Rapid nanoparticle test for sepsis

Jun 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) For Qun Ren, every minute counts. The Empa researcher and her team are currently developing a diagnostic procedure that can detect life-threatening blood poisoning caused by staphylococcus bacteria rapidly. This is because staphylococcal sepsis is fatal in up to 40 percent of the cases. An...

Producing large, clean 2D materials made easy: just KISS

Jun 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Ever since the discovery of the two-dimensional form of graphite (called graphene) almost twenty years ago, interest in 2D materials with their special physical properties has skyrocketed. Famously, graphene was produced by exfoliating bulk graphite using sticky tape. Although it was good enough for a...

Functional 2D-enabled microchips become reality

Jun 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The first demonstration of a functional microchip integrating atomically thin two-dimensional materials with exotic properties heralds a new era of microelectronics. The world’s first fully integrated and functional microchip based on exotic two-dimensional materials has been fabricated at KAUST. The breakthrough demonstrates the potential of...

A nanocrystal shines on and off indefinitely

May 31, 2023 (Nanowerk News) In 2021, lanthanide-doped nanoparticles made waves—or rather, an avalanche—when Changwan Lee, then a PhD student in Jim Schuck’s lab at Columbia Engineering, set off an extreme light-producing chain reaction from ultrasmall crystals developed at the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab. Those same crystals are back...

Scientists report world’s first X-ray of a single atom

May 31, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and others, led by Ohio University Professor of Physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, Saw Wai Hla, have taken the world’s first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom. Since...

New ‘designer’ titanium alloys made using 3D printing

May 31, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A team of researchers has created a new class of titanium alloys that are strong and not brittle under tension, by integrating alloy and 3D-printing process designs. The breakthrough, published in Nature ("Strong and ductile titanium-oxygen-iron alloys by additive manufacturing"), could help extend the applications...