(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Oregon State University researchers have discovered a way to get anti-inflammatory medicine across the blood-brain barrier, opening the door to potential new therapies for a range of conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and cancer cachexia. (The blood-brain barrier is a protective shield separating the brain from the bloodstream; it is made up of tightly packed cells lining the blood vessels in the brain and controls what substances can move from the blood to the brain.) The delivery method involves specially engineered nanoparticles. Tested in a mouse model, the nanoparticles reached their intended destination, the hypothalamus, and delivered a drug that inhibits a key protein associated with inflammation.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy)
Modern electron microscopes can capture incredibly detailed images of materials down to the atomic level, but they require a skilled operator and can only focus on very small areas at a time. Now, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have created a n automated workflow that overcomes these limitations by allowing large amounts of data to be collected over wide areas without human intervention and then quickly transferred to supercomputers for real-time processing. Much of the work was done at The Molecular Foundry and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, two DOE Office of Science user facilities at Berkeley Lab.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Polymer-coated nanoparticles loaded with therapeutic drugs show significant promise for cancer treatment. Over the past decade, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a variety of these nanoparticles using a technique called layer-by-layer assembly. To help move these nanoparticles closer to human use, the researchers have now come up with a manufacturing technique that allows them to generate larger quantities of the nanoparticles in a fraction of the time. The researchers have filed for a patent on the technology and are now working with MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation in hopes of potentially forming a company to commercialize the technology.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California, San Diego, have developed new technology that could lead to the creation of a rapid point-of-care test for HIV infection. The technology uses a nanomechanical platform and tiny cantilevers to detect multiple HIV antigens at high sensitivity in a matter of minutes. Built into a solar-powered device, this technology could be taken to hard-to-reach parts of the world, where early detection remains a challenge to deliver fast interventions to vulnerable populations without waiting for lab results.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy)
When materials are created on a nanometer scale, even the thermal energy present at room temperature can cause structural ripples. How these ripples affect the mechanical properties of these thin materials can limit their use in electronics and other key systems. Now, using a semiconductor manufacturing process, researchers from Binghamton University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Penn State, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have created alumina structures that are 28 nanometers thick on a silicon wafer with thermal-like static ripples, and then tested these ripples with lasers to measure their behavior. The results match with theories proposed about such structural ripples.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy)
An international team led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers has merged two lab-synthesized two-dimensional materials into a synthetic quantum structure once thought impossible to exist and produced an exotic structure expected to provide insights that could lead to new materials at the core of quantum computing. One slice of the quantum structure is made of dysprosium titanate, an inorganic compound used in nuclear reactors, while the other is composed of pyrochlore iridate, a new magnetic semimetal. The specific electronic and magnetic properties of the material developed by the researchers can help in creating very unusual yet stable quantum states, which are essential for quantum computing.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense)
Engineers at Harvard University have created a bilayer metasurface made of two stacked layers of titanium dioxide nanostructures. Almost a decade ago, the engineers had unveiled the world’s first visible-spectrum metasurfaces – ultra-thin, flat devices patterned with nanostructures that could precisely control the behavior of light and enable applications in imaging systems, augmented reality, and communications. But the single-layer nanostructure design has been in some ways limiting. For example, previous metasurfaces put specific requirements on the manipulation of light’s polarization in order to control the light’s behavior. Using the facilities of the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard, the engineers came up with a fabrication process for freestanding, sturdy structures of two metasurfaces that hold strongly together but do not affect each other chemically.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense)
Rice University researchers have developed an innovative solution to a pressing environmental challenge: removing and destroying per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly called “forever chemicals.” By combining granular activated carbon saturated with PFAS and mineralizing agents like sodium or calcium salts, the researchers applied a high voltage to generate temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees Celsius in under one second. The intense heat breaks down the strong carbon-fluorine bonds in PFAS, converting them into inert, nontoxic fluoride salts. Simultaneously, the granular activated carbon is upcycled into graphene, a valuable material used in industries ranging from electronics to construction.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
The shape of nanoparticles depends on the choice of solvent and temperature during their growth. But the tiny seed particles that form first and that guide the formation of final nanoparticle shapes are too small to measure accurately. With the help of a supercomputer, Penn State researchers have developed computer simulations to model seed particles with 100 to 200 atoms. They found that the shapes of the tiny particles depend on the solvent composition and temperature in unexpected ways. Surprisingly, in some cases the shape of the seed particle changes dramatically when only a single atom is added or removed.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology)
The fractional quantum Hall effect arises when electrons in two-dimensional materials are subject to a strong perpendicular magnetic field at very low temperatures. Researchers from George Mason University, Brown University, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have shown that fractional quantum Hall states could be better detected using thermopower measurements than with conventional electrical resistivity. (Thermopower is an electrical voltage generated when charge carriers move from the hot side to the cold side of a conducting or semiconducting material.) The researchers performed thermopower measurements on bilayer graphene and observed new fractional quantum Hall states, which had not been previously reported.