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For the first time, physicists at the University of Basel have succeeded in measuring the magnetic properties of atomically thin van der Waals materials on the nanoscale. They used diamond quantum sensors to determine the strength of the magnetization of individual atomic layers of the material chromium triiodide. In addition, they found a long-sought explanation for the unusual magnetic properties of the material. The journal Science has published the findings.

The use of atomically thin, two-dimensional van der Waals materials promises innovations in numerous fields in science and technology. Scientists around the world are constantly exploring new ways to stack different single atomic layers and thus engineer new materials with unique, emerging properties.

These super-thin composite materials are held together by van der Waals forces and often behave differently to bulk crystals of the same material. Atomically thin van der Waals materials include insulators, semiconductors, superconductors and a few materials with magnetic properties. Their use in spintronics or ultra-compact magnetic memory media is highly promising.

Continue reading “Unprecedented insight into two-dimensional magnets using diamond quantum sensors” »

In a recent study in mice, researchers found a way to deliver specific drugs to parts of the body that are exceptionally difficult to access. Their Y-shaped block catiomer (YBC) binds with certain therapeutic materials forming a package 18 nanometers wide. The package is less than one-fifth the size of those produced in previous studies, so it can pass through much smaller gaps. This allows YBCs to slip through tight barriers in cancers of the brain or pancreas.

The fight against cancer is fought on many fronts. One promising field is gene therapy, which targets genetic causes of diseases to reduce their effect. The idea is to inject a nucleic acid-based drug into the bloodstream—typically small interfering RNA (siRNA)—which binds to a specific problem-causing gene and deactivates it. However, siRNA is very fragile and needs to be protected within a nanoparticle or it breaks down before reaching its target.

“siRNA can switch off specific gene expressions that may cause harm. They are the next generation of biopharmaceuticals that could treat various intractable diseases, including cancer,” explained Associate Professor Kanjiro Miyata of the University of Tokyo, who jointly supervised the study. “However, siRNA is easily eliminated from the body by enzymatic degradation or excretion. Clearly a new delivery method was called for.”

Continue reading “New nanomedicine slips through the cracks” »

You are probably familiar with graphics depicting the double helix structure of DNA. But have you ever seen a single DNA molecule standing straight?

ETH researchers have cooled a nanoparticle to a record low temperature, thanks to a sophisticated experimental set-up that uses scattered laser light for cooling. Until now, no one has ever cooled a nanoparticle to such low temperatures in a photon cage. Dominik Windey and René Reimann – a doctoral student and postdoc in the group led by Lukas Novotny, Professor of Photonics – have succeeded in cooling a 140 nanometre glass bead down to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero.

The researchers recently published details of their work in the journal Physical Review Letters. Their breakthrough came in the form of a sophisticated experimental set-up involving optical tweezers, whereby a nanoparticle can be made to levitate with the aid of a laser beam. The group has already used the same optical tweezers in previous work, in which they caused a nanoparticle to rotate around its own axis at extremely high speed.

Checking out a stack of books from the library is as simple as searching the library’s catalog and using unique call numbers to pull each book from their shelf locations. Using a similar principle, scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory—are teaming with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create a first-of-its-kind automated system to catalog atomically thin two-dimensional (2-D) materials and stack them into layered structures. Called the Quantum Material Press, or QPress, this system will accelerate the discovery of next-generation materials for the emerging field of quantum information science (QIS).

Structures obtained by stacking single atomic layers (“flakes”) peeled from different parent bulk crystals are of interest because of the exotic electronic, magnetic, and optical properties that emerge at such small (quantum) size scales. However, flake exfoliation is currently a manual process that yields a variety of flake sizes, shapes, orientations, and number of layers. Scientists use optical microscopes at high magnification to manually hunt through thousands of flakes to find the desired ones, and this search can sometimes take days or even a week, and is prone to human error.

Once high-quality 2-D flakes from different crystals have been located and their properties characterized, they can be assembled in the desired order to create the layered structures. Stacking is very time-intensive, often taking longer than a month to assemble a single layered structure. To determine whether the generated structures are optimal for QIS applications—ranging from computing and encryption to sensing and communications—scientists then need to characterize the structures’ properties.

Continue reading “Building a printing press for new quantum materials” »

Graphene quantum dots drawn from common coal may be the basis for an effective antioxidant for people who suffer traumatic brain injuries, strokes or heart attacks.

Their ability to quench oxidative stress after such injuries is the subject of a study by scientists at Rice University, the Texas A&M Health Science Center and the McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Quantum dots are semiconducting materials small enough to exhibit quantum mechanical properties that only appear at the nanoscale.

Continue reading “Scientists discover coal-derived ‘dots’ are effective antioxidant” »

Research on opportunities to use nanomaterials for each industry could expand and increase efficiency in industrial water treatment.

(Natural News) Turkish inventors have created a new building material that is five times stronger than titanium and has the density of wood planks. Most remarkably, this new “Metallic wood” is lighter than titanium and still has the chemical stability of metal for use in manufacturing applications.

The new material is made out of nickel-based cellular materials as small as 17 nano-meters in diameter. These electroplated nickel nano-particles are strategically arranged in struts to maximize their load-bearing strength as a whole. This strategic arrangement of nickel makes the material four times stronger than bulk nickel plating. By tinkering with nano-meter-scale geometry, the inventors can increase the strength and density of the new material. This geometric arrangement of cellular materials is spatially organized and repeated to generate the new “Metallic wood” material. This geometric nano-meter engineering feat produces a very dense material, like that of wood. The inventors have even made the material as dense as water (1,000?kg/m3).

The idea is to give craftspeople the tools they need to incorporate digital services to the items they’re already making. Poupyrev made it clear that he doesn’t want fundamentally change tried and tested items, like a jacket, into a computer first, and an article of clothing second. He wants to imbue everyday items with digital functionality.

In its final form, Poupyrev envisions clothing, furniture, and accessories that are all connected to the cloud, each providing their own, specialized functionality. Users will interact with screens using their sleeves and pause their music by tapping their glasses. Step trackers will live in our shoes, translators will live in our ears, and medicinal nano-robots could be injected into our blood streams. The very notion of a computer will radically change as little computers get placed into everything.

“This could allow makers to image and create a new world where things are connected and we don’t need keyboards, screens, or mice to interact with computers,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for 20 years and as it’s taken shape I’m realizing that we’re not building an interface. We’re building a a new kind of computer, an invisible computer.”

Continue reading “This Tic-Tac-Sized Computer Can Turn Almost Anything Into a Smart Device” »