A simple circular or hexagonal pit written into silicon can be used to generate self-assembling polymer spirals thanks to the addition of a tiny notch in the template, report scientists in the launch issue of Nano Futures.
What's more, modifying the notch's shape allows users to dial-up the direction of the spiral to generate either left- or right-handed patterns, and even create double spirals.
A smartphone display that can produce 3-D images will need to be able to twist the light it emits. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have discovered a way to mass-produce spiral semiconductors that can do just that.
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Until now, making semiconductors spirals with sufficiently strong twist – reminiscent of nanoscale fusilli pasta – was a difficult prospect because the twisted state is unnatural to semiconductor materials. They usually form sheets or wires. But Nicholas Kotov, Joseph B. and Florence V. Cejka Professor of Chemical Engineering and his team have found a way to guide the attachment of small semiconductor nanoparticles to each other learning from nature's twisted structures: proteins and DNA.
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Subject: Artificial DNA 
