3) graphene for cooling electronics.<\/p>\n
Food:<\/span><\/strong> In a paper in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Researchers from Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri) [Ref. 1] present findings on a means of improving crop production by using nanomaterials.\u00a0 An article by UPI [Ref. 2] puts the finding in more general terms.\u00a0 As the requirement for additional food production increases, farmers employ more fertilizers.\u00a0 One of the key components in phosphorous.\u00a0 There are potential problems with this. When the excess fertilizer is washed from the field, it enters the waterways.\u00a0 As it concentrates, it aids the growth of oxygen depleting algae, which kill fish.\u00a0 There was also a comment that if farmers continue to use the phosphorous containing fertilizers at the current rate, there is the potential of running out of readily available phosphorous. The consequences are reduction in food supply, increase in the cost of food, and an increase in hunger.\u00a0 Even if it were 100 years instead of the projected 80 years, the decrease in the availability of phosphorous will have an impact on society.<\/p>\n The researchers created zinc oxide nanoparticles the aids plant roots increase their ability to absorb the phosphorous in the soil.\u00a0 The zinc interacts with three plant enzymes and enables the enzymes to convert the phosphorous into a less complex version that is easier for the plant to absorb.\u00a0 The zinc oxide is applied to the plant leaf; it enables the plant to absorb 11% more phosphorous from the soil.\u00a0 The ability to more effectively use the existing phosphorous means that less will be required to increase the plan harvesting.\u00a0 (This is assuming that the mechanism will work similarly with all plants, which needs to be prove.)\u00a0 The interesting thing about this work is that the zinc oxide is produced by a fungus.\u00a0 This means that there is not a need for a complex manufacturing process to produce the nanomaterial.<\/p>\n Non-toxic:<\/span><\/strong> An interesting announcement was released on April 16, 2016 by Directa Plus. [Ref. 3]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0In the announcement, the company stated that \u201call of its graphene-based products have received international certification from Farcoderm Srl (a toxicity testing agency) confirming them to be safe for human contact.\u00a0 The material is manufactured in Lomazzo, Italy.\u00a0 The company supplies material that in incorporated into sportswear and other products.<\/p>\n Graphene for cooling:<\/span><\/strong> Researchers in Gothenburg, Sweden announced the application of functionalized graphene nanoflakes-based film. [Ref. 4] The key to the process is the addition of molecules added to the surface of the material \u201cto encourage various chemical and physical properties.\u201d\u00a0 They are incorporating amino-silane molecules to improve the in-plane heat conduction. \u00a0There results were published in the Journal of Nature Communications, where the full article is available. [Ref. 5] They measured significantly lower temperatures at previously identified hotspots on electronic devices.\u00a0 For those interested, the article contains a significant amount of detail on their understanding of the processes involved.<\/p>\n The impact of being able to remove heat from the circuit itself enables the more effective operation of the electronics, which should result in a longer life.\u00a0 However, there is a very large \u201cif\u201d.\u00a0 For this heat transfer to be effective, the heat that is transferred must be removed from the entire electronics assembly.\u00a0 Unless this removal occurs, the heat will remain in the entire package and result in a heat buildup.\u00a0 Dissipating heat from a large package is continually being worked and is an easier problem to solve than the one this concept addresses.<\/p>\n References:<\/strong><\/p>\n There are starting to be some interesting proposal being developed that use properties of nanomaterials.\u00a0 This blog will cover three recent published reports relating to 1) food; 2) [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n