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Category: nanotechnology – Page 252

Imagine a single particle, only one-tenth the diameter of a bacterium, whose miniscule jiggles induce sustained vibrations in an entire mechanical device some 50 times larger. By taking clever advantage of the interplay between light, electrons on the surface of metals, and heat, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time created a plasmomechanical oscillator (PMO), so named because it tightly couples plasmons—the collective oscillations of electrons at the surface of a metal nanoparticle—to the mechanical vibrations of the much larger device it’s embedded in.

The entire system, no bigger than a , has myriad technological applications. It offers new ways to miniaturize mechanical oscillators, improve communication systems that depend on the modulation of , dramatically amplify extremely weak mechanical and electrical signals and create exquisitely sensitive sensors for the tiny motions of nanoparticles.

NIST researchers Brian Roxworthy and Vladimir Aksyuk described their work in a recent issue of Optica.

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Hedrick’s close call inspired his research team to design a new molecule, called a polymer, that targets five deadly types of drug-resistant microbes and kills them like ninja assassins. Their research, a collaboration with Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, was reported recently in the journal Nature Communications.

If commercialized, the polymer could boost the fight against “superbugs” that can fend off every antibiotic that doctors throw at them. An estimated 700,000 people worldwide die every year from these untreatable infections.

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YES!!!

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have discovered a new approach for developing a rechargeable non-aqueous magnesium-metal battery.

A proof-of-concept paper published in Nature Chemistry detailed how the scientists pioneered a method to enable the reversible of magnesium metal in the noncorrosive carbonate-based electrolytes and tested the concept in a prototype cell. The technology possesses potential advantages over lithium-ion batteries—notably, higher density, greater stability, and lower cost.

NREL researchers (from left) Seoung-Bum Son, Steve Harvey, Andrew Norman and Chunmei Ban are co-authors of the Nature Chemistry white paper, “An Artificial Interphase Enables Reversible Magnesium Chemistry in Carbonate Electrolytes” working with a Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. The device allows them to investigate material degradation and failure mechanisms at the micro- to nano-scale. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)

Continue reading “Research overcomes major technical obstacles in magnesium-metal batteries” | >

Advocates of transhumanism face a similar choice today. One option is to take advantage of the advances in nanotechnologies, genetic engineering and other medical sciences to enhance the biological and mental functioning of human beings (never to go back). The other is to legislate to prevent these artificial changes from becoming an entrenched part of humanity, with all the implied coercive bio-medicine that would entail for the species.

We can either take advantage of advances in technology to enhance human beings (never to go back), or we can legislate to prevent this from happening.

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Doctors have been using radiation to treat cancer for more than a hundred years, but it’s always been a delicate art to direct treatment while avoiding healthy tissue.

To help them, scientists with the University of Chicago have designed an army of tiny flower-shaped metal-and-organic nanoparticles that deliver a one-two punch—first boosting the effects of radiation at the tumor site and then jumpstarting the immune system to search out any remaining tumors.

The research, published March 26 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, led to a candidate molecule currently beginning phase 1 clinical trials.

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Making a giant leap in the ‘tiny’ field of nanoscience, a multi-institutional team of researchers is the first to create nanoscale particles composed of up to eight distinct elements generally known to be immiscible, or incapable of being mixed or blended together. The blending of multiple, unmixable elements into a unified, homogenous nanostructure, called a high entropy alloy nanoparticle, greatly expands the landscape of nanomaterials—and what we can do with them.

This research makes a significant advance on previous efforts that have typically produced nanoparticles limited to only three different elements and to structures that do not mix evenly. Essentially, it is extremely difficult to squeeze and blend different elements into individual particles at the nanoscale. The team, which includes lead researchers at University of Maryland, College Park (UMD)’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, published a peer-reviewed paper based on the research featured on the March 30 cover of Science.

“Imagine the elements that combine to make nanoparticles as Lego building blocks. If you have only one to three colors and sizes, then you are limited by what combinations you can use and what structures you can assemble,” explains Liangbing Hu, associate professor of materials science and engineering at UMD and one of the corresponding authors of the paper. “What our team has done is essentially enlarged the toy chest in nanoparticle synthesis; now, we are able to build nanomaterials with nearly all metallic and semiconductor elements.”

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Today, our IBM Research team published the first real world demonstration of a rocking Brownian motor for nanoparticles in the peer-review journal Science. The motors propel nanoscale particles along predefined racetracks to enable researchers to separate nanoparticle populations with unprecedented precision. The reported findings show great potential for lab-on-a-chip applications in material science, environmental sciences or biochemistry.

No More Fairy Tales

Do you remember the Grimm version of Cinderella when she had to pick peas and lentils out of the ashes? Now imagine that instead of peas and lentils you have a suspension of nanoparticles, which are only 60 nanometer (nm) and 100 nm in size — that’s 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Using previous methods, one could separate them with a complicated filter or machines, however these are too bulky and complex to be integrated into a handheld lab-on-a-chip.

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In this way the new platform, developed by a team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), could potentially be used to inactivate or detect pathogens.

The team, which also included researchers from New York University, created the synthesized nanosheets at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale science center, out of self-assembling, bio-inspired polymers known as peptoids. The study was published earlier this month in the journal ACS Nano.

The sheets were designed to present simple sugars in a patterned way along their surfaces, and these sugars, in turn, were demonstrated to selectively bind with several proteins, including one associated with the Shiga toxin, which causes dysentery. Because the outside of our cells are flat and covered with sugars, these 2-D nanosheets can effectively mimic cell surfaces.

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Researchers have developed a straightforward way to make a type of conducting polymers with high surface area—called “nanoflowers”—potentially useful for energy transfer and storage.

If you could brush your cheek against a nanoflower’s microscopic petals, you’d find them cool, hard, and… rusty. Common rust forms the inner skeleton of these lovely and intricate nanostructures, while their outer layer is a kind of plastic.

“Rust will always pose a challenge in Earth’s humid and oxygenated atmosphere,” says Julio M. D’Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering. “Corrosion makes structures fragile and decreases the ability of components to function properly. But in our lab, we’ve learned how to control the growth of rust so that it can serve an important purpose.”

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