Oct 28, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Increasing amounts of data require storage, often for long periods. Synthetic polymers are an alternative to conventional storage media because they maintain stored information while using less space and energy. However, data retrieval by mass spectrometry limits the length and thus the storage capacity of...
What if you eat nanoplastics?
Oct 28, 2024 (Nanowerk News) In a laboratory set-up simulating the human stomach and intestine, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have explored the fate of plastic nanoparticles during gastrointestinal digestion. In a paper in Chemosphere ("What if you eat nanoplastics? Simulating nanoplastics fate during gastrointestinal digestion"), they report how...
Nanoscale layer boosts signal strength in fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy
Oct 28, 2024 (Nanowerk News) While we might picture a biologist as a researcher hunched over a light microscope, carefully scrutinizing a single bacterium, modern scientists have more powerful instruments at their disposal to investigate, at much smaller scales, the internal structures of living cells. Fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy have...
A single thin film perfectly absorbs all electromagnetic waves
Oct 28, 2024 (Nanowerk News) The research team of Dr. Byeongjin Park and Dr. Sang Bok Lee from the Composites & Convergence Materials Research Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), has developed the world's first ultra-thin film composite material capable of absorbing over 99% of electromagnetic waves...
Unlocking a ‘new synthetic frontier’ for quantum dots
Oct 26, 2024 (Nanowerk News) The type of semiconductive nanocrystals known as quantum dots are both expanding the forefront of pure science and also hard at work in practical applications including lasers, QLED televisions and displays, solar cells, medical devices, and other electronics. A new technique for growing these microscopic...
Light makes special materials move at ultrafast speeds
Oct 26, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Ferroelectric materials are unusual because they have an electrically positive side and an electrically negative side, and these sides can be switched with an electric field. Relaxor ferroelectrics are special ferroelectric materials with greatly enhanced electrical and mechanical properties. These properties originate from the materials’...
Self-assembling nanoscale drug system shows promise for large tumor treatment
Oct 25, 2024 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Most cancer patients are diagnosed after tumors have already grown large or spread, posing major challenges for treatment. Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, often struggle to completely eliminate larger tumors, and side effects can significantly impact patients. As researchers search for safer,...
A new spectroscopy reveals water’s quantum secrets
Oct 25, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Water is synonymous with life, but the dynamic, multifaceted interaction that brings H2O molecules together – the hydrogen bond – remains mysterious. Hydrogen bonds result when hydrogen and oxygen atoms between water molecules interact, sharing electronic charge in the process. This charge-sharing is a key...
Scientists discover molecules that store much of the carbon in space
Oct 25, 2024 (Nanowerk News) A team led by researchers at MIT has discovered that a distant interstellar cloud contains an abundance of pyrene, a type of large, carbon-containing molecule known as a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). The discovery of pyrene in this far-off cloud, which is similar to the...
Novel memristor device boosts neuromorphic computing
Oct 24, 2024 (Nanowerk News) A novel device consisting of metal, dielectric, and metal layers remembers the history of electrical signals sent through it. This device, called a memristor, could serve as the basis for neuromorphic computers—computers that work in ways similar to human brains. Unlike traditional digital memory, which...