Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials can provide highly interesting excitonic properties, which render them an attractive platform to explore polaritonic physics. In the literature, a variety of inorganic exciton-polariton systems have been studied experimentally and described theoretically using the broadly accepted model of two coupled...
Materials design for atmospheric water harvesting
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Only 30% of all freshwater on the planet is not locked up in ice caps or glaciers (not for much longer, though). Of that, some 20% is in areas too remote for humans to access and of the remaining 80% about three-quarters comes at the...
how new microalgae technologies can hasten the end of our reliance on oil
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Microalgae have been used by the Chinese for medicinal and nutritional purposes for thousands of years in the belief they could cure almost any health condition. The idea that microalgae have extraordinary healing powers isn’t as far-fetched as some might think. Though the ancient Chinese...
Microscopic view on asteroid collisions could help us understand planet formation
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new way of dating collisions between asteroids and planetary bodies throughout our Solar System’s history could help scientists reconstruct how and when planets were born. A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, combined dating and microscopic analysis of the Chelyabinsk meteorite...
A superior new material for optoelectronic devices
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Liquid crystals derived from borophene have risen in popularity, owing to their immense applicability in optoelectronic and photonic devices. However, their development requires a very narrow temperature range, which hinders their large-scale application. Now, Tokyo Tech researchers investigated a liquid-state borophene oxide, discovering that it...
Asymmetric nanowaves
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Vanderbilt University, City University of New York, University of Nebraska, and University of Iowa have just published new results on asymmetric light-matter waves in the reknowned magazine Nature ("Hyperbolic shear polaritons in low-symmetry crystals")....
Utilizing carbon dots in electrochemical processes and energy storage
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Thanks to their unusual optical properties, carbon particles with diameters on the order of a few nanometers – so-called carbon dots – show great promise for a wide range of technological applications, as diverse as energy conversion and bio-imaging. Moreover, carbon dots (CDs) have several...
Fingertip sensitivity for robots (w/video)
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence ("A soft thumb-sized vision-based sensor with accurate all-round force perception"), a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) introduce a robust soft haptic sensor named “Insight” that uses computer vision and a...
Targeting gene therapy directly into the lungs with lipid-based nanoparticles
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Tufts researchers are building a reputation for precision targeting in drug delivery. Their tools: tiny lipid-based nanoparticles (LNPs) fine-tuned to latch on to specific tissues, organs, even cell types within the body. Their latest creation: LNPs that carry genetic instructions directly into the lungs. Even...
Mysterious source of fast radio bursts
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long bursts of radiation recorded on radio waves. They are extremely powerful - for example, during one of the brightest flashes lasting five milliseconds, as much energy is radiated as our Sun generates in a month. The scale of...