Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Researchers have developed hierarchical metallic metamaterial with multi-layered, fractal-like 3-D architectures to create structures at centimeter scales incorporating nanoscale features. Credit: Jim Stroup/Virginia Tech

For years, materials have been made at the nanoscale level to take advantage of their mechanical, optical, and energy properties, but efforts to scale these materials to larger sizes have resulted in diminished performance and structural integrity. Now, researchers describe a new process to create lightweight, strong and super elastic 3D printed metallic nanostructured materials with unprecedented scalability, 7 orders of magnitude control of arbitrary 3D architectures.

Strikingly, these multiscale metallic materials have displayed super elasticity because of their design...

Controlling Spatial Heat and Light Distribution by Using Photothermal Enhancing Auto-Regulated Liposomes (PEARLs).

Dr. Gang Zheng and a team of biomedical researchers have discovered a “smart” organic, biodegradable nanoparticle that uses heat and light in a controlled manner to potentially target and ablate tumours with greater precision. The proof-of-concept findings provide a viable approach to boosting the clinical utility of photo-thermal therapy in treating cancer, says Dr. Zheng, Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret and Professor of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.He talks about and demonstrates the research at https://youtu.be/EEN6Mz5iWBI.

In the lab, using phantom models, the “smart” nanoparticle the team has dubbed PEARLs – photo-thermal enhancing auto-regula...

Changes in colors emitted through mechanochromism a) When the blue crystal in emission was ground at the center, the color turned yellow. b) A round filter paper thinly coated with blue mechanochromic molecules in emission. The yellowish letters “Au” appeared after scratching the surface with a spatula. Credit: Image courtesy of Hokkaido University

In mechanochromism, certain solid and liquid crystalline materials change their photoluminescence properties upon mechanical stimulation, such as grinding, ball-milling and crushing. Although such compounds have attracted much attention with hopes of various applications, it has heretofore been thought difficult to synthesize mechanochromic compounds with desired emission properties and behaviors as each molecule emits different color.

A tea...

A thermal probe tests heat conductance in a sample of silicon dioxide nanoparticles. The material could potentially conduct heat at an efficiency higher than that of conventional materials. Credit: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech

Not beach sand, but silicon dioxide nanoparticles coated with a high dielectric constant polymer can inexpensively provide improved cooling for increasingly power-hungry electronic devices. The silicon dioxide doesn’t do the cooling itself. Instead, the unique surface properties of the coated nanoscale material conduct the heat at potentially higher efficiency than existing heat sink materials. The theoretical physics is complicated, involving nanoscale electromagnetic effects created on the surface of the tiny silicon dioxide particles acting together.

The bottom line cou...