Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have developed an easy-to-build, low-cost 3D nanoprinting system that can create arbitrary 3D structures with extremely fine features. The new 3D nanoprinting technique is precise enough to print metamaterials as well as a variety of optical devices and components such as microlenses, micro-optical devices and metamaterials.

“Our system uses a two-step absorption process to realize 3D printing with accuracy reaching the nanometer level, which is suitable for commercial manufacturing,” said research team leader Cuifang Kuang from the Zhejiang Lab and Zhejiang University, both in China. “It can be used for a variety of applications such as printing micro or nanostructures for studying biological cells or fabricating the specialized optical waveguides used for virtual and augmented reality devices.”

Conventional high-resolution 3D nanoprinting approaches use pulsed femtosecond lasers that cost tens of thousands of dollars. In Optics Letters, Kuang and colleagues describe their new system based on an integrated fiber-coupled continuous-wave laser diode that is not only inexpensive but also easy to operate.

Multiple complementary DNA strands can be thermally annealed into desired entities to engineer DNA nanostructures. In a new study now published in Nature Nanotechnology, Caroline Rossi-Gendron and a team of researchers in chemistry, materials science and biology in France and Japan used a magnesium-free buffer containing sodium chloride, complex cocktails of DNA strands and proteins to self-assemble isothermally at room temperature or physiological temperature into user-defined nanostructures including nanogrids, DNA origami and single-stranded tile assemblies.

This self-assembly relied on thermodynamics, proceeding through multiple folding pathways to create highly configurable nanostructures. The method allowed the self-selection of the most stable shape in a large pool of competitive DNA strands. Interestingly, DNA origami can shift isothermally from an initially stable shape to a radically different one through an exchange of constitutive staple strands. This expanded the collection of shapes and functions obtained via isothermal self-assembly to create the foundation for adaptive nanomachines and facilitate evolutionary nanostructure discovery.

Self-assembly occurs when naturally occurring or rationally designed entities can embed necessary information to spontaneously interact and self-organize into functional superstructures of interest. Typically, synthetic self-assembled materials result from the organization of a repeating single component to create a stable supramolecular assembly containing micelles or colloidal crystals with a prescribed set of useful properties. Such constructs have limited reconfigurability, making it highly challenging to produce the desired structures.

The classic film “Alien” was once promoted with the tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Physicists Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have demonstrated that, on the contrary, in certain situations, sound can be transmitted strongly across a vacuum region.

In a recent article published in Communications Physics they show that in some cases, a sound wave can jump or “tunnel” fully across a vacuum gap between two solids if the materials in question are piezoelectric. In such materials, vibrations (sound waves) produce an electrical response as well, and since an electric field can exist in vacuum, it can transmit the sound waves.

The requirement is that the size of the gap is smaller than the wavelength of the sound wave. This effect works not only in audio range of frequencies (Hz–kHz), but also in ultrasound (MHz) and hypersound (GHz) frequencies, as long as the vacuum gap is made smaller as the frequencies increase.

Julia Greer discusses her life background and research career in this five-part oral history.

Study reveals an important discovery in the realm of nanomachines within living systems. Prof. Sason Shaik from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Kshatresh Dutta Dubey from Shiv Nadar University, conducted molecular-dynamics simulations of Cytochromes P450 (CYP450s) enzymes, revealing that these enzymes exhibit unique soft-robotic properties.

Cytochromes P450 (CYP450s) are enzymes found in living organisms and play a crucial role in various biological processes, particularly in the metabolism of drugs and xenobiotics. The researchers’ simulations demonstrated that CYP450s possess a fourth dimension — the ability to sense and respond to stimuli, making them soft-robot nanomachines in “living matters.”

In the catalytic cycle of these enzymes, a molecule called a substrate binds to the enzyme. This leads to a process called oxidation. The enzyme’s structure has a confined space that allows it to act like as a sensor and a soft robot. It interacts with the substrate using weak interactions, like soft impacts. These interactions transfer energy, causing parts of the enzyme and the molecules inside it to move. This movement generates ultimately a special substance called oxoiron species, which serves the enzyme to oxidize a variety of different substances.

Sandwich compounds are special chemical compounds used as basic building blocks in organometallic chemistry. So far, their structure has always been linear.

Recently, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Marburg were the first to make stacked sandwich complexes form a nano-sized ring. Physical and other properties of these cyclocene structures will now be further investigated. The researchers report their findings in Nature.

Sandwich complexes were developed about 70 years ago and have a sandwich-like structure. Two flat aromatic organic rings (the “slices of bread”) are filled with a single, central metal atom in between. Like the slices of bread, both rings are arranged in parallel. Adding further layers of “bread” and “filling” produces triple or multiple sandwiches.

The next generation of 2D semiconductor materials doesn’t like what it sees when it looks in the mirror. Current synthesizing approaches to make single-layer nanosheets of semiconducting material for atomically thin electronics develop a peculiar “mirror twin” defect when the material is deposited on single-crystal substrates like sapphire. The synthesized nanosheet contains grain boundaries that act as a mirror, with the arrangement of atoms on each side organized in reflected opposition to one another.

This is a problem, according to researchers from the Penn State’s Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium-Materials Innovation Platform (2DCC-MIP) and their collaborators. Electrons scatter when they hit the boundary, reducing the performance of devices like transistors. This is a bottleneck, the researchers said, for the advancement of next-generation electronics for applications such as Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. But now, the research team may have come up with a solution to correct this defect. They have published their work in Nature Nanotechnology.

This study could have a significant impact on semiconductor research by enabling other researchers to reduce mirror twin defects, according to lead author Joan Redwing, director of 2DCC-MIP, especially as the field has increased attention and funding from the CHIPS and Science Act approved last year. The legislation’s authorization increased funding and other resources to boost America’s efforts to onshore the production and development of semiconductor technology.

Seitz et al. use DNA origami as a scaffold for viral capsid proteins to create virus capsids in the shapes of rings, tubes, and more! They employ cryo-EM to obtain 3D structures of some of their nanomolecular constructs and they show that multi-layer capsids occur at high concentrations of capsid proteins. Exciting work! #nanotechnology #biotechnology #syntheticbiology #genetherapy

DNA and RNA origami nanostructures direct the size, shape and topology of different virus capsids in a user-defined manner while shielding encapsulated origamis from degradation.

Still a big maybe but it gives them other ideas/possibilities. Hopefully they succeed soon! My mother has glaucoma. It’ll probably be decades before this cure happens though. Unless it can be accelerated which is predicted by Ray Kurzweil in his book The Singularity is Near. I think other futurists have said similar things though I’m not familiar with all of them, I saw a talk by one for NASA.

In efforts to tackle the leading cause of blindness in developed countries, researchers have recruited nanotechnology to help regrow retinal cells.

Macular degeneration is a form of central vision loss, which has massive social, mobility, and mental consequences. It impacts hundreds of millions of people globally and is increasing in prevalence.

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