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

Researchers from Florida State University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, have developed a new way to create blue light from metal halide perovskites, a class of materials that shows enormous potential for optoelectronic devices, including solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers. First, the researchers created nanoplatelets, which are nanomaterials with only a few unit cells in thickness, and then they coated them with a multifunctional organic sulfate, which caused the nanoplatelets to emit efficient and stable blue light.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are advancing and optimizing a technology that allows a clot-promoting enzyme to be intravenously delivered in a targeted manner to the site of internal injuries. The researchers made nanoparticles that carry the clot-promoting enzymes to the bleeding site and then release them at the site to make a specialized protein called fibrin – the body’s mesh-like substance critical to staunching the bleeding – where it is needed.

Imaging a specific protein inside a cell requires labeling it with a fluorescent tag carried by an antibody that binds to the protein. Antibodies are about 10 nanometers long, while typical proteins are usually about 2 to 5 nanometers in diameter, so if the proteins are too densely packed, the antibodies can't get to them. To overcome this limitation, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland have developed a way to make those "invisible" proteins visible. Their technique expands a cell or tissue sample before labeling the proteins, which makes the proteins more accessible to fluorescent tags.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, HRL Laboratories LLC, in Malibu, California, and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, have found a way to better control silicon quantum dot qubits. One common issue with silicon qubits is competition between different kinds of quantum states, and the states that most often compete with the ones needed for computing are “valley states.” The researchers found a way to control the valley states, even in the presence of defects.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab, the University of Central Florida, and Penn State have unveiled a new, fast, and readily reproducible way to map and identify defects in two-dimensional (2D) materials. It uses an application of artificial intelligence to quickly analyze data from autonomous experiments, which in recent years have become a powerful tool for imaging 2D materials.

The focused ion beam is an essential tool for cutting patterns as small as several billionths of a meter deep and wide in tiny industrial parts. But the focused ion beam has been limited by a trade-off between high speed and fine resolution. Now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have discovered that a masking process can virtually eliminate this trade-off, enabling a focused ion beam to machine at high current (and therefore high speed) without sacrificing fine resolution.

Using a suspended nanowire, researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Missouri have, for the first time, created a tiny sensor that can simultaneously measure electrical and mechanical cellular responses in cardiac tissue. With its size much smaller than a single cell, the nanowire can tightly patch onto a cell’s membrane and "listen to" cellular activities. Also, it can convert "heard" bioelectrical and biomechanical activities into electrical sensing signals for detection.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Korea University in Seoul have devised a transparent infrared reflective coating. Designed with a nano-mesh structure, the coating transmits sunlight and reflects body thermal radiation. This new coating could be used in clothes that keep people warm in winter and in counter-surveillance military applications – specifically, to provide camouflage under the scrutiny of thermal imaging cameras. 

Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington have created a platform that shows promise in speeding up the design of lipid nanoparticles, which can be used to carry messenger RNA to cells and generate immunity. But the potency of mRNA begins to decline within 24 hours of its delivery. So, the scientists designed lipid nanoparticles that carry a promising alternative, called plasmid DNA, which can last for up to seven days. The researchers are now leveraging these nanoparticles to develop a vaccine against malaria. 

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have shown that when materials with nanopores are submerged in a highly saline liquid, the pH inside the nanopores can be as much as 100 times more acidic than in the bulk solution. The researchers developed plasmonic nanoparticle sensors that reported how pH changed as they moved through the pores and their immediate environment. Each sensor consists of a gold nanoparticle paired with a molecule that is sensitive to pH.