Nanostructures are of great interest not only for their basic scientific richness, but also because they have the potential to revolutionize critical technologies. The miniaturization of electronic devices over the past century has profoundly affected human communication, computation, manufacturing and transportation systems. True molecular-scale electronic devices are now emerging that set the stage for future integrated nanoelectronics. Recently, there have been dramatic parallel advances in the miniaturization of mechanical and electromechanical devices. Commercial microelectromechanical systems now reach the submillimetre to micrometre size scale, and there is intense interest in the creation of next-generation synthetic nanometre-scale electromechanical systems. We report on the construction and successful operation of a fully synthetic nanoscale electromechanical actuator incorporating a rotatable metal plate, with a multi-walled carbon nanotube serving as the key motion-enabling element.
Bacterial nanowires are extracellular appendages that have been suggested as pathways for electron transport in phylogenetically diverse microorganisms, including dissimilatory metal-reducing bacteria and photosynthetic cyanobacteria. However, there has been no evidence presented to demonstrate electron transport along the length of bacterial nanowires. Here we report electron transport measurements along individually addressed bacterial nanowires derived from electron-acceptor–limited cultures of the dissimilatory metal-reducing bacterium
Shewanella oneidensis
MR-1. Transport along the bacterial nanowires was independently evaluated by two techniques: (
i
) nanofabricated electrodes patterned on top of individual nanowires, and (
ii
) conducting probe atomic force microscopy at various points along a single nanowire bridging a metallic electrode and the conductive atomic force microscopy tip. The
S. oneidensis
MR-1 nanowires were found to be electrically conductive along micrometer-length scales with electron transport rates up to 10
9
/s at 100 mV of applied bias and a measured resistivity on the order of 1 Ω·cm. Mutants deficient in genes for
c
-type decaheme cytochromes MtrC and OmcA produce appendages that are morphologically consistent with bacterial nanowires, but were found to be nonconductive. The measurements reported here allow for bacterial nanowires to serve as a viable microbial strategy for extracellular electron transport.
We report carbon-nanotube-based electromechanical resonators with the fundamental mode frequency over 1.3 GHz, operated in air at room temperature. A new combination of drive and detection methods allows for unprecedented measurement of both oscillation amplitude and phase and elucidates the relative mobility of static charges near the nanotube. The resonator serves as an exceptionally sensitive mass detector capable of approximately 10(-18) g resolution.
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