Reginald M. Penner, professor of chemistry, and his team built the sensors using nanowires made from palladium, a malleable platinum-like metallic element with high electrical conductivity. The sensors were found to respond faster and be more selective for hydrogen than conventional sensors while needing significantly less power for operation. Actually, you would probably miss it anyway, because it's one billionth the size of what you'd see taking a turn at Talladega or Indy. Calif. It's a modern soap box derby and fund-raising event that features the mechanical and technical work of students and businesses. We'll have blow-up photos that we'll be displaying at the race because the car clearly is so small.
Nanotechnology is in the news.
Forecasters paint a vision of microscopic machines that can fight viruses or alter the functioning of bodily systems, of power generators smaller than a penny, of entire medical laboratories in an area smaller than a credit card. The problem is, there is a huge gap between the devices we can design and those we can implement, given current technology. A technique that will greatly improve the study of nanostructures and help shorten the development time for quantum computers and similar devices has been demonstrated by a team of University of Michigan researchers. Authors of the paper are Profs. Bradford Orr and Duncan Steel, research fellow Jeffrey Guest, and graduate students Todd Stievater, Gang Chen, and Elizabeth Tabak, all of the Department of Physics.