Basic science

Materials scientists at Rice University are shedding light on the intricate growth processes of 2D crystals, paving the way for controlled synthesis of these materials with unprecedented precision. The researchers have developed a custom-built miniaturized chemical vapor deposition system to observe and record the growth of 2D molybdenum disulfide crystals in real time.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new fabrication process for helical metal nanoparticles that provides a simpler, cheaper way to rapidly produce a material essential for biomedical and optical devices. "One of our motivators is to drastically simplify manufacturing of complex materials that represent bottlenecks in many current technologies," said Nicholas Kotov, one of the scientists involved in this study. 

Researchers from Northwestern University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, and the Technical University of Denmark have developed a novel method to host gas molecules as they are being analyzed in real time, using honeycomb structures found in nature as inspiration for an ultra-thin ceramic membrane used to encase the sample. The encapsulation strategy works within high-vacuum transmission electron microscopes to enhance imaging of solid nanostructures.

Researchers from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have grown a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure's key properties. The researchers added a layer of gold between two sheets of a traditional semiconducting material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). "With only a bottom MoS2 layer, the gold is happy to align with it, so no twist happens," said Yi Cui, one of the scientists involved in the study.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Columbia University, and Stony Brook University have developed a universal method for producing a wide variety of designed metallic and semiconductor 3D nanostructures. “[B]y building on previous achievements, we have developed a method for converting these DNA-based structures into many types of functional inorganic 3D nano-architectures, and this opens tremendous opportunities for 3D nanoscale manufacturing," said Oleg Gang, one of the scientists involved in this study.

Researchers from Yale University, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reported new findings on the behavior of metallic glass and how these materials deform or respond to external stresses at very small size scales. Their finding of the size limits (approximately 100 nanometers) at which metallic glass does not deform provides insights that could lead to new ways of creating metallic glasses and provide researchers with a novel method to slowly grow metastable materials. 

Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (including the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies) and the Army Research Laboratory have developed a new way to quickly test an array of metamaterial architectures and their resilience to supersonic impacts. Metamaterials are functional materials that contain unique microscale and nanoscale patterns or structures. The engineers suspended tiny, printed metamaterial lattices between microscopic support structures and then fired even tinier particles at the materials, at supersonic speeds.

Researchers from Northwestern University, the Technical University of Denmark, and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have addressed spatial resolution, electron scattering, and visibility limitations in closed-cell microchips based on silicon nitride. These closed-cell systems are widely used as “nanoscale reactors” inside high-vacuum electron microscopes.

A team of Rice University researchers has mapped out how flecks of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials move in liquid. The researchers used glowing soap to tag samples of hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets and make their motion visible. Videos of this motion allowed researchers to map out the trajectories of the samples and determine the relationship between their size and how they move. These findings could help scientists assemble macroscopic-scale materials with the same properties as their 2D counterparts. 

Purdue University researchers have merged the power of advanced surfaces with thermal imaging algorithms to create a device that could open new frontiers in machine vision and autonomous systems. The device, called a Spinning MetaCam, could help classify materials and provide new possibilities for technologies in security, thermography, medical imaging, and remote sensing. The Spinning MetaCam contains metasurfaces – structured electromagnetic nanoscale surfaces crafted to behave like aqueducts for water, filtering and channeling light.