Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

This prototype bicycle helmet will protect your head with a biodegradable and renewable alternative to hazardous Styrofoam. The shock-absorbing foam material inside was developed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and it is one of the key features of an entirely wood-sourced helmet. Credit: Cellutech

We may soon be saying goodbye to polystyrene, the petroleum-based material that is used to make Styrofoam. In what looks like an ordinary bicycle helmet, designers have replaced Styrofoam with a new shock-absorbing material made with renewable and biodegradable wood-based material.

Researcher Lars Wågberg, a professor in Fibre Technology at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the wood-based foam material Cellufoam offers comparable properties to Styrofoam.

The helmet was pr...

A thin, flexible film developed by researchers from the University of Michigan can detect biomarkers of cancer in the blood. It may eventually lead to the development of phone-sized cancer detection devices. (Photo : Public Domain Pictures | Pixabay

A thin, stretchable film that coils light waves like a Slinky could one day lead to more precise, less expensive monitoring for cancer survivors. The Uni of Michigan chemical engineers who developed the film say it could help patients get better follow-up Rx with less disruption to their everyday lives.
The film provides a simpler, more cost-effective way to produce circularly polarized light, an essential ingredient in the process that could eventually provide an early warning of cancer recurrence.

Circular polarization is similar to the linea...

Schematic depiction of different energy terms contributing to the adsorption energy, and charge density difference of 2H-P after adsorption onto Cu(111) at 12.8 Angstrom separation. Credit: M. Müller/TU Munich

As we continue to shrink electronic components, top-down manufacturing methods begin to approach a physical limit at the nanoscale. A solution involves bottom-up self-assembly of molecular building blocks to build nanoscale devices.

Successful self-assembly is an elaborately choreographed dance, in which the attractive and repulsive forces within molecules, between each molecule and its neighbors, and between molecules and the surface that supports them, have to all be taken into account...

This is the NIST concept for DNA sequencing through a graphene nanopore. Credit: Smolyanitsky/NIST

Researchers at NIST have simulated a new concept for rapid, accurate gene sequencing by pulling a DNA molecule through a tiny, chemically activated hole in graphene and detecting changes in electrical current. The method could identify about 66 billion bases/s with 90% accuracy and no false +ves. If demonstrated experimentally, the NIST method might ultimately be faster and cheaper than conventional DNA sequencing, meeting a critical need for applications such as forensics.

Conventional sequencing, developed in the 1970s, involves separating, copying, labeling and reassembling pieces of DNA to read the genetic information...