Feature Channels: Nanotechnology

• share
• favorite_border

“Hairy” nanoparticles made with light-sensitive materials that assemble themselves could one day become “nano-carriers” providing doctors a new way to simultaneously introduce both therapeutic drugs and cancer-fighting heat into tumors. That’s one potential application for a new technology that combines water-repelling yet light-sensitive and water-absorbing materials into polymeric nano-reactors for creating photo-responsive gold nanoparticles.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to triple the amount of power generated by the world’s most powerful X-ray laser. The new technique, developed at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), will enable researchers to observe the atomic structure of molecules and ultrafast chemical processes that were previously undetectable at the atomic scale.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers funded by the National Institute Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have developed florescent nanoparticles that light up to track the progress of breast cancer metastasis. They are currently testing the particles in mice with the hope of someday being able to use them in humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an energy-efficient recycling process that restores used cathodes from spent lithium ion batteries and makes them work just as good as new. The process involves harvesting the degraded cathode particles from a used battery and then boiling and heat treating them. Researchers built new batteries using the regenerated cathodes. Charge storage capacity, charging time and battery lifetime were all restored to their original levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered a way of enhancing the capabilities of an emerging nanotechnology that could open the door to a new generation of electronics.

• share
• favorite_border

“The 2018 SLAS Technology Ten represent some of the most innovative scientific achievements that were featured in SLAS Technology in the past 12 months,” says Editor-in-Chief Edward Kai-Hua Chow, PhD (National University of Singapore).

• share
• favorite_border

Jonathan Claussen and the nanoengineers in his research group continue to find new ways to use graphene printing technology. They're now treating printed graphene with lasers to create electronic circuits that repel water. That could lead to washable electronics.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Arkansas invention has the potential to change the way we produce and consume energy. A technology commercialization company has licensed the patent for this technology and is working with physics professor Paul Thibado on to develop a prototype.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Berkeley Lab discovered that a form of perovskite, one of the hottest materials in solar research due to its high conversion efficiency, works surprisingly well as a stable and photoactive semiconductor material that can be reversibly switched between a transparent state and a non-transparent state, without degrading its electronic properties.

• share
• favorite_border

New research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford University has found that palladium nanoparticles can repair atomic dislocations in their crystal structure, potentially leading to other advances in material science.

• share
• favorite_border

Northwestern University researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind technique for creating entirely new classes of optical materials and devices that could lead to light bending and cloaking devices — news to make the ears of Star Trek’s Spock perk up.

• share
• favorite_border

Northwestern University’s Chad A. Mirkin will receive the prestigious Remsen Memorial Lecture Award for his outstanding discoveries in chemistry.

• share
• favorite_border

The magnetic noise caused by adsorbed oxygen molecules is “eating at” the phase stability of quantum bits, mitigating the noise is vital for future quantum computers.

• share
• favorite_border

Water passes through human-made straws faster than the “gold standard” protein, allowing us to filter seawater.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at UC San Diego have developed macrophage "nanosponges"—nanoparticles cloaked in the cell membranes of macrophages—that can safely remove sepsis-causing molecules from the bloodstream. In lab tests, these macrophage nanosponges improved survival rates in mice with sepsis.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy honors Argonne researchers in top 40 research-paper countdown.

• share
• favorite_border

Some materials have the unique ability to self-assemble into organized molecular patterns and structures. Materials scientist Gregory Doerk of the Electronic Nanomaterials Group at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory—takes advantage of this ability in materials called block copolymers.

• share
• favorite_border

As medicine and pharmacology investigate nanoscale processes, it has become increasingly important to identify and characterize different molecules. Raman spectroscopy, which leverages the scattering of laser light to identify molecules, has a limited capacity to detect molecules in diluted samples because of low signal yield, but researchers in India have improved molecular detection at low concentration levels by arranging silver nanoparticles on silicon nanowires. They describe their work in this week’s Journal of Applied Physics.

• share
• favorite_border

Using two types of “designer” quantum dots, researchers are creating double-pane solar windows that generate electricity with greater efficiency and create shading and insulation for good measure. It’s all made possible by a new window architecture which utilizes two different layers of low-cost quantum dots tuned to absorb different parts of the solar spectrum.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have published the first part of what they expect to be a database showing the kinetics involved in producing colloidal metal nanocrystals – which are suitable for catalytic, biomedical, photonic and electronic applications – through an autocatalytic mechanism.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team led by a scientist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has demonstrated for the first time that the magnetic fields of bacterial cells and magnetic nano-objects in liquid can be studied at high resolution using electron microscopy.

• share
• favorite_border

This new (and freely available) original research article presents a fast, robust and accurate methodology for correlating compound identity to CYP1A2 potency of inhibitors in metabolic mixtures. The methodology is centered around an at-line nanofractionation platform in which a metabolic mixture is chromatographically separated followed by parallel on-line mass spectrometric (MS) analysis and at-line nanofractionation on high-density microtiter well plates that are then directly exposed to a bioassay.

• share
• favorite_border

Teng of the University of New Hampshire brings his research to design new types of nanostructured materials for energy conversion and storage applications to Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN).

• share
• favorite_border

Argonne research has shown how hybrid nanomaterials may be used to convert light energy more efficiently for applications in photocatalysis, photovoltaics and ultrafast optics.

• share
• favorite_border

Silver nanoparticles are being used in clothing for their anti-odor abilities but some of this silver comes off when the clothes are laundered. The wastewater from this process could end up in the environment, possibly harming aquatic life, so researchers have attempted to recover the silver. Now, one group reports in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering that detergent chemistry plays a significant role in how much of this silver can be removed from laundry wastewater.

• share
• favorite_border

An international group of researchers have designed new anti-viral nanoparticles that bind to a range of viruses, including herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, respiratory syncytial virus and Dengue and Lentiviruses. Unlike other broad-spectrum antivirals, which simply prevent viruses from infecting cells, the new nanoparticles destroy viruses.

• share
• favorite_border

To help fill the need for six million workers trained in nanotechnology and nanofabrication, Penn State's Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization and its Nanotechnology Professional Development Partnership are offering free live stream nanotechnology workshops for educators.

• share
• favorite_border

How sensitive is the human sense of touch? Sensitive enough to feel the difference between surfaces that differ by just a single layer of molecules, a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has shown

• share
• favorite_border

Doctors might be able to better detect any disease or disorder that involves inflammation thanks to a new MRI imaging technology co-developed by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

• share
• favorite_border

Los Alamos National Laboratory will award four former researchers with the Los Alamos Medal for their scientific contributions.

• share
• favorite_border

By using an electrochemical etching process on a common stainless steel alloy, researchers have created a nanotextured surface that kills bacteria while not harming mammalian cells. If additional research supports early test results, the process might be used to attack microbial contamination on implantable medical devices and on food processing equipment made with the metal.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering, experts at manipulating matter at the nanoscale, have made an important breakthrough in physics and materials science, recently reported in Nature Nanotechnology. Working with colleagues from Princeton and Purdue Universities and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, the team has engineered “artificial graphene” by recreating, for the first time, the electronic structure of graphene in a semiconductor device.

• share
• favorite_border

Using light-emitting nanoparticles, Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientists have invented a highly effective method to detect tiny tumors and track their spread, potentially leading to earlier cancer detection and more precise treatment. The technology, announced today, could improve patient cure rates and survival times.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, helped saved the life of an injured baby alpaca using the NuCress™ scaffold, a nanomaterial-based bone regeneration device.

• share
• favorite_border

For decades, scientists have been trying to make a true molecular chain: a repeated set of tiny rings interlocked together. In a study in Science published online Nov. 30, University of Chicago researchers announced the first confirmed method to craft such a molecular chain.

• share
• favorite_border

Strong odors are an indicator that food has gone bad, but there could soon be a new way to sniff foul smells earlier on. As reported in ACS Nano, researchers have developed a bioelectronic “nose” that can specifically detect a key decay compound at low levels, enabling people to potentially take action before the stink spreads. It can detect rotting food, as well as be used to help find victims of natural disasters or crimes.

• share
• favorite_border

What is the difference between linear chains and rings composed of the same material? The molecular building blocks are identical, but from a mathematical point of view the two structures have distinct topologies, namely ring and linear chain. This difference is readily recognizable on a macroscopic scale, as for example a golden ring and a gold bar, but represents a tricky task on the microscopic scale. The physicists Lisa Weiss and Christos Likos of the University of Vienna and Arash Nikoubashman of the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz investigated strategies to separate nano- and microparticles of distinct topology. Their results are published in the high-impact journal ACS Macro Letters.

• share
• favorite_border

Supercapacitors can store more energy than and are preferable to batteries because they are able to charge faster, mainly due to the vertical graphene nanosheets that are larger and positioned closer together. Using VGNs as the material for supercapacitor electrodes offers advantages due to their intriguing properties, and those advantages can be enhanced depending on how the material is grown, treated and prepared to work with electrolytes. In this week’s Journal of Applied Physics, researchers discuss their work to improve the material’s supercapacitance properties.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Washington has launched a new institute aimed at accelerating research at the nanoscale: the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, or NanoES. Housed in a new, multimillion-dollar facility on the UW's Seattle campus, the institute will pursue impactful advancements in a variety of disciplines — including energy, materials science, computation and medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering have found yet another remarkable use for the wonder material graphene—tiny electronic “tweezers” that can grab individual biomolecules with incredible efficiency. This capability could lead to a revolutionary handheld disease diagnostic system that could be run on a smart phone.

• share
• favorite_border

New developments may now propel nanoswimmers from science fiction to reality thanks to unexpected help from bacteria. An international research team has demonstrated a new technique for plating silica onto flagella, the helix-shaped tails found on many bacteria, to produce nanoscale swimming robots. As reported this week in APL Materials, the group’s biotemplated nanoswimmers spin their flagella thanks to rotating magnetic fields and can perform nearly as well as living bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

In a rare honor for an American university, three Northwestern University scientists — Sir Fraser Stoddart, Chad Mirkin and Yonggang Huang — have been elected foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The three were selected for their scientific achievements and contributions to promoting the development of science and technology in China.

• share
• favorite_border

Transistors based on carbon nanostructures: what sounds like a futuristic dream could be reality in just a few years' time. An international research team working with Empa has now succeeded in producing nanotransistors from graphene ribbons that are only a few atoms wide, as reported in the current issue of the trade journal "Nature Communications."

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have developed germanium nanoparticles with improved photoluminescence, making them potentially better materials for solar cells and imaging probes. The research team found that by adding tin to the nanoparticle’s germanium core, its lattice structure better matched the lattice structure of the cadmium-sulfide coating which allows the particles to absorb more light.

• share
• favorite_border

One drop of liquid, a cutting-edge laser 3D-printer and a few hours are all it takes to make a fidget spinner smaller than the width of a human hair. The tiny whirligig was created by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences to illustrate the facility’s unique resources and expertise available to scientists across the world. The microscale fidget spinner measures only 100 microns wide, or one tenth of a millimeter, but the capabilities it represents are enormous.

• share
• favorite_border

Windows that generate electricity may have a clearer path to prominent roles in buildings of the future due to an Argonne-led discovery.

• share
• favorite_border

Anatoly Frenkel, Morgan May, Rachid Nouicer, Eric Stach, and Peter Steinberg were recognized for their outstanding contributions to astrophysics, materials physics, and nuclear physics.

• share
• favorite_border

The discovery of nanoscale changes deep inside hybrid perovskites could shed light on developing low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells. Using X-ray beams and lasers, a team of researchers led by the University of California San Diego discovered how the movement of ions in hybrid perovskites causes certain regions within the material to become better solar cells than other parts.

• share
• favorite_border

Stony Brook assistant professor Jason Trelewicz uses the electron microscopy and computing resources at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials to characterize nanoscale structures in metals mixed with other elements. The goal of his research is to achieve unprecedented properties in classical materials for use in everything from aerospace and automotive components to consumer electronics and nuclear reactors.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team from the Universities of Vienna, Duisburg-Essen and Tel Aviv have created a nanomechanical hand to show the time of an electronic clock, by spinning a tiny cylinder using light. A silicon nanorod, less than a thousandth of a millimetre long, can be trapped in thin air using focussed laser beams, and spun to follow the ticking of a clock, losing only one-millionth of a second over four days.