Berkeley researchers have devised a simple but powerful technique to induce nanoparticles to assemble themselves into complex arrays.

Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that selective placement of strain can alter the electronic phase and its spatial arrangement in correlated electron materials, a class of materials that can display properties such as colossal magnetoresistance and high-temperature superconductivity.

In a development that holds much promise for the future of solar electricity and fuel, Berkeley Lab researchers used gold tips grown in solution to increase the electrical conductivity of cadmium-selenide nanorod crystals by 100,000 times.

Berkeley Lab experts in nanocrystal growth and electron microscopy combined their skills to record the first ever direct observations in real-time of the growth of single nanocrystals in solution. Their findings revealed that much of what we thought we knew is wrong.

Berkeley Lab researchers have produced non-toxic nanocrystals that efficiently emit blue light, making them a bright candidate for solid-state lighting. These materials could also play a role in long-term storage of carbon dioxide, a potential means of tempering the effects of global warming.

Researchers in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and at UC Berkeley have made efficient, cheap, flexible solar cells by growing dense 3-D arrays of single-crystal semiconductors on a prepatterned aluminum substrate. The nanoscale pillars are embedded in a complementary transparent semiconductor that serves as a window. The solar cells are made bendable by embedding them in clear plastic.

Berkeley Lab scientists have created bright, stable and bio-friendly nanocrystals that act as individual investigators of activity within a cell. These ideal light emitting probes represent a significant step in scrutinizing the behaviors of proteins and other components in complex systems such as a living cell.

The electron mobility and other unique features of graphene hold great promise for nanoscale electronics and photonics, but graphene has no bandgap. Now Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered a bandgap in bilayer graphene that can be precisely controlled from 0 to .25 electron volts at room temperature, making possible new kinds of nanotransistors and nanoscale optical devices in the infrared range.

Berkeley Lab researchers have created a unique new memory storage medium that can pack thousands of times more data into one square inch of space than conventional chips and preserve this data for more than a billion years!

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed simple recipes to whip up ‘cage-like’ container structures for the creation of complex molecular machines that can be programmed to rotate, switch and perform mechanical work.