‘Drycells’ promise to transform single cell research

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Cell culturing demands the ability to isolate and analyze individual cells, a requirement that is especially critical in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and gene therapy. Cell culturing involves growing cells in controlled conditions outside their natural environment, and is a fundamental technique used in biological...

A novel laser slicing technique for diamond semiconductors

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Silicon-based materials are currently the undisputed leaders in the field of semiconductors. Even so, scientists around the world are actively trying to find superior alternatives for next-generation electronics and high-power systems. Interestingly, diamonds are among the most promising materials for applications such as fast telecommunications...

Nanopore technology achieves breakthrough in protein variant detection

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A team of scientists led by the University of Oxford have achieved a significant breakthrough in detecting modifications on protein structures. The method, published in Nature Nanotechnology ("Enzyme-less nanopore detection of post-translational modifications within long polypeptides"), employs innovative nanopore technology to identify structural variations at...

Faster thin film devices for energy storage and electronics

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) An international research team from the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale), Germany, the University of Cambridge, UK and the University of Pennsylvania, USA reported the first realization of single-crystalline T-Nb2O5 thin films having two-dimensional (2D) vertical ionic transport channels, which results in...

Making structures on 2D materials with a 3D printer

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) In the quest to leverage the exceptional properties of graphene and other 2D materials, researchers at Graphene Flagship Associated Member KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and Graphene Flagship Partner the University of the Bundeswehr Munich (Germany) & SENS Research Center joined forces to structure...

Using sound waves to image nanostructures

Aug 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The potential of an ultrafast form of transmission electron microscopy to measure sound waves in nanostructures has been demonstrated by three RIKEN physicists (Nano Letters, "Characterizing an optically induced sub-micrometer gigahertz acoustic wave in a silicon thin plate"). This could help realize a high-resolution imaging...

Can rainbows monitor the environment?

Jul 31, 2023 (Nanowerk News) New nanotechnology may make it easier to identify the chemical composition of impurities and their geometrical shape in samples of air, liquid and live tissue. Using conventional testing techniques, it can be challenging - sometimes impossible - to detect harmful contaminants such as nano-plastics, air...

When electrons slowly vanish during cooling

Jul 31, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Many substances change their properties when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Such a phase transition occurs, for example, when water freezes. However, in certain metals there are phase transitions that do not exist in the macrocosm. They arise because of the special...