Feature Channels: Nanotechnology

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Missouri S&T researchers are demonstrating a new concept to reconstruct holographic images by using a single two-dimensional material monolayer with the thickness of less than one nanometer. Their work could lead to the creation of smart watches with holographic displays, printed security cryptograms on bank notes and credit cards, and new possibilities for data storage.

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Painless skin patch collects fluid to monitor biomarkers to speed up and simplify routine diagnostic testing.

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Tiny silica bottles filled with medicine and a special temperature-sensitive material could be used for drug delivery to kill malignant cells only in certain parts of the body, according to a study published recently by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Researchers developed a drug delivery system that can break through the blood-brain barrier in mice.

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Nanotechnology developed at Rutgers University–New Brunswick could boost research on stem cell transplantation, which may help people with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, and central nervous system injuries.

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In order to understand advanced materials like graphene nanostructures and optimize them for devices in nano-, opto- and quantum-technology it is crucial to understand how phonons – the vibration of atoms in solids – influence the materials’ properties. Researchers from the University of Vienna, the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, the company JEOL and La Sapienza University in Rome have developed a method capable to measure all phonons existing in a nanostructured material. This is a breakthrough in the analysis of nanoscale functional materials and devices. With this pilot experiment using graphene nanostructures these researchers have shown the uniqueness of their approach, which will be published in the latest issue of Nature.

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UC San Diego engineers have developed the thinnest optical device in the world—a waveguide that is three layers of atoms thin. The work is a proof of concept for scaling down optical devices to sizes that are orders of magnitude smaller than today’s devices. It could lead to the development of higher density, higher capacity photonic chips.

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Scientists have tested an experimental system that uses a near-infrared laser to actively heat two gold nanorod antennae to different temperatures. The nanorods are electromagnetically and thermally coupled, yet the team measured reversible temperature differences of up to 20 degrees Celsius.

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Macrophages are white blood cells that accumulate in tumors, and aid cancer progression. Now scientists have identified a surface protein found only on the macrophages residing in tumors, exposing a target for precise tumor treatments.

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ORNL story tips: Training next-generation sensors to “see,” interpret live data; 3D printing tungsten could protect fusion reactor components; detailed study estimated how much more, or less, energy U.S. residents might consume by 2050 based on seasonal weather shifts; astrophysicists used ORNL supercomputer to create highest-ever-resolution galactic wind simulations; new solar-thermal desalination method improves energy efficiency.

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The properties of high-temperature superconductors can be tailored by the introduction of artificial defects. An international research team around physicist Wolfgang Lang at the University of Vienna has succeeded in producing the world's densest complex nano arrays for anchoring flux quanta, the fluxons.

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Working with mouse and human tissue, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report new evidence that a protein pumped out of some — but not all — populations of “helper” cells in the brain, called astrocytes, plays a specific role in directing the formation of connections among neurons needed for learning and forming new memories.

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A research team lead by Osaka University demonstrated how information encoded in the circular polarization of a laser beam can be translated into the spin state of an electron in a quantum dot, each being a quantum bit and a quantum computer candidate.

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A scientist, an artist, and a computer music professor combined 3-D printing, sound, and virtual reality to represent nanoscience data.

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You can’t see nanoparticles, but many of the products we use contain these atomic-scale units of various chemical elements. Are these miniscule bits of human industry safe when they are shed into the environment? Rebecca Klaper is working to identify which are toxic and design them to be safer in the first place.

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An imaging guide that Brookhaven and ExxonMobil scientists made to identify petroleum contaminants could lead to cleaner, more efficient fuels.

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Scientists at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed a magnetic device out of liquids. Their findings could lead to printable liquid magnetic devices for a variety of applications such as artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a graphene device that switches from a superconducting material that conducts electricity without losing any energy, to an insulator that resists the flow of electric current – all with a simple flip of a switch.

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This research is a fundamental discovery of how to engineer proteins onto non-biological surfaces. Artificial proteins engineered from scratch have been assembled into nanorod arrays, designer filaments and honeycomb lattices on the surface of mica, demonstrating control over the way proteins interact with surfaces to form complex structures previously seen only in natural protein systems. The study provides a foundation for understanding how protein-crystal interactions can be systematically programmed and sets the stage for designing novel protein-inorganic hybrid materials.

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Argonne National Laboratory played a critical role in the discovery of a DNA-like twisted crystal structure created with a germanium sulfide nanowire, also known as a “van der Waals material.” Researchers can tailor these nanowires in many different ways — twist periods from two to twenty micrometers, lengths up to hundreds of micrometers, and radial dimensions from several hundred nanometers to about ten micrometers. By this means, they can adjust the electrical and optical properties to optimize performance for different applications.