Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) High-quality graphite has excellent mechanical strength, thermal stability, high flexibility and very high in-plane thermal and electric conductivities and, thus, is one of most important advanced materials for many applications, such as being used as the light thermal conductor of cell phones. For example, a...
Light-driven molecular motors light up
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Rotary molecular motors were first created in 1999, in the laboratory of Ben Feringa, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Groningen. These motors are driven by light. For many reasons, it would be good to be able to make these motor molecules visible....
Mars’s crust more complex, evolved than previously thought
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Early crust on Mars may be more complex than previously thought—and it may even be similar to our own planet’s original crust. The Martian surface is uniformly basaltic, a product of billions of years of volcanism and flowing lava on the surface that eventually cooled....
Astronomers discover closest black hole to Earth
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Black holes are the most extreme objects in the Universe. Supermassive versions of these unimaginably dense objects likely reside at the centers of all large galaxies. Stellar-mass black holes — which weigh approximately five to 100 times the mass of the Sun — are much...
AI predicts properties of complex metamaterials
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Given a 3D piece of origami, can you flatten it without damaging it? Just by looking at the design, the answer is hard to predict, because each and every fold in the design has to be compatible with flattening. This is an example of a...
New model found for microsphere-enhanced interferometry
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Optical measurement techniques collecting light intensity in the far-field such as conventional and confocal microscopy or coherence scanning interferometry (CSI) enable fast and contactless inspection of several types of specimens. Nonetheless, optical measurement instruments suffer from diffraction effects leading to a fundamental lateral resolution limitation...
Research into thermal properties of cellulose nanofibers yields surprising results
Nov 04, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Plant-derived materials such as cellulose often exhibit thermally insulating properties. A new material made from nanoscale cellulose fibers shows the reverse, high thermal conductivity. This makes it useful in areas previously dominated by synthetic polymer materials. Materials based on cellulose have environmental benefits over polymers,...
Seeing concentrations of toxins with the naked eye
Nov 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a fast and cost-effective method to test liquids for a ubiquitous family of chemical compounds known as amphiphiles, which are used to detect diseases such as early-stage tuberculosis and...
Incongruent results from proteomics core facilities compromise nanoparticle protein corona research
Nov 03, 2022 (Nanowerk Spotlight) The protein corona plays a critical role not only in clinical translation of nanomaterials but also in a wide range of other nanomedicine areas such as cellular uptake, targeting, drug delivery, and theranostics applications. A protein corona develops when nanoparticles enter human blood and come...
First neutrino image of an active galaxy
Nov 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) For over ten years the IceCube Observatory in the Antarctic has been monitoring the light traces of extragalactic neutrinos. While evaluating the observatory's data, an international research team led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) discovered a high-energy neutrino radiation source in the active...