Nanotechnology Spotlight – Latest Articles

Showing Spotlights 1761 - 1768 of 3579 in category All (newest first):

Investigating fracture behavior of nanocrystalline Ni-W thin-films

In the past couple of decades, nickel-tungsten (Ni-W) amorphous and nanocrystalline materials have been drawing more and more research interest due to the superior mechanical properties such as high hardness, good mechanical performance, and excellent corrosion resistance. Striving to enhance the mechanical performance of Ni-W thin film alloys, researchers report how the annealing temperature will influence the microstructure evolution and the fracture properties of Ni-W alloys.

January 8, 2016

Toward the automation of plasmonic design

Metal nanoparticles, when excited at optical frequencies, may experience localized surface plasmon resonances, which determine enhanced local electric fields, increased scattering cross sections, and high sensitivity to the environment refractive index. Thanks to these unique properties, they are widely utilized especially in biomedical sciences and engineering. Researchers have now conceived and demonstrated a new method to fully automate the design of metal nanoparticles.

January 7, 2016

Flexible, low-power, high-frequency nanoelectronics with monolayer MoS2

In the past, the performance of synthesized MoS2 had been poor, especially when integrated on flexible substrates. A new study have now yielded the highest performance for CVD-grown monolayer MoS2 device properties on flexible substrates to date. MoS2 exhibits unique physical, optical and electrical properties correlated with its single-layer atomic layer structure. Important for electronics applications, and in contrast to graphene, MoS2 has a bandgap.

January 6, 2016

Microcannons that fire drug-loaded nanobullets

The goal of a vast amount of nanomedicine research is the perfect drug carrier: it is injected into the body and transports itself to the correct target, such as a tumor, and delivers the required therapeutic drug dose at this target. This idealized concept was first proposed at the beginning of the 20th century and was nicknamed the 'magic bullet' concept. Taking this 'bullet' concept literally, researchers have developed acoustically triggered microcannons, capable of versatile loading and effective firing of nanobullets, as novel tools toward advancing microscale tissue penetration of therapeutic payloads.

January 5, 2016

Identifying nanopollution

Engineered nanoparticles are being used in a wide range of product areas, including composite materials, coatings, electronics, food, agriculture, cosmetics, healthcare, and biotechnology. As a consequence, human exposure to nanoparticles has become a prominent environmental concern; especially since these potential pollutants are not visible to the human eye or detectable by smell. However, there is no current technology that provides rapid, sensitive and highly portable detection and identification of nanoparticles. Now though, researchers have developed a simple colorimetric sensor array approach capable of detection and unambiguous differentiation of a wide range of nanoparticles in aqueous solutions.

January 4, 2016

Top 10 nanotechnology spotlights 2015

Here are the 10 most popular Nanowerk Nanotechnology Spotlight articles of 2015. This year, the list includes a quick and simple blood test to detect early-stage cancer; self-powered smart suits; nanomaterials for camouflage and stealth applications; nanotechnology energy applications; 3D-printing with graphene; fuzzy and Boolean logic gates based on DNA nanotechnology; a path towards self-powered electronic papers; a look at whether nanomedicine lhas ived up to its promise; smart materials that become 'alive' with living bacteria in supramolecular assemblies; and repair nanobots on damage patrol.

January 1, 2016

Multiplexed planar array analysis from within a living cell

Researchers have developed a suspended planar-array chip whose in situ capabilities with a spatial molecular-probe arrangement combine the advantages of both suspended arrays and planar arrays. This opens the way towards the multiplexed detection of intracellular biological parameters using a single device in dramatically reduced volumes, such as inside a living HeLa cell. The chip's volume represents only about 0.35% of the total volume of a typical HeLa cell.

December 29, 2015

Skin-inspired haptic memory devices

Current research on tactile sensors is mostly focused on the improvement of sensitivity and multi-functionality to emulate the function of natural skin. However, natural skin can sense external pressure and help form haptic memory, while current flexible tactile sensors for electronic skin can only perform sensing functions. This functionality gap between state-of-the-art tactile sensing devices and natural skin inspired a team of researchers to develop haptic memory devices that integrate sensor and memory functions.

December 23, 2015