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Guinness record: World's thinnest glass is just two atoms thick At just a molecule thick, it's a new record: The world's thinnest sheet of glass, a serendipitous discovery by scientists at Cornell and Germany's University of Ulm, is recorded for posterity in the Guinness Book of World Records. The "pane" of glass, so impossibly thin that its individual silicon and  oxygen atoms  are clearly visible via  electron microscopy , was identified in the lab of David A. Muller, professor of applied and  engineering physics  and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. The work that describes direct imaging of this thin glass was first published in January 2012 in  Nano Letters , and the Guinness records officials took note. The record will now be published in the Guinness World Records 2014 Edition. Just two atoms in thickness, the glass was an accidental discovery, Muller said. The scientists had been making graphene, a

New NANO Particles make solar cell cheaper to manufacture University of Alberta researchers have found that abundant materials in the Earth's crust can be used to make inexpensive and easily manufactured nanoparticle-based solar cells. The University of Alberta  discovery, several years in the making, is an important step forward in making solar power more accessible to parts of the world that are off the traditional  electricity grid  or face high power costs, such as the Canadian North, said researcher Jillian Buriak, a chemistry professor and senior research officer of the National Institute for Nanotechnology, based on the  University of Alberta  campus. Buriak and her team have designed nanoparticles that absorb light and  conduct electricity  from two very common elements: phosphorus and zinc. Both materials are more plentiful than scarce materials such as cadmium and free from manufacturing restrictions imposed on lead-based nanoparticles. "Half the world

Raising the IQ of smart windows Aug 14, 2013 Nanocrystals of indium tin oxide (shown here in blue) embedded in a glassy matrix of niobium oxide (green) form a composite material that can switch between NIR-transmitting and NIR-blocking states with a small jolt of electricity. A synergistic interaction in the region where glassy matrix meets nanocrystal increases the potency of the electrochromic effect. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a new material to make smart windows even smarter. The material is a thin coating of nanocrystals embedded in glass that can dynamically modify sunlight as it passes through a window. Unlike existing technologies, the coating provides selective control over visible light and heat-producing near-infrared (NIR) light, so windows can maximize both energy savings and occupant comfort in a wide range of climates. n the US, we spend about a quarter of our t