Lifeboat Foundation

While carbon nanotubes are the materials that have received most of the attention so far, they have proved very difficult to manufacture and control, so scientists are eager to find other compounds that could be used to create nanowires and nanotubes with equally interesting properties, but easier to handle.

So, Chiara Cignarella, Davide Campi and Nicola Marzari thought to use computer simulations to parse known three-dimensional crystals, looking for those that—based on their structural and electronic properties —look like they could be easily “exfoliated,” essentially peeling away from them a stable 1-D structure. The same method has been successfully used in the past to study 2D materials, but this is the first application to their 1-D counterparts.

The researchers started from a collection of over 780,000 crystals, taken from various databases found in the literature and held together by van der Waals forces, the sort of weak interactions that happen when atoms are close enough for their electrons to overlap. Then they applied an algorithm that considered the spatial organization of their atoms looking for the ones that incorporated wire-like structures, and calculated how much energy would be necessary to separate that 1-D structure from the rest of the crystal.

While researchers have long studied brain dynamics using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalograms (EEG), advances in neuroscience have only recently provided massive datasets for the brain’s cellular structure. These data opened possibilities for Kovács and his team to apply statistical physics techniques to measure the physical structure of neurons.

For the new study, Kovács and Ansell analyzed publicly available data of 3D brain reconstructions from humans, fruit flies and mice. By examining the brain at nanoscale resolution, the researchers found the samples showcased hallmarks of physical properties associated with criticality.

One such property is the well-known, fractal-like structure of neurons. This nontrivial fractal-dimension is an example of a set of observables, called “critical exponents,” that emerge when a system is close to a phase transition.

Research groups from the University of Tsukuba and the University of Rennes have discovered a novel phenomenon in which a nested structure of carbon nanotubes enveloped in boron nitride nanotubes facilitates a unique electron escape route when exposed to light. This finding introduces promising avenues for various applications, including the creation of high-speed optical devices, rapid control of electrons and other particles and efficient heat dissipation from devices.

Researchers from Princeton University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Basel, and ETH Zurich have discovered new applications for nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre quantum sensors in condensed matter physics. These sensors, which offer nanoscale resolution across a wide range of temperatures, have been used to measure static magnetic fields in condensed matter systems.

NV centres can probe beyond average magnetic fields, enabling high precision noise sensing in diverse systems. They offer several advantages over other nanoscale probes, including the ability to probe both static and dynamic properties in a momentum and frequency-resolved way.

Condensed matter physics is a field that studies the physical properties of condensed phases of matter, such as solids and liquids. Recently, researchers from Princeton University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Basel, and ETH Zurich have discovered new opportunities in this field for nanoscale quantum sensors, specifically nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre quantum sensors. These sensors offer unique advantages in studying condensed matter systems due to their quantitative, noninvasive, physically robust nature, and their ability to offer nanoscale resolution across a wide range of temperatures.

Advanced technologies enable the controlled release of medicine to specific cells in the body. Scientists argue these same technologies must be applied to agriculture if growers are to meet increasing global food demands.

Nanocarrier delivery has huge potential in agriculture; however, there are significant scientific and societal barriers to overcome. In this Review, the authors explore the state of the field, what lessons can be learned from nanomedicine, and discuss what scientific and societal issues need to be addressed.

(Nanowerk News) Advanced technologies enable the controlled release of medicine to specific cells in the body. Scientists argue these same technologies must be applied to agriculture if growers are to meet increasing global food demands.

In a new Nature Nanotechnology journal review paper (“Towards realizing nano-enabled precision delivery in plants”), scientists from UC Riverside and Carnegie Mellon University highlight some of the best-known strategies for improving agriculture with nanotechnology.

Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), and their collaborators have uncovered new details of the reversible assembly and disassembly of a platinum catalyst. The new understanding may offer clues to the catalyst’s stability and recyclability.

The work, described in a paper published in the journal Nanoscale (“Unravelling the origin of reaction-driven aggregation and fragmentation of atomically dispersed Pt catalyst on ceria support”), reveals how single platinum atoms on a cerium oxide support aggregate under reaction conditions to form active catalytic nanoparticles — and then, surprisingly, fragment once the reaction is stopped.

Fragmentation may sound shattering, but the scientists say it could be a plus.

A collaborative study by researchers at Lancaster and Radboud universities has pioneered a method to generate and control spin waves at the nanoscale, offering a new, energy-efficient approach to quantum computing.

Researchers at Lancaster University and Radboud University Nijmegen have successfully produced propagating spin waves on the nanoscale, unveiling a new method to modulate and amplify these waves.

Their discovery, published in Nature, could pave the way for the development of dissipation-free quantum information technologies. As the spin waves do not involve electric currents these chips will be free from associated losses of energy.