Wonder material graphene has been touted as the next silicon, with one major problem -- it is too conductive to be used in computer chips. Now scientists have given its prospects a new lifeline. Scientists have now literally opened a third dimension in graphene research. Their research shows a transistor that may prove the missing link for graphene to become the next silicon.

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.

Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices. With unique properties and potential applications in areas from electronics to biodevices, graphene, which consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms, has been hailed as a rising star in the materials world. Now, a new study suggests that point defects, composed of silicon atoms that replace individual carbon atoms in graphene, could aid attempts to transfer data on an atomic scale by coupling light with electrons.

A kitchen gadget that vacuum seals food in plastic inspired a physicist to improve the performance of organic transistors for potential use in video displays.

A rare combination of electric and magnetic properties in a now readily producible material could improve electronic memory devices.

Researchers have examined the challenges facing scientists building the next generation of materials and innovative electronic devices and identified opportunities for taking the rational material design in new directions.

Physicists have identified a property of "bilayer graphene" that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics. The physicists found that when the number of electrons on the BLG sheet is close to 0, the material becomes insulating -- a finding that has implications for the use of graphene as an electronic material in the semiconductor and electronics industries.

Scientists have selectively grown polymer nanowires using only irradiation with a pulsed laser, in a region limited to the area of irradiation. They also succeeded in imparting diverse functionalities to the nanowires by doping with various species of nanomaterials.

The beauty of an electron’s spin is that it responds very rapidly to small magnetic fields. Such external magnetic fields can be used to reverse the direction of spin. In this way, information can be carried by a flow of electrons.

Materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates. The reactive ink has several advantages over particle-based inks: low processing temperature, high conductivity, and the ability to print very small features.

A new discovery shows that the flexibility and durability of carbon nanotube films and coatings are intimately linked to their electronic properties and could impact flexible electronic devices such as solar cells and wearable sensors.

Similar to the way pavement, softened by a hot sun, will slow down a car, graphene slows down an object sliding across its surface. But stack the sheets and graphene gets more slippery, say theorists who developed new software to quantify the material's friction.

Engineers have discovered that the new material graphene conducts heat about 20 times faster than silicon, making it an option as a semiconductor material that could produce quieter and longer-lasting computers, cellphones and other devices.

The prospect of electronics at the nanoscale may be even more promising with the first observation of metallic conductance in ferroelectric nanodomains.

Smaller and more powerful electronics requires the understanding of 'quantum jamming' physics, experts say.

An engineering professor has made a breakthrough discovery with graphene, a material that could play a major role in keeping laptops and other electronic devices from overheating.

Can organic matter behave like a fridge magnet? Scientists have now shown that it can. Researchers took nonmagnetic graphene and then either 'peppered' it with other nonmagnetic atoms like fluorine or removed some carbon atoms from the chicken wire. The empty spaces, called vacancies, and added atoms all turned out to be magnetic, exactly like atoms of, for example, iron.

Chemists have developed novel glass ceramics for dentistry. The new kind of glass ceramic with a nanocrystalline structure seems to be well suited to be used in dentistry due to its high strength and its optical characteristics.

Scientists have used supercomputers to uncover the properties of a promising form of graphene, known as graphene nanowiggles. What they found was that graphitic nanoribbons can be segmented into several different surface structures called nanowiggles. Each of these structures produces highly different magnetic and conductive properties. The findings provide a blueprint that scientists can use to literally pick and choose a graphene nanostructure that is tuned and customized for a different task or device.

A relay reaction of hydrogen atoms at a single-molecule level has been observed in real-space. This way of manipulating matter could open up new ways to exchange information between novel molecular devices in future electronics.