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

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and North Carolina State University have discovered, for the first time, a unique property in complex nanostructures that has, so far, only been found in simple nanostructures. The property, called anelasticity, relates to how materials react to stresses over time. When the complex nanostructures were bent, tiny defects moved slowly in response to the stress gradient. When the stress was released, the tiny defects slowly returned to their initial positions, resulting in the anelastic behavior.

Researchers from Cornell University and Yale University have demonstrated that nanomolding, a fabrication process in which a bulk polycrystalline feedstock is pressed into a nanostructured mold at an elevated temperature to form nanowires, offers several advantages over existing synthesis methods for nanomaterials. Nanomolding had previously been used for metallic material systems, but this research group is one of the first to expand its application to topological materials, which have different properties at their surfaces and edges than in their interiors.

Researchers at Duke University have developed a unique type of nanoparticle, called a nanorattle, that greatly enhances light emitted from within its outer shell. Loaded with light-scattering dyes that are commonly used to detect biomarkers of disease in organic samples, the approach can amplify and detect signals from separate types of nanoprobes without needing an expensive machine or medical professional to read the results. In a small proof-of-concept study, the nanorattles accurately identified head and neck cancers through an artificial intelligence-enabled point-of-care device.

Researchers from Rice University and Johns Hopkins University have found a way to manipulate light at the nanoscale that breaks the Moss rule, which describes a trade-off between a material's optical absorption and how it refracts light. In particular, the researchers found that iron pyrite works particularly well as a nanophotonic material and could lead to better and thinner displays for wearable devices.

Researchers from Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University have developed a promising, first-of-its-kind messenger RNA (mRNA) therapy for ovarian cancer as well as cachexia, a muscle-wasting condition associated with cancer and other chronic illnesses. The new therapy is based on lipid nanoparticles, which can deliver mRNA that triggers the production of follistatin, a protein that works against another protein, activin A, whose elevated numbers are linked with aggressive ovarian cancer and cachexia.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a technology that delivers a combination therapy to #pancreatic #tumors using #nanoscale particles loaded with irinotecan, a #chemotherapy drug approved as part of a drug regimen for #PancreaticCancer, and an investigational drug that can boost #immune activity and help overcome tumors' resistance. The research team showed that the combination therapy outperformed the sum of its parts in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.

Scientists from Harvard University, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Northwestern University have developed a new approach to transporting gases in aqueous environments using porous liquids. Until now, all porous liquids have consisted of microporous nanocrystals or organic cage molecules dispersed in organic solvents or ionic liquids that are too large to diffuse through the pore entrances. This time, the researchers proposed that microporous nanocrystals with hydrophobic internal surfaces and hydrophilic external surfaces could be designed to leave the microporous framework permanently dry in water and available to absorb gas molecules. 

The natural world has its own intrinsic electrical grid composed of a global web of tiny bacteria-generated nanowires in the soil and oceans that "breathe" by exhaling excess electrons. In a new study, Yale University researchers have discovered that exposing bacteria-produced nanowires to light yielded an up to 100-fold increase in electrical conductivity. 

Johns Hopkins University researchers have engineered a way to ensure that nanotubes are safe from the tiniest of leaks. Leak-free piping made with nanotubes that self-assemble, self-repair, and can connect themselves to different biostructures is a significant step toward creating a nanotube network that one day might deliver specialized drugs, proteins, and molecules to targeted cells in the human body.

A research team led by a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has demonstrated a new magnetized state in a monolayer of tungsten ditelluride. Called a magnetized or ferromagnetic quantum spin Hall insulator, this material of one-atom thickness has an insulating interior but a conducting edge, which has important implications for controlling electron flow in nanodevices. Because devices using this material would consume less power and dissipate less energy, they could be made more energy efficient. Batteries using this technology, for example, would last longer.