| May 15, 2013 |
Innovations in nanomedicine through 'materials nanoarchitectonics'
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(Nanowerk News) The term materials nanoarchitectonics was coined at the dawn of the 21st century ("Nanoarchitectonics: Pioneering a New Paradigm for Nanotechnology in Materials Development") to describe a strategy that would stir innovation in nanotechnology and facilitate the necessary paradigm shifts of classical materials science as it is faced with the challenge of converting the new properties of individual nano-objects into functional and, eventually, commercial materials and devices.
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The approach shuns the conventional analytical aspects of nanotechnology in favor of a synthetic view conducive to innovation. It is intended to lead to integrated assemblies that display concerted functions by virtue of mutual interactions among their units. It is achieved through the use of five “technologies”:
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– self-organization
– chemical nanomanipulation
– field-induced interactions
– new atom/molecule manipulations, and
– theoretical modeling
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Materials nanoarchitectonics has led to important innovations in the design and construction of systems in nanoelectronics, nanomachinery, and energy conversion. Recent publications point to the fact that the same approach may be applied successfully to other fields.
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In a Perspective article in Langmuir ("Innovation in Nanomedicine through Materials Nanoarchitectonics"), the authors – Piotr Kujawa from the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, and Françoise M. Winnik from the University of Montreal – define the key features of materials nanoarchitectonics and examine how they can be used to address current challenges in nanomedicine, placing emphasis on colloidal agents for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.
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