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Category: nanotechnology – Page 224

Spectroscopy is the use of light to analyze physical objects and biological samples. Different kinds of light can provide different kinds of information. Vacuum ultraviolet light is useful as it can aid people in a broad range of research fields, but generation of that light has been difficult and expensive. Researchers created a new device to efficiently generate this special kind of light using an ultrathin film with nanoscale perforations.

The wavelengths of light you see with your eyes constitute a mere fraction of the possible wavelengths of light that exist. There’s infrared light which you can feel in the form of heat, or see if you happen to be a snake, that has a longer wavelength than visible light. At the opposite end is ultraviolet (UV) light which you can use to produce vitamin D in your skin, or see if you happen to be a bee. These and other forms of light have many uses in science.

Within the UV range is a subset of wavelengths known as vacuum ultraviolet light (VUV), so called because they are easily absorbed by air but can pass through a vacuum. Some VUV wavelengths in the region of around 120–200 nanometers (nm) are of particular use to scientists and medical researchers as they can be used for chemical and physical analyses of different materials and even biological samples.

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Summary: Tufts researchers have developed neurotransmitter-lipid hybrids that help transport therapeutic drugs and gene editing proteins across the blood-brain barrier in mice.

Source: Tufts University

Biomedical engineers at the Tufts University School of Engineering have developed tiny lipid-based nanoparticles that incorporate neurotranmitters to help carry drugs, large molecules, and even gene editing proteins across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain in mice. The innovation, published today in Science Advances, could overcome many of the current limitations encountered in delivering therapeutics into the central nervous system, and opens up the possibility of using a wide range of therapeutics that would otherwise not have access to the brain.

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Utilizing neurotransmitters as a passport into the brain:

Safe and efficient delivery of blood-brain barrier (BBB)–impermeable cargos into the brain through intravenous injection remains a challenge. Here, we developed a previously unknown class of neurotransmitter–derived lipidoids (NT-lipidoids) as simple and effective carriers for enhanced brain delivery of several BBB-impermeable cargos. Doping the NT-lipidoids into BBB-impermeable lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) gave the LNPs the ability to cross the BBB. Using this brain delivery platform, we successfully delivered amphotericin B (AmB), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) against tau, and genome-editing fusion protein (−27)GFP-Cre recombinase into the mouse brain via systemic intravenous administration. We demonstrated that the NT-lipidoid formulation not only facilitates cargo crossing of the BBB, but also delivery of the cargo into neuronal cells for functional gene silencing or gene recombination. This class of brain delivery lipid formulations holds great potential in the treatment of central nervous system diseases or as a tool to study the brain function.

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Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have found a way to use diamonds and graphene to create a new material combination that demonstrates so-called superlubricity.

Led by nanoscientist Ani Sumant of Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and Argonne Distinguished Fellow Ali Erdemir of Argonne’s Energy Systems Division, the Argonne team combined diamond nanoparticles, small patches of graphene, and a diamond-like carbon material to create superlubricity, a highly-desirable property in which friction drops to near zero.

According to Erdemir, as the graphene patches and diamond particles rub up against a large diamond-like carbon surface, the graphene rolls itself around the diamond particle, creating something that looks like a ball bearing on the nanoscopic level.

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An invention may turn one of the most widely used materials for biomedical applications into wearable devices to help monitor heart health.

A team from Purdue University developed self-powered wearable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-based contact layers for monitoring cardiovascular health. TENGs help conserve and turn it into power.

The Purdue team’s work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

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Circa 2017

Data storage technology continues to shrink in size and grow in capacity, but scientists have just taken things to the next level — they’ve built a nanoscale hard drive using a single atom.

By magnetising an atom, cooling it with liquid helium, and storing it in an extreme vacuum, the team managed to store a single bit of data (either a 1 or a 0) in this incredibly miniscule space.

Not enough room for your holiday photos then, but according to the team from IBM Research in California, this proof-of-concept approach could eventually lead to drives the size of a credit card that could hold the entire iTunes or Spotify libraries, at about 30 million songs each.

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New types of cathodes, suitable for advanced energy storage, can be developed using beyond-lithium ion batteries.

The rapid development of renewable energy resources has triggered tremendous demands in large-scale, cost-efficient and high-energy-density stationary energy storage systems.

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have many advantages but there are much more abundant metallic elements available such as sodium, potassium, zinc and aluminum.

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Circa 2018

Back in July 2018, researchers at Purdue University created the world’s fastest-spinning object, which whipped around at 60 billion rpm – and now that seems like the teacup ride at Disneyland. The same team has now broken its own record using the same technique, creating a new nano-scale rotor that spins five times faster.

Like the earlier version, the whirling object in question is a dumbbell-shaped silica nanoparticle suspended in a vacuum. When it’s set spinning, this new model hit the blistering speed of over 300 billion rpm. For comparison, dentist drills are known to get up to about 500,000 rpm, while the fastest pulsar – which is the speediest-spinning known natural object – turns at a leisurely 43,000 rpm.

Setting this record involves shining two lasers at the nanoparticle. One holds it in place, while the other starts it spinning. When the photons that make up light strike an object, they exert a tiny amount of force on it, known as radiation pressure. Normally this force is too weak to have any noticeable effect, but in a vacuum where there’s very little friction record speeds can be reached. That’s the case here, and it also applies to the concept of light sails, which could one day propel spacecraft at high speeds.

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A team led by Prof. Du Jiangfeng, Prof. Shi Fazhan, and Prof. Wang Ya from University of Science and Technology of China, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a robust electrometric method utilizing a continuous dynamic decoupling technique, where the continuous driving fields provide a magnetic-field-resistant dressed frame. The study was published in Physical Review Letters on June 19.

Characterization of electrical properties and comprehension of the dynamics in nanoscale become significant in the development of modern electronic devices, such as semi-conductor transistors and quantum chips, especially when the feature size has shrunk to several nanometers.

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond—an atomic-scale spin sensor—has shown to be an attractive electrometer. Electrometry using the NV center would improve various sensing and imaging applications. However, its natural susceptibility to the magnetic field hinders effective detection of the electric field.

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