Wafer-Scale Nanopatterning and Translation into High-Performance Piezoelectric Nanowires

The development of a facile method for fabricating one-dimensional, precisely positioned nanostructures over large areas offers exciting opportunities in fundamental research and innovative applications. Large-scale nanofabrication methods have been restricted in accessibility due to their complexity and cost. Likewise, bottom-up synthesis of nanowires has been limited in methods to assemble these structures at precisely defined locations. Nanomaterials such as PbZr_xTi_(1−x)O_3 (PZT) nanowires (NWs)—which may be useful for nonvolatile memory storage (FeRAM), nanoactuation, and nanoscale power generation—are difficult to synthesize without suffering from polycrystallinity or poor stoichiometric control. Here, we report a novel fabrication method which requires only low-resolution photolithography and electrochemical etching to generate ultrasmooth NWs over wafer scales. These nanostructures are subsequently used as patterning templates to generate PZT nanowires with the highest reported piezoelectric performance (d_(eff) ~ 145 pm/V). The combined large-scale nanopatterning with hierarchical assembly of functional nanomaterials could yield breakthroughs in areas ranging from nanodevice arrays to nanodevice powering

Optimised protein recovery from mackerel whole fish by using sequential acid/alkaline isoelectric solubilization precipitation (ISP) extraction assisted by ultrasound

peer-reviewedThe growing fishery industry needs to find new green-processes in order to provide a solution to the huge amount of wastes and by-products that such industrial activity produces. Currently, around a 40% of the total weight of the mackerel is considered a by-product, because just the fillets are used in the food market. ISP method has been revealed as a useful tool for protein recovering, however the yield of this process is traditionally lower than enzymatic methods. In present work, the use of sequential acid/alkaline extraction and alkaline extraction assisted by ultrasound, have been implemented in order to increase the yield of the process. It has been demonstrated that (i) sequential extraction is able to recover practically 100% of total protein, and (ii) applying ultrasound to alkaline extraction is possible to recover more than 95% of total protein from mackerel by-products. Extracted proteins were characterized according to their size, and the amino acid profile of final product was determined.This project (Grant-Aid Agreement No. MFFRI/07/01) was carried out under the Sea Change Strategy with the support of the Marine Institute and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, funded under the National Development Plan 2007–2013

Rural Energy Alternatives in India: Opportunities in Financing and Community Engagement for Renewable Energy Microgrid Projects

This report focuses on scaling up the deployment of micro-grids in India. The researchers visited and interviewed official in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and other places to determine best practices from successful micro-grid projects. According to the authors, rural electrification will require effective financing strategies and community engagement