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

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have stabilized perovskite nanocrystals to make more efficient and longer-lived light-emitting diodes (LEDs), with applications in consumer electronics, medicine, and security. The researchers fabricated the perovskite crystals within the matrix of a metal-organic framework (MOF), which keeps the nanocrystals separated, so they don’t interact and degrade. The MOF-stabilized LEDs can be fabricated to create bright red, blue, and green light, along with varying shades of each color.

A team of U.S. and Polish scientists used the Stokes-Einstein relationship to describe diffusive behavior of polymer-coated inorganic nanoparticles in biological fluids that are typically present in human joints. Understanding the diffusion of nanoparticles in biological fluids, such as synovial fluid and hyaluronic acids, is key to designing nanoparticles for biomedical applications.

Researchers at the University of Houston have developed an electrochemical device or actuator that transforms electrical energy to mechanical motion using specialized organic semiconductor nanotubes (OSNTs). These OSNTs displayed low power consumption, a large deformation, fast response, and actuation stability. Breakthroughs in OSNT-based electrochemical devices will help to usher in the next generation of soft robotics, artificial muscles, bioelectronics, and biomedical devices.

Scientists at Purdue University have substantially improved the sensitivity of spin defects in 2D materials such as hexagonal boron nitride. The researchers used a gold film to increase the brightness of spin qubits by up to 17-fold and improve the contrast of the magnetic resonance signal by a factor of 10. This discovery could amplify the field of ultrathin quantum sensing.

Engineers at the University of Notre Dame have developed a prototype of an electronic nose using nanoengineered materials to tune the sensitivity and selectivity to mimic the performance and capabilities of a human nose. By manipulating the size and shape of the nanoengineered materials, the engineers can make more precise sensors that function more efficiently and economically.

Researchers from the University of Central Florida have developed a nanoparticle-based disinfectant that can continuously kill viruses on a surface for up to seven days. The active ingredient of the nanoparticle-engineered disinfectant is an engineered nanostructure called cerium oxide, which is known for its regenerative antioxidant properties. The cerium oxide nanoparticles are modified with small amounts of silver to make them more potent against pathogens.

In a review article, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory assess the status of research into colloidal quantum dot lasers with a focus on prospective electrically pumped devices, or laser diodes. The review analyzes the challenges for realizing lasing with electrical excitation, discusses approaches to overcome them, and surveys recent advances toward this objective.

Scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at El Paso, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne have found that nanoparticles with certain ligands can attach to viruses. The scientists also designed nanosensors that are small, fast, and sensitive enough to detect microscopic amounts of neurotransmitters in the brain. The nanosensors consist of carbon nanotubes wrapped in DNA.

Almost all living things breathe oxygen to get rid of excess electrons when converting nutrients into energy. Without access to oxygen, however, soil bacteria living deep under oceans or buried underground over billions of years have developed a way to respire by "breathing minerals," like snorkeling, through tiny protein filaments called nanowires. Now, researchers at Yale University have discovered that a hair-like protein hidden inside these bacteria serves as a sort of on-off switch for a global web of bacteria-generated nanowires that permeates all oxygen-less soil and deep ocean beds.

Over the past few years, scientists have demonstrated how cage-like, porous nanostructures made of silicon and oxygen can trap noble gases such as argon, krypton, and xenon. But for these silica nanocages to be practically useful – for example, to improve the efficiency of nuclear energy production – they need to be scaled up from their lab versions. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Pennsylvania, and Universidad Nacional de San Luis in Argentina have taken a step forward in bringing this technology out of the lab and into the real world.