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

Scientists at Rice University are using machine-learning techniques to streamline the process of synthesizing graphene from waste through flash Joule, which consists of blasting a jolt of high energy through the source material to eliminate all but graphene. The researchers used these techniques to improve graphene crystallization from four starting materials ­­– carbon black, plastic pyrolysis ash, pyrolyzed rubber tires and coke ­­– over 173 trials, using Raman spectroscopy to characterize the starting materials and graphene products.

Using a novel polymerization process, chemical engineers at MIT have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets. Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges.

Researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Washington, Seattle, have developed a novel method for detecting viruses. The technique is a clever twist on conventional high-accuracy tests relying on complex testing protocols and expensive readout systems. It involves in-solution nanosensors that detect disease antigens in a sample by simple mixing.

Researchers at MIT have used ultrathin materials to build superconducting qubits that are at least one-hundredth the size of conventional designs and suffer from less interference between neighboring qubits. This advance could improve the performance of quantum computers and enable the development of smaller quantum devices.

A team of researchers at Penn State has developed a novel and better approach to detect non-uniformities in the optical properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, which could potentially open the door to new uses for these materials, such as drug detection. The researchers conducted experiments using a heterostructure material made of graphene and the inorganic compound molybdenum disulfide. Molybdenum disulfide gives a photoluminescence signal that detects the amount of charge transfer between the graphene and the molybdenum disulfide layers, and therefore can detect changes due to an analyte, such as a cancer drug, that can affect the charge.

Researchers at Caltech have created a nano-architected material that exhibits a property that, until now, was only theoretically possible: It can refract light backward, regardless of the angle at which light strikes the material. This property is known as negative refraction, meaning that the refractive index is negative across a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum at all angles. The new material achieves its unusual property through a combination of organization at the nano- and microscale and the addition of a coating of a thin germanium film. The current work is a step toward demonstrating optical properties that would be required to enable 3D photonic circuits.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed and tested an atomically thin graphene coating for photocathodes – materials that can convert photons to free electrons, which are used to create electron beams. Photocathodes need to have a protective coating because the chemical reaction from photons striking the photocathodes to emit electrons also produces a corrosive gas that can quickly degrade the photocathodes. Graphene possesses high gas impermeability, yet electrons can still pass through it.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have demonstrated that a novel combination of two drugs that act as targeted inhibitors, delivered in a nanoparticle formulation, extend the survival of mice with medulloblastoma – an aggressive brain tumor that can spread to other parts of the brain as well as the spinal cord.  The researchers showed that the combination of palbocicbib and sapanisertib, delivered in nanoparticles, was more effective than either drug alone, as well as being more effective than combinations of other drugs with palbociclib.

Zeolites are crystalline porous materials widely used in the production of chemicals and fuels. So far, zeolites have been made as 3D or 2D materials, but researchers at Georgia Tech, Penn State, and Stockholm University have now discovered crystalline zeolites in a nanotubular (1D) shape. This 1D material, termed a zeolitic nanotube, is unlike any zeolite ever synthesized or discovered in nature previously.