#Nanomaterial Self-Assembly Imaged In real time A team of researchers from UC San diego, Florida State university and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories has visualized for the first time the growth of anoscalechemical complexes in real time,
which will make possible many future advances in nanotechnology, is detailed in a paper published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
for example, to better understand the stepwise formation of nanostructures. Previously, scientists could examine changes in nanostructures only by looking at the large-scale alterations of a bulk population of particles
or by taking creen shotsin a static fashion of individual nanostructures with electron microscopy. hat process is like taking photos every 10 minutes of a football game
and then trying to piece these photos together to tell the story of what is really a highly dynamic process,
chair of UC San diego Department of chemistry and Biochemistry. ntil now, this was the state of the art in terms of how we could document how nanostructures formed.
by literally videoing these processes on the nanoscale level using an electron microscope. The development employed a recently developed process called Liquid Cell Transmission Electron microscopy.
or TEM, has long been used by scientists to image nanoscale materials and understand nanoscale structure.
While advances in Liquid Cell TEM or LCTEM, had permitted scientists to visualize the motion of nanoscale objects in liquids,
researchers had figured not yet out a way to use it to visualize the growth of complex self-assembled,
chemical nanostructures. e showed for the first time that this technique can be used to observe the growth of complex organic-inorganic hybrid materials,
providing an unprecedented understanding of their formation, said Gianneschi. his demonstration marks a significant step forward in LCTEM becoming essential for our understanding of nanoscale processes for all materials in liquids.
if these nanostructures would survive the experiment. This is necessary because materials are susceptible to being destroyed by the high energy electron beam that is used to image them.
length scales can be observed that are relevant to nanoscale materials and processes. In terms of imaging dynamics like this, we believe it will impact how nanotechnology is developed in the future. o
#UCLA researchers discover molecular rules that govern autoimmune disorders An international team led by researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of engineering
and Applied science and California Nanosystems Institute has identified an unexpectedly general set of rules that determine which molecules can cause the immune system to become vulnerable to the autoimmune disorders lupus and psoriasis.
#Ultrafast heat conduction can manipulate nanoscale magnets Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have uncovered physical mechanisms allowing the manipulation of magnetic information with heat.
and highly desirable way to manipulate magnetization at the nanoscale. This is a schematic, cutaway view of the geometry used to generate currents of spin from currents of heat.
and enables the manipulation of nanomagnets with spin currents rather than magnetic fields, explained Gyung-Min Choi,
It is made from gelatin-based biomaterials reinforced with nanoparticles and seeded with cells, and it mimics the anatomical microenvironment of lymphoid tissue.
is a soft, nanocomposite biomaterial. The engineers reinforced the material with silicate nanoparticles to keep the structure from melting at the physiologically relevant temperature of 98.6 degrees.
The organ could lead to increased understanding of B cell functions, an area of study that typically relies on animal models to observe how the cells develop and mature.
Using the Center for Nanoscale Materials a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne, they built a constricted wire out of a three-layered structure in
A protein nanoparticle called OD-GT8 60mer which already proved to help immunity of mouse models to cope with HIV,
During it scientists tested a protein nanoparticle designed to bind and activate B cells needed to fight HIV.
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
In photosynthesis, plants that are exposed to sunlight use carefully organized nanoscale structures within their cells to rapidly separate charges pulling electrons away from the positively charged molecule that is left behind,
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. he two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
The polymer donor absorbs sunlight and passes electrons to the fullerene acceptor; the process generates electrical energy.
The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
Some fullerene meatballs are designed to sit inside the spaghetti bundles, but others are forced to stay on the outside.
The fullerenes inside the structure take electrons from the polymers and toss them to the outside fullerene
#New way to produce carbon nanoparticles found only honey and microwave needed Researchers at University of Illinois have created a new inexpensive and simple way to produce carbon nanoparticles.
They are small enough to evade the body immune system, reflect light in the near-infrared range for easy detection,
However, when usual methods to produce carbon nanoparticles are rather complex and can take days,
and time that these carbon nanoparticles can virtually be made at home. Dipanjan Pan bioengineering professor one of authors of the study, said that you just have to mix honey
but that is nanoparticles with high luminescence This method is extremely simple and highly scalable for eventual clinical use.
These carbon nanoparticles produced in such a simple and inexpensive way have several attractive properties.
Finally, carbon nanoparticles are rather small, less than eight nanometres in diameter (in comparison, a human hair is 80,000 to 100,000 nanometres thick).
This is very important and useful, since human immune system fails to recognize anything under 10 nanometres,
which allows for a better therapeutic potential. The team of researchers tested the therapeutic potential of these carbon nanoparticles by loading them with an anti-melanoma drug
and mixing them in a topical solution that was applied to pig skin. However, scientists have to make sure they coated particles properly,
so they used vibrational spectroscopic techniques to identify the molecular structure of the nanoparticles and their cargo.
The experiment showed that the carbon nanoparticles did not release the drug payload at room temperature
Study showed that cancer cells were affected positively by drugs delivered by these carbon nanoparticles. These carbon nanoparticles,
despite being made from honey in the microwave, are very useful indeed. They can be used to carry a variety of different drugs into a human body.
having in mind that currently production of carbon nanoparticles requires expensive equipment and purification processes that can take days.
Once the researchers designed these ntelligent insulin nanoparticles, they had to figure out a way to administer them to patients with diabetes.
Gu created these icroneedlesusing the same hyaluronic acid that was a chief ingredient of the nanoparticles,
#Nanowire implants offer remote-controlled drug delivery A team of Purdue University researchers developed a new implantable drug-delivery system using the nanowires,
A team of researchers has created a new implantable drug-delivery system using nanowires that can be controlled wirelessly.
The nanowires respond to an electromagnetic field generated by a separate device, which can be used to control the release of a preloaded drug.
The nanowires are made of polypyrrole, a conductive polymer material that responds to electromagnetic fields. Wen Gao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Paralysis Research who worked on the project with Borgens,
grew the nanowires vertically over a thin gold base, like tiny fibers making up a piece of shag carpet hundreds of times smaller than a human cell.
The nanowires can be loaded with a drug and when the correct electromagnetic field is applied, the nanowires release small amounts of the payload.
This process can be started and stopped at will, like flipping a switch, by using the corresponding electromagnetic field stimulating device,
and transported a patch of the nanowire carpet on water droplets that were used used to deliver it to the site of injury.
The nanowire patches adhere to the site of injury through surface tension, Gao said. The magnitude and wave form of the electromagnetic field must be tuned to obtain the optimum release of the drug
The electromagnetic field is likely affecting the interaction between the nanomaterial and the drug molecules, Borgens said. e think it is a combination of charge effects
Functional Drug Delivery Using Electromagnetic field-Responsive Polypyrrole Nanowires, was published in the journal Langmuir. Other team members involved in the research include John Cirillo,
A 1-2 millimeter patch of the nanowires doped with dexamethasone was placed onto spinal cord lesions that had been exposed surgically,
and those that received a nanowire patch but were exposed not to the electromagnetic field. In some cases, treated mice had no detectable GFAP signal.
Dr Thomas Bointon, from Moorfield Nanotechnology and former Phd student in Professor Craciun team at Exeter added:
#NRL Researchers First to Detect Spin Precession in Silicon nanowires Scientists at the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have reported the first observation of spin precession of spin currents flowing in a silicon nanowire
and determined spin lifetimes and corresponding spin diffusion lengths in these nanoscale spintronic devices. The spin currents were injected electrically
and the green line is the silicon nanowire transport channel. The bright dot on the end of the nanowire is used the gold nanoparticle to seed the nanowire growth.
The NRL research team observed spin precession (the Hanle effect) for both the spin-polarized charge near the contact interface and for pure spin currents flowing in the NW channel.
Semiconductor nanowires provide an avenue to further reduce the ever-shrinking dimensions of transistors. Including electron spin as an additional state variable offers new prospects for information processing,
or hexagonal boron nitride as tunnel contacts on nanowires offers many advantages over conventional materials deposited by vapor deposition (such as Al2o3
This increase would further improve the performance of nanowire spintronic devices by providing higher signal to noise ratios
and corresponding operating speeds, advancing the techological applications of nanowire devices. The NRL research team includes Dr. Olaf van Erve, Dr. Adam Friedman, Dr. Connie Li,
and then figure out their cumulative effect They suggested their technique could be used to calculate the effect for graphene in other more complex shapes, like wrinkled sheets or distorted fullerenes,
several of which they also analyzed. hile the dipole moment is zero for flat graphene or cylindrical nanotubes,
#New nanogenerators collect friction energy from rolling tires Team of engineers from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a collaborator from China have developed a new nanogenerator that is able to generate power from friction created by rolling
The nanogenerator harvests the wasted tire friction energy by relying on the triboelectric effect. It is the electric charge that results from the contact or rubbing together of two dissimilar objects.
and see how these nanogenerators develop and when they will be introduced for practical application c
#Ultra-stable JILA Microscopy Technique Tracks Tiny Objects for Hours JILA researchers have designed a microscope instrument
and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder. his technology can actively stabilize two items relative to each other with a precision well below one nanometer at room temperature,
JILA/NIST physicist Tom Perkins says. his level of 3d stability may start to interest the nanomanufacturing world,
and characterizing things on the single-nanometer scale. he work builds on JILA world-leading expertise in measuring positions of microscopic objects.
The instrument must be stable to within about one-tenth of a nanometer (1 angstrom to biologists, equivalent to the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
it can reliably achieve tenth of a nanometer stability for up to 100 seconds at a time. And it can do this over and over again for extended periodshe JILA team operated the system for up to 28 hours straight.
and an organic semiconductor known as Alq3 can be altered by coating the cobalt with a single-molecule thick layer (monolayer) that affects the electron spin states of the cobalt.
which to attach a monolayer. In the first of two separate, but complementary studies, 2 Hacker team studied the effects of adding a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) 3 to both a pure cobalt surface
and a cobalt surface that was allowed to oxidize. The SAMS studied were octadecanethiol (ODT) and mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA.
The data suggest that the MHA monolayer actually etched away much of the oxidized layer from the cobalt,
#Polymer mold makes perfect silicon nanostructures Using molds to shape things is as old as humanity.
In a breakthrough for nanoscience, Cornell polymer engineers have made such a mold for nanostructures that can shape liquid silicon out of an organic polymer material.
3-D, single crystal nanostructures. The advance is from the lab of Uli Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials science and engineering,
and the researchers used this special ability of polymers to make a mold dotted with precisely shaped and sized nanopores..
This could lead to making perfect, single-crystal silicon nanostructures. They haven done it yet,
Wiesner called the breakthrough eautifuland a possibly fundamental insight into studying nanoscale materials. In materials science, the goal is always to get well-defined structures that can be studied without interference from material defects.
Most self-assembled nanostructures today are either amorphous or polycrystalline made up of more than one piece of a material with perfect order.
whether their properties are due to the nanostructure itself or whether theye dominated by defects in the material.
Today, nanotechnology allows incredibly detailed nanoscale etching, down to 10 nanometers on a silicon wafer.
But nanofabrication techniques like photolithography, in which a polymeric material is written with a structure that is etched into the silicon,
To make single crystal nanostructures there are two options: multiple etching or molding. Wiesner group now has made the mold.
porous nanomaterials using specially structured molecules called block copolymers. They first used a carbon dioxide laser in Thompson lab to ritethe nanoporous materials onto a silicon wafer.
A film, spin-coated on the wafer, contained a block copolymer, which directed the assembly of a polymer resin.
while the negative-tone resin was left behind to form the porous nanostructure. That became the mold. e demonstrated that we can use organic templates with structures as complicated as a gyroid, a periodically ordered cubic network structure,
The researchers found that it was possible to combine the gel with silica nanoparticles microscopic particles previously found to stop bleeding to develop an even more powerful barrier to promote wound healing. his could allow us to immediately stop bleeding with one treatment
#Crowd-sourced computing reveals how to make better water filters with nanotubes Crowd-sourced computing has helped an international research team including researchers from the University of Sydney discover a new method of improving water filtration systems and water quality.
Nanotube inflitration in actionthe team enlisted more than 150,000 computer volunteers worldwide to conduct the research.
the Computing for Clean water project was able to expand these simulations to probe flow rates of just a few centimeters per second characteristic of the working conditions of real nanotube-based filters,
a Phd from Tsinghua University, was also a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney working with nanotechnology expert Associate professor Luming Shen on the research.
They can shed new light on the fundamental processes occurring in the nanoscale biological pores that funnel essential ingredients into cells. e also developed some key data processing methods
which will become essential to analyze the massive data generated by the volunteered computers. y simulating water molecules flowing through nanotubes we have shown how vibrations result in oscillating friction,
Ultimately this will help design new carbon nanotube based membranes for water filtration with reduced energy consumption. rowd-sourced computing power was essential to the success of our project.
and to investigate other nanofluidic systems such as boron nitride nanotubes and biological channels. ource: University of Sydne a
or more years. here a lot of talk about using graphene in electronics and small nanoscale devices, but theye all a ways away, said Zettl,
and a member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute, operated jointly by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. he microphone and loudspeaker are some of the closest devices to commercial viability,
#Nanotech transforms cotton fibers into modern marvel Marcia Silva da Pinto, postdoctoral researcher, works on growing metal organic frameworks onto cotton samples to create a filtration system capable of capturing toxic gas,
who directs the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell. n a nanoscale world and that is our world we can control cellulose-based materials one atom at a time. he Hinestroza group has turned cotton fibers into electronic components such as transistors and thermistors,
Taking advantage of cotton irregular topography, Hinestroza and his students added conformal coatings of gold nanoparticles,
Synthesizing nanoparticles and attaching them to cotton not only creates color on fiber surfaces without the use of dyes,
can be manipulated at the nano level to build nanoscale cages that are the exact same size as the gas they are trying to capture. e wanted to harness the power of these molecules to absorb gases
The discovery, published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, was made in the lab of Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied science (SEAS).
Nano-optics is a major part of the future of nanotechnology and this research furthers our ability to control
and harness the power of light on the nanoscale. The creation and control of surface plasmon wakes could lead to new types of plasmonic couplers
or focus light at the nanoscale. Surface plasmons are confined to the surface of a metal.
The metamaterial, a nanostructure of rotated slits etched into a gold film, changes the phase of the surface plasmons generated at each slit relative to each other,
The nanostructure also acts like the boat rudder, allowing the wakes to be steered by controlling the speed of the running wave.
The $10, 000 grant provided by the award will be used in direct support of the development of the Omnisense lab-on-a-chip. he promise and delivery of high-throughput, real-time,
For his postdoctoral work, he studied the downscaling of bioanalytical techniques to the nanoscale, taking
He worked more than two years in industry, developing lab-on-a-chip technology for Medimate B. V, . before crossing the Atlantic to land in Pennathur lab. At UCSB,
and Northwestern University described their new method for the syntheses and fabrication of mesocopic three-dimensional semiconductors (intermediate between the nanometer and macroscopic scales).
to promote the growth of silicon nanowires and to induce gold-based patterns in the silicon.
and could be important for future device technologies as well as for fundamental studies of electron transport in molecular nanostructures.
similar to the working principle of a quantum dot gated by an external electrode. In our case, the charged atoms nearby provide the electrostatic gate potential that regulates the electron flow
his intriguing behavior goes beyond the established picture of charge transport through a gated quantum dot.
#Environmentally Friendly Lignin Nanoparticle reenssilver Nanobullet to Battle Bacteria North carolina State university researchers have developed an effective
and environmentally benign method to combat bacteria by engineering nanoscale particles that add the antimicrobial potency of silver to a core of lignin,
greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.
In a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, NC State engineer Orlin Velev and colleagues show that silver-ion infused lignin nanoparticles,
which are coated with a charged polymer layer that helps them adhere to the target microbes,
As the nanoparticles wipe out the targeted bacteria, they become depleted of silver. The remaining particles degrade easily after disposal because of their biocompatible lignin core,
limiting the risk to the environment. eople have been interested in using silver nanoparticles for antimicrobial purposes, but there are lingering concerns about their environmental impact due to the long-term effects of the used metal nanoparticles released in the environment,
said Velev, INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at NC State and the paper corresponding author. e show here an inexpensive and environmentally responsible method to make effective antimicrobials with biomaterial cores. he researchers used the nanoparticles
to attack E coli, a bacterium that causes food poisoning; Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common disease-causing bacterium; Ralstonia, a genus of bacteria containing numerous soil-borne pathogen species;
The nanoparticles were effective against all the bacteria. The method allows researchers the flexibility to change the nanoparticle recipe in order to target specific microbes.
Alexander Richter, the paper first author and an NC State Ph d. candidate says that the particles could be the basis for reduced risk pesticide products with reduced cost
and lights. e used powerful nanomanufacturing strategies to fabricate an implant that lets us penetrate deep inside the brain with minimal damage,
#New Technique to Synthesize Nanostructured Nanowires IBM scientist Frances Ross (left) with Brookhaven Lab scientists Dong Su (center) and Eric Stach in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.
and tailor complex structures at the nanoscale, developed by an international collaboration led by the University of Cambridge
The researchers have developed a method for growing combinations of different materials in a needle-shaped crystal called a nanowire.
Nanowires are small structures, only a few billionths of a metre in diameter. Semiconductors can be grown into nanowires
and the result is a useful building block for electrical, optical, and energy harvesting devices. The researchers have found out how to grow smaller crystals within the nanowire,
forming a structure like a crystal rod with an embedded array of gems. Details of the new method are published in the journal Nature Materials.
Electron microscope images showing the formation of a nickel silicide nanoparticle (colored yellow) in a silicon nanowire.
Stephan Hofmannhe key to building functional nanoscale devices is to control materials and their interfaces at the atomic level, said Dr. Stephan Hofmann of the Department of Engineering,
and feed the nanowire, so that it self-assembles one atomic layer at a time. VLS allows a high degree of control over the resulting nanowire:
composition, diameter, growth direction, branching, kinking and crystal structure can be controlled by tuning the self-assembly conditions.
As nanowires become better controlled, new applications become possible. The technique that Hofmann and his colleagues from Cambridge and IBM developed can be thought of as an expansion of the concept that underlies conventional VLS growth.
not only to grow the nanowire, but also to form new materials within it. These tiny crystals form in the liquid,
but later attach to the nanowire and then become embedded as the nanowire is grown further. This catalyst mediated docking process can elf-optimiseto create highly perfect interfaces for the embedded crystals.
To unravel the complexities of this process the research team used two customised electron microscopes, one at IBM TJ Watson Research center and a second at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
This allowed them to record high-speed movies of the nanowire growth as it happens atom-by-atom.
resulted in complex structures consisting of nanowires with embedded nanoscale crystals, or quantum dots, of controlled size and position. he technique allows two different materials to be incorporated into the same nanowire,
even if the lattice structures of the two crystals don perfectly match, said Hofmann. t a flexible platform that can be used for different technologies. ossible applications for this technique range from atomically perfect buried interconnects to single-electron transistors, high-density memories, light emission, semiconductor lasers,
along with the capability to engineer three-dimensional device structures. his process has enabled us to understand the behaviour of nanoscale materials in unprecedented detail,
#olecular spongeadvancement in storing hydrogen Researchers at the University of Bath have discovered that hydrogen absorbed in specialised carbon nanomaterials can achieve extraordinary storage densities at moderate temperatures and pressures.
found that when hydrogen is stored in materials with optimally-sized subnanometer pores, it is able to be compressed simultaneously
reater understanding of how the nanoscale structure of the storage material can influence gas storage capacities is expected to lead to more accurate evaluation methods for existing porous hydrogen storage materials.
said Anand Bhattacharya, a physicist in Argonne Materials science Division and the Center for Nanoscale Materials (a DOE Office of Science user facility),
senior author of the paper and director of the Alan G. Macdiarmid Nanotech Institute at UT Dallas. One key to the performance of the new conducting elastic fibers is the introduction of buckling into the carbon nanotube
the carbon nanofibers form a complex buckled structure, which allows for repeated stretching of the fiber. hink of the buckling that occurs
the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at UT Dallas. e make the inelastic carbon nanotube sheaths of our sheath-core fibers super stretchable by modulating large buckles with small buckles,
and a research associate in the Nanotech Institute, said the structure of the sheath-core fibers as further interesting and important complexity.
Liu said. his novel combination of buckling in two dimensions avoids misalignment of nanotube and rubber core directions, enabling the electrical resistance of the sheath-core fiber to be insensitive to stretch.
By adding a thin overcoat of rubber to the sheath-core fibers and then another carbon nanotube sheath,
which the buckled nanotube sheaths serve as electrodes and the thin rubber layer is a dielectric,
a research associate in the Nanotech Institute and an author of the paper. In the laboratory
Nan Jiang, a research associate in the Nanotech Institute, demonstrated that the conducting elastomers can be fabricated in diameters ranging from the very small about 150 microns,
an author on the paper and chief research and intellectual properties strategist at Lintec of America Nanoscience & Technology Center. he rubber cores used for these sheath-core fibers are inexpensive and readily available,
she said. he only exotic component is the carbon nanotube aerogel sheet used for the fiber sheath.
Lintec opened its Nanoscience & Technology Center in Richardson, Texas, less than 5 miles from the UT Dallas campus,
to manufacture carbon nanotube aerogel sheets for diverse applications c
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