Nanotechnology Spotlight – Latest Articles

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3D printing of living responsive devices

3D-printingResearchers have demonstrated a new paradigm in 3D-printing by using genetically programmed living cells as active components to print living materials and devices. The living cells are engineered to light up in response to a variety of stimuli. When mixed with a slurry of hydrogel and nutrients, the cells can be printed, layer by layer, to form three-dimensional, interactive structures and devices. These printed large-scale high-resolution living materials accurately respond to signaling chemicals in a programmed manners.

Jan 31st, 2018

Nanomachines in living systems - on route to microcyborgs

nanobiotechnologyFrom interaction with bacteria, propulsion based on cells, in vivo medical applications to even intracellular applications, the rapidly expanding development of micro- and nanomachines with sizes comparable to or even smaller than mammalian cells, has led this field to advance from understanding of basic motion mechanisms to applications in living biosystems. A recent review highlights the recent efforts for and toward application of micro/nanomachines in living biosystems, including microorganisms, biological cells, and human body. Applications of micro- and nanomachines in living biosystems are reviewed from two aspects: their interaction with other microscopic organisms or biological units, and the efforts toward their application in the human body.

Jan 30th, 2018

Helical nanopropellers to measure local viscosity in a fluid

nanomotorResearchers find magnetic helical nanomachines that mimic the swimming characteristics of E. coli bacteria to be particularly promising because of their extremely small size and their capability of navigating in various biological fluids like human blood. New work extends the possibility of using helical nanomachines as a tool to measure the localized mechanical properties of a heterogeneous environment that is ubiquitous in biological systems. This technique can be useful to gain valuable insights into the physiological changes of a cell in response to a disease or a drug, leading to better therapeutics.

Jan 26th, 2018

Sculpting liquids

Countless commercial and industrial products are routinely produced by manufacturing processes where solid parts are molded through injecting molten polymer into a cast and removing the finished shape once cooled. This process is well understood for solid materials. If the characteristics and properties of a liquid are of interest, e.g., ion transport or mobility, the ability to structure liquids into complex shapes becomes highly desirable. It would open a wide range of potential applications in areas such as all-liquid reaction vessels, energy storage materials, all-liquid electronic devices, and microfluidic devices. Researchers now have developed a very simple route to structure liquids by all-liquid molding.

Jan 22nd, 2018

Power up your T-shirt with print designs

electronic_t-shirtInspired by the designs printed on T-shirts, researchers recently reported a new class of wearable power sources. To explore the feasibility of power sources directly printed on cotton T-shirts, which look like letters or symbols, they chose electric double layer supercapacitors based on activated carbon materials as a model electrochemical system. These T-shirts look and behave like a normal T-shirt but feature printed supercapacitors in the shape of letters and symbols.

Jan 19th, 2018

Drastic phase changes in topologically-engineered planar absorbers improve sensitivity of optical sensors

sensorPlasmonic metasurfaces can be designed to achieve the singular-phase condition, yet this typically requires complex electromagnetic design and low-throughput fabrication techniques such as electron beam lithography. In a new work, researchers have developed a simple and robust planar singular-phase sensing platform for remote temperature detection, which does not require nano-patterning and exhibits singular-phase behavior due to the excitation of topologically-protected Tamm surface states.

Jan 18th, 2018

Manipulating colloids with mobile nanotweezers

helical_nanostructureResearchers have merged two important technologies of nanomanipulation - plasmonic tweezers and magnetically driven microbots - in order to overcome their individual limitations and achieve new functionalities that did not exist before. This technique is applicable to different types of particles in various fluids. The resulting mobile nanotweezers' performance combines the best of both worlds: capturing, maneuvering, and positioning sub micrometer objects of various materials at low illumination intensities, high speeds, and with great control.

Jan 17th, 2018

Nanofluidics - recent progress

nanofluidicsNanofluidics is the study and application of fluids in and around geometries with nanoscale characteristic dimensions. The field of nanofluidics is not brand-new. Some issues associated with nanoscale fluidics have been occasionally dealt with by researchers in membrane science, colloid science, and chemical engineering for many decades. A recent review article provides a selected overview of the recent progress, rather than a comprehensive review of the entire field.

Jan 16th, 2018