Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify new materials impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

Now, researchers at Northwestern University and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have successfully applied machine learning to guide the synthesis of new nanomaterials, eliminating barriers associated with materials discovery. The highly trained algorithm combed through a defined dataset to accurately predict new structures that could fuel processes in clean energy, chemical and automotive industries.

AI machine learning presents a roadmap to define new materials for any need, with implications in green energy and waste reduction.

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify new materials impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

Researchers identify a crucial mediator of youthfulness for mouse muscle in membranous nanoparticles circulating the bloodstream, a discovery that could advance muscle regeneration therapies for older people.

Scientists have used state-of-the-art 3D printing and microscopy to provide a new glimpse of what happens when taking magnets to three-dimensions on the nanoscale—1000 times smaller than a human hair.

The international team led by Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory used an advanced 3D printing technique they developed to create magnetic double helices—like the double helix of DNA—which twist around one another, combining curvature, chirality, and strong magnetic field interactions between the helices. Doing so, the scientists discovered that these magnetic double helices produce nanoscale topological textures in the magnetic field, something that had never been seen before, opening the door to the next generation of magnetic devices. The results are published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Magnetic devices impact many different parts of our societies, magnets are used for the generation of energy, for data storage and computing. But magnetic computing devices are fast approaching their shrinking limit in two-dimensional systems. For the next generation of computing, there is growing interest in moving to three dimensions, where not only can higher densities be achieved with 3D nanowire architectures, but three-dimensional geometries can change the magnetic properties and offer new functionalities.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developed a new 3D printing technique capable of producing nanoscale metal parts.

Based on an electrochemical approach, the process can be used to fabricate copper objects as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. For reference, an average human hair is around 3000x thicker at 75 microns.

According to the research team led by Dr Dmitry Momotenko, the new 3D printing technique has potential applications in microelectronics, sensor technology, and battery technology.

Honda Research Institute USA (HRI-US) is doing some pretty interesting things in the field of quantum electronics. Scientists from HRI-US were able to successfully synthesize atomically thin nanoribbons. HRI noted that these are materials with atomic-scale thickness and a ribbon shape. These nanoribbons have broad implications for the future of quantum electronics, which is an area of physics that focuses on the effects of quantum mechanics on the behavior of electrons in matter.

According to the press release, “HRI-US’s synthesis of an ultra-narrow two-dimensional material built of a single or double layer of atoms demonstrated the ability to control the width of these two-dimensional materials to sub-10 nanometer (10^-9 meter) that results in quantum transport behavior at much higher temperatures compared to those grown using current methods.”

The scientists along with collaborations from both Columbia University and Rice University as well as Oak Ridge National Laboratory co-authored a new paper on this topic and published it in Science Advances.

Experimental realization of cluster crystals-periodic structures with lattice sites occupied by several, overlapping building blocks, has been elusive. Here, the authors show the existence of well-controlled soft matter cluster crystals composed of a thermosensitive water-soluble polymer and nanometer-scale all-DNA dendrons.

Amprius Technologies announced that its lithium-ion battery cells with silicon anode (Si-Nanowire platform) achieved a breakthrough fast charging capability of 0–80% state-of-charge (SOC) in just 6 minutes (10C current).

The capability of extreme fast charging has been validated and confirmed by Mobile Power Solutions for three 2.75 Ah sample pouch cells (see report here). It actually took less than 6 minutes to achieve 80% SOC.

0–70% charging takes less than 5 minutes, and 0–90% is usually above 8 minutes. Then, the charging rate is much slower, so 100% is achieved after 25–27 minutes (90–100% takes 17–19 minutes).

Researchers in China have developed a new three-pronged method to fight liver cancer that shows promise in tests in mice. The technique combines drugs and CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing into lipid nanoparticles, then activates them with ultrasound.

One emerging treatment against cancer is known as sonodynamic therapy (SDT), which involves delivering drugs to the tumor and then activating them with ultrasound pulses. That produces reactive oxygen species (ROS) that can induce oxidative stress on the cancer cells to kill them. Unfortunately, cancer can counter this attack with antioxidant enzymes, reducing the method’s efficiency.

So for the new study, the researchers investigated a way to remove that defense system. The team suspected that they could use CRISPR to switch off a gene called NFE2L2, which cancer cells use to set off their antioxidant defenses. The team packaged both the CRISPR machinery and the ROS-producing drugs into lipid nanoparticles, which could be activated with ultrasound pulses.