Press Releases: Research Funded by Agencies Participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative

The following press releases describe the results of research activities that are funded by Federal agencies that participate in the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
  • Stanford Chemists Develop ‘Infrared Vision’ for Cancer Immunotherapy
    October 03, 2019
    (Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

    Researchers at Stanford University have developed nanoparticles that can be used to light up and image tumors located well below the surface of the skin. The nanoparticles should be useful for not only diagnosing and monitoring tumor progression but also for predicting how individual patients will respond to a given immunotherapy.

  • Printed Electronics Open Way for Electrified Tattoos and Personalized Biosensors
    October 03, 2019
    (Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health)

    Electrical engineers at Duke University have devised a fully print-in-place technique for electronics that uses carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires and is gentle enough to work on delicate surfaces, including paper and human skin. The advance could enable high-adhesion, embedded electronic tattoos and bandages tricked out with patient-specific biosensors.

  • Inventing the world’s strongest silver
    October 03, 2019
    (Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy)

    A team of scientists from the University of Vermont, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the Ames Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles, has made the strongest silver ever — 42 percent stronger than the previous world record. It's part of a discovery of a new mechanism at the nanoscale that can create metals stronger than any ever made before — while not losing electrical conductivity.

  • Product authentication at your fingertips
    October 02, 2019
    (Funded by the National Science Foundation)

    Chemists at the University of California, Riverside, have fabricated, for the first time, plasmonic color-switchable films of silver nanoparticles. Until now, such color change of nanoparticles was mainly achieved in liquids, limiting their potential for practical applications, which include product authentication, color displays, signage, sensors, and information encryption.

  • Finding the ‘magic angle’ to create a new superconductor
    October 02, 2019
    (Funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Army Research Office)

    Earlier this year, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published research that showed that graphene could become a superconductor if one piece of graphene were laid on top of another piece and the layers twisted to a specific angle—what they termed "the magic angle." That magic angle, scientists thought, was between 1 degree and 1.2 degrees. Now scientists at The Ohio State University, in collaboration with scientists around the world, have found that graphene layers still superconducted at a smaller angle, around 0.9 degrees.

  • Nanoparticles Inside Samples of Mucus to Measure COPD Development
    October 01, 2019
    (Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

    Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have used nanoparticles to test the mucus of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The researchers hope that their approach will allow for early detection of COPD progression and will therefore help clinicians to deliver therapies in a more timely manner.

  • Controlling 2-D magnetism with stacking order
    October 01, 2019
    (Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation)

    Researchers at MIT and collaborators have demonstrated that they can alter the magnetic properties of chromium trichloride – an ultra-thin material that features a honeycomb-shaped atomic structure — by shifting the stacking order of layers. The researchers peeled away two-dimensional (2-D) layers of chromium trichloride using and found that the magnetism is different in 2-D and 3-D crystals, due to different stacking arrangements between atoms in adjacent layers.

  • Delivery system can make RNA vaccines more powerful
    October 01, 2019
    (Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

    Chemical engineers at MIT have developed a new series of lipid nanoparticles to deliver RNA vaccines and have shown that the particles trigger efficient production of the protein encoded by the RNA. Also, the engineers used this RNA vaccine to successfully inhibit the growth of melanoma tumors in mice.

  • Borophene on silver grows freely into an atomic ‘skin’
    October 01, 2019
    (Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation)

    Researchers at Rice and Northwestern universities, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Argonne National Laboratory have discovered that they can grow elongated hexagon-shaped flakes of borophene – the atom-thick allotrope of boron – by using a substrate made of silver. This discovery will help streamline the manufacture of borophene, which shows potential for use in wearable and transparent electronics, plasmonic sensor, and energy storage.

  • Nanotherapy Improves Chemotherapy Delivery
    September 27, 2019
    (Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

    Michigan State University scientists have invented a new way to monitor chemotherapy concentrations. Too high a dose can result in killing healthy tissue and cells, triggering more side effects; too low a dose may stun, rather than kill, cancer cells, allowing them to come back. The new process is based around magnetic particle imaging that uses superparamagnetic nanoparticles as the contrast agent and the sole signal source to monitor drug release in the body at the site of the tumor.

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