Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods to self-assemble into aligned and ordered macroscopic structures. This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices and sensors, and boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.

Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they’ve also discovered how to correct the problem.

Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and UC Berkeley professor, has won the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry for 2012. Alivisatos is an internationally recognized authority on nanochemistry and a pioneer in the synthesis of semiconductor quantum dots and multi-shaped artificial nanostructures. He shares this year’s Wolf Prize in Chemistry with fellow nanoscience expert Charles Lieber of Harvard University.

Omar Yaghi, one of the world’s most cited chemists and leading authorities on nanoscience, is the new director of the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy nanoscience center at Berkeley Lab.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a nanowire endoscope that can provide high-resolution optical images of the interior of a single living cell, or precisely deliver genes, proteins, therapeutic drugs or other cargo without injuring or damaging the cell.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a promising new inexpensive technique for fabricating large-scale flexible and stretchable backplanes using semiconductor-enriched carbon nanotube solutions. To demonstrate the utility of their carbon nanotube backplanes, the researchers constructed an artificial electronic skin device capable of detecting and responding to touch.

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have discovered a universal technique for stripping nanocrystals of tether-like molecules that pose as obstacles for their integration into devices. These findings could provide scientists with a clean slate for developing new nanocrystal-based technologies for energy storage, photovoltaics, smart windows, solar fuels and light-emitting diodes.

Berkeley Lab researchers may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials – one of the hottest new fields in high tech – by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional millimeter-sized supercrystals of the highest possible density.

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have shed light on the role of temperature in controlling a fabrication technique for drawing chemical surface patterns as small as 20 nanometers. This technique could provide an inexpensive, fast route to growing and patterning a wide variety of materials on surfaces to build electrical circuits and chemical sensors, or study how pharmaceuticals bind to proteins and viruses.

By embedding fixed arrays of gold nanoparticles into fluid lipid bilayers, Berkeley Lab scientists can study with unprecedented detail how the spatial patterns of chemical and physical properties on membranes can determine the fate of a cell – whether it lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous.