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

A team of researchers from George Washington University has found that a type of membrane called an electrospun nanofiber membrane can capture up to 99.9% of coronavirus aerosols. The researchers also found that by adding a chemical dye called rose bengal to electrospun nanofiber membranes, more than 97% of coronavirus-laden droplets could be inactivated after 15 minutes of exposure under a regular desk lamp. According to the researchers, electrospun nanofibrous membranes that can capture and kill airborne environmental pathogens under ambient conditions hold promise for broad applications as personal protective equipment and indoor air filters.

TV Worldwide, a web-based global TV network, has released a retrospective video and video trailer on the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) entitled, “NNI Retrospective Video: Creating a National Initiative.” The retrospective video features short interviews with leaders and professionals involved in the NNI who discuss the creation and implementation of the NNI over the past two decades.

Researchers at Rice University have shown that sanding a surface increases its ability to shed water without getting wet and that grinding in a powder at the same time makes it superhydrophobic. The researchers applied the technique on a variety of surfaces – including polyethylene, polystyrene, and polyvinyl chloride – with a variety of powder additives, which included laser-induced graphene fibers, turbostratic flash graphene, and molybdenum disulfide. 

By applying a 19th-century color photography technique to modern holographic materials, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have printed large-scale images onto elastic materials that, when stretched, can change color. The scientists adhered elastic, transparent holographic film onto a reflective, mirror-like surface. Then, they placed an off-the-shelf projector several feet from the film and projected images onto each sample. They peeled the film away from the mirror, stuck it to a black elastic silicone backing for support, and stretched it. The researchers observed that when the film stretches and thins out, its nanoscale structures reconfigure to reflect slightly different wavelengths, for instance, changing from red to blue.

For the first time, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sorbonne University in Paris have been able to act physically on chromosomes in living cells. By subjecting the chromosomes to different forces, they discovered that chromosomes are almost liquid outside cell division phases. To reach this conclusion, the scientists attached magnetic nanoparticles to a small portion of a chromosome in a living cell. Then, they stretched the chromosome, thanks to a micro-magnet outside the cell.

Using single calcite crystals with varying surface roughness allows engineers to simplify the complex physics that describes fault movement. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown how this simplification may lead to better earthquake prediction. The researchers examined the nanoscale processes that may trigger fault movement and used microscopic observations to bridge the gap between the nanoscale and macroscale worlds.

For decades, scientists have struggled to develop inexpensive ways to use methane without also producing carbon dioxide, both of which are #GreenhouseGases. Among the possible solutions is dry reforming, a process that has the potential to convert both methane and carbon dioxide into chemical feedstocks. But dry reforming of methane isn't commercially viable using existing nickel-based catalysts, which stop functioning because their catalytically active particles become covered with carbon deposits (coking) or combine into larger, less active particles (sintering). Now, researchers from the University at Buffalo and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab have developed a one-step process to make nanoshell catalysts, which resist both coking and sintering. 

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), together with collaborators from JILA – a joint institute of the University of Colorado and NIST in Boulder – have, for the first time, demonstrated that they can trap single atoms using a novel miniaturized version of “optical tweezers” – a system that grabs atoms using a laser beam. In the new design, instead of typical lenses, the NIST team used unconventional optics – a square glass wafer about 4 millimeters in length imprinted with millions of pillars only a few hundreds of nanometers in height that, collectively, act as tiny lenses. 

A team of researchers from Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has created nanocrystals and nanofibers of chitin from waste shrimp shells. (Crab, shrimp and lobster shells are made up of about 20–30% chitin.) When these tiny bits of chitin were added to cement paste, the resulting material was up to 40% stronger. Also, set time for the cement, or how long it takes to harden, was delayed by more than an hour, a desired property for long-distance transport and hot-weather concrete work.

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M University, the University of California Los Angeles, Rice University, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials. High-entropy alloys are composed of five or more elements in near-equal proportions and offer the ability to create a near-infinite number of unique combinations for alloy design.