Nanotechnology News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Bone Growth Inspired “Microrobots” that Can Create Their Own Bone
January 17, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940217

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Inspired by the growth of bones in the skeleton, researchers at the universities of Linköping in Sweden and Okayama in Japan have developed a combination of materials that can morph into various shapes before hardening. The material is initially soft, but later hardens through a bone development process that uses the same materials found in the skeleton.

When we are born, we have gaps in our skulls that are covered by pieces of soft connective tissue called fontanelles. It is thanks to fontanelles that our skulls can be deformed during birth and pass successfully through the birth canal. Post-birth, the fontanelle tissue gradually changes to hard bone. Now, researchers have combined materials which together resemble this natural process.

“We want to use this for applications where materials need to have different properties at different points in time. Firstly, the material is soft and flexible, and it is then locked into place when it hardens. This material could be used in, for example, complicated bone fractures. It could also be used in microrobots – these soft microrobots could be injected into the body through a thin syringe, and then they would unfold and develop their own rigid bones”, says Edwin Jager, associate professor at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University.

The idea was hatched during a research visit in Japan when materials scientist Edwin Jager met Hiroshi Kamioka and Emilio Hara, who conduct research into bones. The Japanese researchers had discovered a kind of biomolecule that could stimulate bone growth under a short period of time. Would it be possible to combine this biomolecule with Jager’s materials research, to develop new materials with variable stiffness?

In the study that followed, published in Advanced Materials, the researchers constructed a kind of simple “microrobot”, one which can assume different shapes and change stiffness.
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Nanotechandmorefuture
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EDITORIAL FEATURE
Biomedical Applications of Perovskite Nanocrystals
By Marzia Khan
January 18 2022

https://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5956
Research into disease prevention and strategies to control the transmission of viruses has always been a significant field of study; however, with the ongoing global SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, advancements in the area have become critical.
weatheriscool
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Tiny antenna enables portable biomedicine, food analysis, and other nano- and terahertz technologies
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-02-tin ... icine.html
by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
A Skoltech professor and his colleagues from Germany have designed a very small and flat antenna for receiving and transmitting terahertz signals. THz waves are a band of electromagnetic radiation that holds much promise for applications as diverse as security checks and wireless communication, cancer screening and dentistry, and detection of food degradation and defects in manufactured devices. The problem with the technology is that THz devices will require miniaturization before they can be more widely adopted. The recent study in Scientific Reports makes an important contribution to that effort.

"Today, you will find bulky THz devices in laboratory or industrial settings, in some airports, hospitals, and telescopes," says the study's first author Shihab Al-Daffaie, an associate professor of the practice at Skoltech. "To enable new exciting applications, we need to get THz technologies out of the lab and into the hands and homes of ordinary people. And that means making them radically smaller."

This is what Al-Daffaie and his colleagues are working on: bringing THz devices and systems to your fingertips.

"Almost 90 percent of THz devices use the bulky silicon lenses that are about 10 millimeters in diameter and 6 millimeters thick," Al-Daffaie goes on. "There's no way you can have a fingertip-sized device with that thing. So we found a way to get rid of it."

The antenna presented in the new study is just 0.3 millimeters thick—20 times thinner than the cumbersome silicon lens plaguing earlier designs. "But this is more than a reduction in size," Al-Daffaie explains. "We can plant our THz device directly on the flat antenna, seamlessly integrating it into the system. Previously, you would put the device over the lens, sort of like a device within a device—but now we have it on the same platform."
weatheriscool
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Easy aluminum nanoparticles for rapid, efficient hydrogen generation from water
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-easy-alum ... cient.html
by University of California - Santa Cruz
Aluminum is a highly reactive metal that can strip oxygen from water molecules to generate hydrogen gas. Its widespread use in products that get wet poses no danger because aluminum instantly reacts with air to acquire a coating of aluminum oxide, which blocks further reactions.

For years, researchers have tried to find efficient and cost-effective ways to use aluminum's reactivity to generate clean hydrogen fuel. A new study by researchers at UC Santa Cruz shows that an easily produced composite of gallium and aluminum creates aluminum nanoparticles that react rapidly with water at room temperature to yield large amounts of hydrogen. The gallium was easily recovered for reuse after the reaction, which yields 90% of the hydrogen that could theoretically be produced from reaction of all the aluminum in the composite.

"We don't need any energy input, and it bubbles hydrogen like crazy. I've never seen anything like it," said UCSC Chemistry Professor Scott Oliver.

Oliver and Bakthan Singaram, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are corresponding authors of a paper on the new findings, published February 14 in Applied Nano Materials.

The reaction of aluminum and gallium with water has been known since the 1970s, and videos of it are easy to find online. It works because gallium, a liquid at just above room temperature, removes the passive aluminum oxide coating, allowing direct contact of aluminum with water. The new study, however, includes several innovations and novel findings that could lead to practical applications.
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A Simple Strategy to Enhance the Crystallinity of Coordination Nanosheets
Reviewed by Bethan Davies
Feb 22 2022

https://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=38729
Coordination nanosheets are newly evolving 2D materials with a wide variety of applications. However, extremely crystalline nanosheets are hard to synthesize through solution-based methods.
weatheriscool
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Atom by atom: Building precise smaller nanoparticles with templates
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-atom-prec ... lates.html
by Tokyo Institute of Technology
Nanoparticles (which have sizes ranging between 3–500 nm), and sub-nanoclusters (which are around 1 nm in diameter) are utilized in many fields, including medicine, robotics, materials science, and engineering. Their small size and large surface-area-to-volume ratios give them unique properties, rendering them valuable in a variety of applications, ranging from pollution control to chemical synthesis.

Recently, quasi-sub-nanomaterials, which are about 1–3 nm in scale have attracted attention because they have a dual nature–they can be regarded as nanoparticles, as well as inorganic molecules. Understandably, controlling the number of atoms in a quasi-sub-nanomaterial could be of much value. However, synthesizing such precise molecular structures is technically challenging, but scientists at Tokyo Tech were certainly up for this challenge.

Dendrons—highly branched molecular structures consisting of basic imines—have been suggested as precursors for the precise synthesis of quasi-sub-nanomaterials with the desired number of atoms. The imines in the dendrons function as a scaffold that can form complexes with certain acidic metallic salts, accumulating metals on the dendron structure. These, in turn, can be reduced to metal sub-nanoclusters with the desired number of atoms. However, synthesizing dendrons with a high proportion of imines is an expensive process with low yield.
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Simpler graphene method paves way for new era of nanoelectronics
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-simpler-g ... s-era.html
by Chalmers University of Technology
Ever since its discovery in 2004, graphene has received attention owing to its extraordinary properties, among them its extremely high carrier mobility. However, the high carrier mobility has only been observed using techniques that require complex and expensive fabrication methods. Now, researchers at Chalmers report on a surprisingly high charge-carrier mobility of graphene using much cheaper and simpler methods.

"This finding shows that graphene transferred to cheap and flexible substrates can still have an uncompromisingly high mobility, and it paves the way for a new era of graphene nano-electronics," says Munis Khan, researcher at Chalmers University of Technology.

Graphene is the one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms, known as the world's thinnest material. The material has become a popular choice in semiconductor, automotive and optoelectronic industry due to its excellent electrical, chemical, and material properties. One such property is its extremely high carrier mobility.

"In solid-state physics, the electron carrier mobility characterizes how quickly an electron can move through a metal or semiconductor when pulled by an electric field. The high electron mobility of graphene points to great potential for broadband communications and high-speed electronics operating at terahertz switching rates. In addition, the other material properties, such as high chemical stability, excellent transparency, and electrical sensitivity towards biochemicals, make it a promising material for displays, light harvesting devices and biosensors," says Munis Khan.
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Paving the way to tailor-made carbon nanomaterials and more accurate energetic materials modeling
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-paving-ta ... urate.html
by Anne M Stark, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Carbon exhibits a remarkable tendency to form nanomaterials with unusual physical and chemical properties, arising from its ability to engage in different bonding states. Many of these "next-generation" nanomaterials, which include nanodiamonds, nanographite, amorphous nanocarbon and nano-onions, are currently being studied for possible applications spanning quantum computing to bio-imaging. Ongoing research suggests that high-pressure synthesis using carbon-rich organic precursors could lead to the discovery and possibly the tailored design of many more.

To better understand how carbon nanomaterials could be tailor-made and how their formation impacts shock phenomena such as detonation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists conducted machine-learning-driven atomistic simulations to provide insight into the fundamental processes controlling the formation of nanocarbon materials, which could serve as a design tool, help guide experimental efforts and enable more accurate energetic materials modeling.

Laser-driven shock and detonation experiments can be used to drive carbon-rich materials to conditions of temperatures of the thousands of degrees Kelvin (K) and pressures of tens of GPa (one GPa equals 9,869 atmospheres), under which complex processes lead to the formation of 2-10 nanometer nanocarbons within hundreds of nanoseconds. However, the precise chemical and physical phenomena governing emergent nanocarbon formation under elevated pressure and temperature have not been fully explored yet, due in part to the challenges associated with studying systems at such extreme states.
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funkervogt
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Here's something I didn't think of: Even if we had nanomachine assemblers, the speed at which they would be able to build macro-scale objects would be limited by heat dissipation. The faster they worked, the hotter they and their immediate surroundings would get, and if the heat got too high, they would start malfunctioning.

I don't believe something like a Star Trek replicator is possible.

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