News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF))

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a drug-delivery system that allows rapid response to heart attacks without surgical intervention.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF))

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a drug-delivery system that allows rapid response to heart attacks without surgical intervention.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH))

Researchers have shown that a new, double-layered nanoparticle vaccine made with peptides effectively protects mice against influenza A virus, which might help in the development of universal flu vaccines.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH))

Researchers have shown that a new, double-layered nanoparticle vaccine made with peptides effectively protects mice against influenza A virus, which might help in the development of universal flu vaccines.

(Funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology)

DNA is the stuff of life, but it is also the stuff of nanotechnology.

(Funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology)

DNA is the stuff of life, but it is also the stuff of nanotechnology.

(Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy)

Materials scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have shuffled layered compounds together, much like combining two different decks of cards. The technique can generate thermally stable three-dimensional heterostructures from layered transition metal dichalcogenides. These are van der Waals materials composed of metal nanolayers sandwiched between two other layers of chalcogens—sulfur, selenium, or tellurium. Similar to graphite, these compounds can be exfoliated into 2D layers, which display unique electron transport properties and quantum phenomena.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health)

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Van Andel Institute have developed a platform for assembling nanosized material components, or "nano-objects," of very different types—inorganic or organic—into desired 3-D structures. Synthetic DNA frames were engineered in the shape of a cube, octahedron, and tetrahedron. Inside the frames are DNA "arms" that only nano-objects with the complementary DNA sequence can bind to. These material voxels—the integration of the DNA frame and nano-object—are the building blocks from which macroscale 3-D structures can be made.