Nanotechnology – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Nov 17
2022

Engineers designed a new nanoscale 3D printing material that can be printed at a speed of 100 mm/s

It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.

A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronicsAn improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.

According to the study led by Stanford University, a nanoscale 3D printing material, which creates structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair, will enable to print of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.

Phuchit/iStock.

An improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.

Nov 17
2022

3D-printing microrobots with multiple component modules inside a microfluidic chip

Scientists from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Osaka University introduced a method for manufacturing complex microrobots driven by chemical energy using in situ integration. By 3D-printing and assembling the mechanical structures and actuators of microrobots inside a microfluidic chip, the resulting microrobots were able to perform desired functions, like moving or grasping. This work may help realize the vision of microsurgery performed by autonomous robots.

As medical technology advances, increasingly complicated surgeries that were once considered impossible have become reality. However, we are still far away from a promised future in which microrobots coursing through a patient’s body can perform procedures, such as microsurgery or cancer cell elimination.

Although nanotech methods have already mastered the art of producing tiny structures, it remains a challenge to manipulate and assemble these constituent parts into functional complex robots, especially when trying to produce them at a mass scale. As a result, the assembly, integration and reconfiguration of tiny mechanical components, and especially movable actuators driven by chemical energy, remains a difficult and time-consuming process.

Nov 16
2022

Researchers develop new, heat-efficient nanoparticles for treating cancer

Oregon State University scientists have invented a way to make magnetic nanoparticles that get hotter than any previous nanoparticle, improving their cancer fighting ability.

Faculty from the OSU College of Pharmacy spearheaded a collaboration that developed an advanced thermal decomposition method for producing nanoparticles able to reach temperatures in cancer lesions of up to 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, when exposed to an alternating magnetic field.

Findings of the preclinical study led by Oleh Taratula and Olena Taratula were published today in the journal Small Methods.

Nov 14
2022

New Technologies that May be in the Cards

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Nov 13
2022

Previously unseen processes reveal path to better rechargeable battery performance

To design better rechargeable ion batteries, engineers and chemists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign collaborated to combine a powerful new electron microscopy technique and data mining to visually pinpoint areas of chemical and physical alteration within ion batteries.

A study led by materials science and engineering professors Qian Chen and Jian-Min Zuo is the first to map out altered domains inside rechargeable ion batteries at the nanoscale—a 10-fold or more increase in resolution over current X-ray and optical methods.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Materials.

Nov 13
2022

Researchers learn to engineer growth of crystalline materials consisting of nanometer-size gold clusters

First insights into engineering crystal growth by atomically precise metal nanoclusters have been achieved in a study performed by researchers in Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Finland. The work was published in Nature Chemistry.

Ordinary solid matter consists of atoms organized in a crystal lattice. The chemical character of the atoms and lattice symmetry define the properties of the matter, for instance, whether it is a metal, a semiconductor or and electric insulator. The lattice symmetry may be changed by ambient conditions such as temperature or high pressure, which can induce structural transitions and transform even an electric insulator to an electric conductor, that is, a metal.

Larger identical entities such as nanoparticles or atomically precise metal nanoclusters can also organize into a crystal lattice, to form so called meta-materials. However, information on how to engineer the growth of such materials from their building blocks has been scarce since the crystal growth is a typical self-assembling process.

Nov 12
2022

Researchers proposed a new theory to grow pure carbon nanotubes

Enot-poloskun/iStock.

Carbon Nanotube (CNTs)

Nov 11
2022

For local mRNA delivery, nanoparticles stick to the bone

Researchers designed a lipid nanoparticle that sticks to bone minerals, increasing mRNA delivery and therapeutic protein expression in the bone.

Nov 9
2022

Chirping toward a Quantum RAM

A new quantum random-access memory device reads and writes information using a chirped electromagnetic pulse and a superconducting resonator, making it significantly more hardware-efficient than previous devices.

Random-access memory (or RAM) is an integral part of a computer, acting as a short-term memory bank from which information can be quickly recalled. Applications on your phone or computer use RAM so that you can switch between tasks in the blink of an eye. Researchers working on building future quantum computers hope that such systems might one day operate with analogous quantum RAM elements, which they envision could speed up the execution of a quantum algorithm [1, 2] or increase the density of information storable in a quantum processor. Now James O’Sullivan of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and colleagues have taken an important step toward making quantum RAM a reality, demonstrating a hardware-efficient approach that uses chirped microwave pulses to store and retrieve quantum information in atomic spins [3].

Just like quantum computers, experimental demonstrations of quantum memory devices are in their early days. One leading chip-based platform for quantum computation uses circuits made from superconducting metals. In this system, the central processing is done with superconducting qubits, which send and receive information via microwave photons. At present, however, there exists no quantum memory device that can reliably store these photons for long times. Luckily, scientists have a few ideas.

Nov 7
2022

Scientists Build Synthetic Molecular Machines That Can Read Data

Turing’s machine should sound familiar for another reason. It’s similar to the way ribosomes read genetic code on ribbons of RNA to construct proteins.

Cellular factories are a kind of natural Turing machine. What Leigh’s team is after would work the same way but go beyond biochemistry. These microscopic Turing machines, or molecular computers, would allow engineers to write code for some physical output onto a synthetic molecular ribbon. Another molecule would travel along the ribbon, read (and one day write) the code, and output some specified action, like catalyzing a chemical reaction.

Now, Leigh’s team says they’ve built the first components of a molecular computer: A coded molecular ribbon and a mobile molecular reader of the code.