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

Date Published
(Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)

Researchers with the Kansas City Veterans Affairs Medical Center and North Dakota State University have designed a new way to deliver pancreatic cancer drugs that could make fighting the disease easier. They designed a nanoparticle delivery system that stops the drugs from breaking down and releases them specifically to cancer cells in the pancreas and not to other areas of the body.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)

Researchers with the Kansas City Veterans Affairs Medical Center and North Dakota State University have designed a new way to deliver pancreatic cancer drugs that could make fighting the disease easier. They designed a nanoparticle delivery system that stops the drugs from breaking down and releases them specifically to cancer cells in the pancreas and not to other areas of the body.

(Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense)

For more than 15 years, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and their collaborators in the United States, Australia, South Korea, and China have made artificial muscles by twisting and coiling carbon nanotube or polymer yarns. When thermally powered, these muscles actuate by contracting their length when heated and returning to their initial length when cooled. Such thermally driven artificial muscles, however, have limitations. The researchers have now created powerful, unipolar electrochemical yarn muscles that contract more when driven faster, thereby solving important problems that have limited the applications for these muscles.

(Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense)

For more than 15 years, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and their collaborators in the United States, Australia, South Korea, and China have made artificial muscles by twisting and coiling carbon nanotube or polymer yarns. When thermally powered, these muscles actuate by contracting their length when heated and returning to their initial length when cooled. Such thermally driven artificial muscles, however, have limitations. The researchers have now created powerful, unipolar electrochemical yarn muscles that contract more when driven faster, thereby solving important problems that have limited the applications for these muscles.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Harvard University have developed a two-millimeter achromatic metalens that can focus red, blue, and green colors without aberrations. Like previous metalenses, this lens uses arrays of titanium dioxide nanofins to focus wavelengths of light and eliminate chromatic aberration. In a virtual or augmented reality platform, the metalens would sit directly in front of the eye, and the display would sit within the focal plane of the metalens.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Harvard University have developed a two-millimeter achromatic metalens that can focus red, blue, and green colors without aberrations. Like previous metalenses, this lens uses arrays of titanium dioxide nanofins to focus wavelengths of light and eliminate chromatic aberration. In a virtual or augmented reality platform, the metalens would sit directly in front of the eye, and the display would sit within the focal plane of the metalens.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation)

Bulk hexagonal boron nitride is cheap and easy to obtain, but exfoliating it into atomically thin nanosheets has been a challenge. Now, chemists at Rice University have found a way to get the maximum amount of quality 2D hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets (from its natural bulk form) by processing it with surfactant and water. The surfactant surrounds and stabilizes the nanosheets, preserving their properties.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation)

Bulk hexagonal boron nitride is cheap and easy to obtain, but exfoliating it into atomically thin nanosheets has been a challenge. Now, chemists at Rice University have found a way to get the maximum amount of quality 2D hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets (from its natural bulk form) by processing it with surfactant and water. The surfactant surrounds and stabilizes the nanosheets, preserving their properties.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense)

Kombucha tea, a trendy fermented beverage, has inspired engineers at the U.S. Army's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT and Imperial College London to develop a new way to generate tough, functional materials with a mixture of bacteria and yeast similar to the kombucha mother used to ferment tea. These functional materials, which consist of a dense network of ribbon-like cellulose fibrils, each about 50 nanometers wide and up to 9 micrometers in length, can perform a variety of functions, such as sensing environmental pollutants, purifying water for soldiers in the field, and making smart packaging materials that can detect damage.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense)

Kombucha tea, a trendy fermented beverage, has inspired engineers at the U.S. Army's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT and Imperial College London to develop a new way to generate tough, functional materials with a mixture of bacteria and yeast similar to the kombucha mother used to ferment tea. These functional materials, which consist of a dense network of ribbon-like cellulose fibrils, each about 50 nanometers wide and up to 9 micrometers in length, can perform a variety of functions, such as sensing environmental pollutants, purifying water for soldiers in the field, and making smart packaging materials that can detect damage.