Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

Digitization results in a high energy consumption. In industrialized countries, information technology presently has a share of more than 10% in total power consumption. The transistor is the central element of digital data processing in computing centers, PCs, smartphones, or in embedded systems for many applications from the washing machine to the airplane. A commercially available low-cost USB memory stick already contains several billion transistors. In the future, the single-atom transistor developed by Professor Thomas Schimmel and his team at the Institute of Applied Physics (APH) of KIT might considerably enhance energy efficiency in information technology. “This quantum electronics element enables switching energies smaller than those of conventional silicon technologies by a factor of 10,000,” says physicist and nanotechnology expert Schimmel, who conducts research at the APH, the Institute of Nanotechnology (INT), and the Material Research Center for Energy Systems (MZE) of KIT. Earlier this year, Professor Schimmel, who is considered the pioneer of single-atom electronics, was appointed Co-Director of the Center for Single-Atom Electronics and Photonics established jointly by KIT and ETH Zurich.

In Advanced Materials, the KIT researchers present the transistor that reaches the limits of miniaturization. The scientists produced two minute metallic contacts. Between them, there is a gap as wide as a single metal atom. “By an electric control pulse, we position a single silver atom into this gap and close the circuit,” Professor Thomas Schimmel explains. “When the silver atom is removed again, the circuit is interrupted.” The world’s smallest transistor switches current through the controlled reversible movement of a single atom. Contrary to conventional quantum electronics components, the single-atom transistor does not only work at extremely low temperatures near absolute zero, i.e.-273°C, but already at room temperature. This is a big advantage for future applications.

Continue reading “Smallest transistor worldwide switches current with a single atom in solid electrolyte” »

An international team of researchers has used a unique tool inserted into an electron microscope to create a transistor that’s 25,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The research, published in the journal Science, involves researchers from Japan, China, Russia, and Australia who have worked on the project that began five years ago.

QUT Center for Materials Science co-director Professor Dmitri Golberg, who led the research project, said the result was a “very interesting fundamental discovery” which could lead a way for the future development of tiny transistors for future generations of advanced computing devices.

Researchers at Aalto University have shown that a nanoparticle suspension can serve as a simple model for studying the formation of patterns and structures in more complicated non-equilibrium systems, such as living cells. The new system will not only be a valuable tool for studying patterning processes but also has a wide range of potential technological applications.

The mixture consists of an oily liquid carrying nanoparticles of iron oxide, which become magnetized in a magnetic field. Under the right conditions, applying a voltage across this ferrofluid causes the nanoparticles to migrate, forming a concentration gradient in the mixture. For this to work, the ferrofluid has to also include docusate, a waxy chemical that can carry charge through the fluid.

The researchers discovered that the presence of docusate and a voltage across the ferrofluid resulted in a separation of electric charges, with the iron oxide nanoparticles becoming negatively charged. “We didn’t expect that at all,” says Carlo Rigoni, a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto. “We still don’t know why it happens. In fact, we don’t even know whether the charges already get split when the docusate is added or if it happens as soon as voltage is turned on.”

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the devastating impact of acute lung inflammation (ALI), which is part of the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) that is the dominant cause of death in COVID-19. A potential new route to the diagnosis and treatment of ARDS comes from studying how neutrophils—the white blood cells responsible for detecting and eliminating harmful particles in the body—differentiate what materials to uptake by the material’s surface structure, and favor uptake of particles that exhibit “protein clumping,” according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Researchers investigated how neutrophils are able to differentiate between bacteria to be destroyed and other compounds in the bloodstream, such as cholesterol particles. They tested a library consisting of 23 different protein-based nanoparticles in mice with ALI which revealed a set of “rules” that predict uptake by neutrophils. Neutrophils don’t take up symmetrical, rigid particles, such as viruses, but they do take up particles that exhibited “protein clumping,” which the researchers call nanoparticles with agglutinated protein (NAPs).

“We want to utilize the existing function of neutrophils that identifies and eliminates invaders to inform how to design a ‘Trojan horse’ nanoparticle that overactive neutrophils will intake and deliver treatment to alleviate ALI and ARDS,” said study lead author Jacob Myerson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics. “In order to build this ‘Trojan horse’ delivery system, though, we had to determine how neutrophils identify which particles in the blood to take up.”

Today, magnets have many applications being used for energy generation, data storage, and computing. But magnetic computing devices in two-dimensional systems are quickly approaching their shrinking limit.

That’s why, we have witnessed a growing trend in moving to three dimensions, where higher densities can be achieved and three-dimensional geometries can offer new functionalities.

Now, an international team led by Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory has used an advanced 3D printing method they developed to create magnetic double helices that produce nanoscale topological textures in the magnetic field, opening the door to the next generation magnetic devices.

The U.S. Army is expected to announce that it has developed a vaccine that protects against omicron and other COVID-19 variants. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) has been developing a Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle (SpFN) since early 2020, and began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in early April. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of WRAIR’s infections disease branch, said that the early-stage trials ended this month, and yielded positive results that are currently under review.

-a slight correction, but still promising.

Correction: This headline and story have been corrected to reflect that the COVID-19 vaccine the Army is developing has not been tested against omicron.

Continue reading “Army to announce vaccine that protects against an array of COVID-19 variants” »

4D printing works the same as 3D printing, the only difference is that the printing material allows the object to change shape based on environmental factors.

In this case, the bots’ hydrogel material allows them to morph into different shapes when they encounter a change in pH levels — and cancer cells, as it happens, are usually more acidic than normal cells.

The microrobots were then placed in an iron oxide solution, to give them a magnetic charge.

Continue reading “Microbots in your blood could help destroy cancer” »

An international team of researchers have used a unique tool inserted into an electron microscope to create a transistor that’s 25,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The research, published in the journal Science, involves researchers from Japan, China, Russia and Australia who have worked on the project that began five years ago.

QUT Center for Materials Science co-director Professor Dmitri Golberg, who led the research project, said the result was a “very interesting fundamental discovery” which could lead a way for the future development of tiny transistors for future generations of advanced computing devices.

A new vaccine for COVID-19, using a multi-faced nanoparticle, could offer protection against many different strains of the virus simultaneously.

The news has been filled with doom and gloom lately, as the latest variant of COVID-19, called Omicron, becomes dominant in many countries. This follows the previous Delta variant, which followed earlier strains such as Alpha, which derived from the original “wildtype” virus. As 2021 draws to a close and the world prepares for yet another year of the pandemic, many people are understandably anxious and weary.

There is reason for optimism, however. Scientists are now talking about a pan-coronavirus vaccine development strategy, to offer protection from all current and even future variants of COVID-19. Last week, the U.S. National Institute of Health published a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine calling for such an approach, as a way of breaking the cycle of new strains emerging.