"Keep cool to reduce friction" might be the advice given designers of nanoscale machinery by researchers who have just completed a study of factors influencing the formation of "water bridges" – capillary connections that can glue surfaces together, giving rise to friction forces.

When surfaces touch in a humid environment, moisture forms water bridges, or capillaries, between them. On familiar size scales, this process – known as nucleation – helps hold sand castles and wet concrete together, and is critical to the formation of clouds. But sometimes these structures can be less helpful, causing friction sufficient to slow or even stop nanoscale machinery – or in food processing, creating large clusters of sugar, salt, baby cereals or coffee.

By studying the frictional forces acting on an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip drawn across a glass surface, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated for the first time that the formation of these capillaries is thermally activated. Their study suggests that it may be possible to reduce the adhesion between surfaces by reducing temperatures and putting nanoscale surfaces into motion before the water bridges have time to form.

The main objectives of the project are (i) to develop versatile, inexpensive, and easy-to-use diagnostic tools for health, environmental and other applications based on the measurement of molecular interactions (ligand-receptor interactions) by integrated micro- and nano-cantilever sensors and (ii) to test the developed diagnostic tools in two specific health care applications, namely (1) the detection of tumour markers in clinical diagnosis and (2) the high-sensitivity detection of proteins, providing a verification of the project's achievements and initiating a generation of innovative products with significant market potential. The proposed project capitalizes on the mechanical properties of micro- and nano-mechanical structures (cantilevers) to measure molecular (ligand-receptor) interactions.

Researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute, US, the University of California, Los Angeles, US, and the University of Bologna, Italy, have made a molecular machine that acts as a nanoscale elevator. They claim the device is considerably more complex and better organized than previous artificial molecular machines.

“We built three controllable molecular shuttles into the three legs of a rig-like component and then fused three rings onto a platform,” Fraser Stoddart of UCLA told nanotechweb.org. “Using chemicals in the form of acid and base, we can make the platform move up and down with respect to the rig.”

A tiny shot of alcohol could one day perk up worn-out micro-motors in digital camera displays, car airbags and other micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The injected alcohol would cause an alcoholic vapour to condense on the tiny crevices in the motor and provide lubrication.

Seong Kim of Pennsylvania State University suggested the idea at the American Chemical Society conference in Anaheim, California, on Monday. He and his colleague Ken Strawhecker showed that methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol deposited in this way reduced friction between silicon dioxide plates by 80 per cent, while providing a replenishable method for lubrication.

Nanorings, a new type of geometry in the quest to build nanoscale devices, hold out near-term promise as injectable pressure sensors to monitor the human body.

The uniform, crystalline zinc-oxide rings, 1 to 4 microns in diameter and 30 nanometers thick, were produced by a research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Atlanta).

While the geometry simply joins nanowires and nanotubes in a line of building blocks for nanoscale devices, lead researcher Zhong Lin Wang called the piezoelectric nature of zinc-oxide "a dramatic advance." Wang believes a new class of nanoscale devices with applications in MEMS and biotechnology will result from the discovery.

Zyvex Corp., a Richardson, Texas, developer of nanotechnology tools and devices, announced the release of its A100 assembly system, a manipulation and assembly tool that is used with a scanning electron or optical microscope.
The A100 was developed for MEMS and microcomponent assembly as part of a grant-supported project. It has a two positioners that grasp, move, test and position microscale components. The company plans to demonstrate the device in late January.

Recent nanotechnology research at Purdue University could pave the way toward faster computer memories and higher density magnetic data storage, all with an affordable price tag.

Purdue chemist Alexander Wei may have come up with a surprisingly simple and cheap solution to the shrinking data storage problem. Wei's research team has found a way to create tiny magnetic rings from particles made of cobalt. The rings are much less than 100 nanometers across – an important threshold for the size-conscious computer industry – and can store magnetic information at room temperature. Best of all, these "nanorings" form all on their own, a process commonly known as self-assembly.

Nanogen, Inc. (Nasdaq:NGEN) today announced that it has been issued U.S. Patent No. 6,652,808, "Methods for the Electronic Assembly and Fabrication of Devices," ("the '808 patent") by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Researchers need to be able to sense conditions in microscopic environments in order to explore nanotechnology's potential to produce useful machines at the scale of atoms and molecules.

Researchers from the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) have fashioned nano thermometers from a magnesium oxide nanotubes filled with liquid gallium. The tiny thermometers are between 20 and 60 nanometers thick, or about one hundredth the diameter of a red blood cell.

The device has an especially large temperature range for a nanothermometer—it works up to 1,000 degrees Celsius, or just shy of the melting point of gold. The researchers constructed a thermometer that was able to withstand high temperatures because they used magnesium oxide nanotubes rather than the more common carbon nanotubes.

A network of microscopic sensors, each acting as its own antenna and power source, could float through storms and generate detailed, real-time atmospheric data essential for weather forecasting.

The concept relies on packaging micro-electromechanical systems, devices with micron-scale features dozens of times narrower than a human hair. An optimal sensor package would take up about 100 cubic microns, said John Manobianco, a staff scientist with the aerospace sciences and engineering division of Ensco, a systems integration and research company.