National Nanotechnology Initiative

Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology# (MIT) have taken a key step toward solving the puzzle of what leads #electrons to split into fractions of themselves. The new work is an effort to make sense of a discovery that was reported earlier this year by other physicists at MIT, who found that electrons appear to exhibit "#FractionalCharge" in #pentalayer #graphene – a configuration of five graphene layers that are stacked atop a similarly structured sheet of #BoronNitride. Through calculations of #quantum mechanical interactions, the scientists showed that the electrons form a sort of #crystal structure, the properties of which are ideal for fractions of electrons to emerge. “This crystal has a whole set of unusual properties that are different from ordinary crystals, and leads to many fascinating questions for future research,” said Senthil Todadri, the scientist who led the new study. https://lnkd.in/gZZy3pDC (Work funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)) Long Ju

Researchers from New York University; the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory; and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have used a special #robotic system to assemble very large pieces of atomically clean #2Dmaterials into stacks. These materials, called #graphene #heterostructures, consist of sheets just a few atoms thick, have record-setting dimensions – as large as 7.5 square millimeters, which is very large in the world of #microelectronics. The robotic assembly tool helped the scientists discover a new interface cleaning mechanism that combines #mechanical and #thermal forces. Overall, this study opens a new opportunity to develop a more effective process to make large and clean layered heterostructure devices. https://lnkd.in/g8-NXHTi (Work funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)) Kevin Yager Davood Shahrjerdi

Cornell University researchers have made headway into understanding how twisted #bilayer #graphene becomes a #superconductor. In 2023, the scientists developed a theoretical formalism to compute the highest possible superconducting transition temperature in any material obtained by stacking and twisting #2Dmaterials. For the current work, the scientists applied this theoretical formalism to twisted bilayer graphene. “One of the remarkable properties of twisted bilayer graphene is the associated tunability,” said Debanjan Chowdhury, one of the scientists involved in this study. “You have unprecedented control over temperature and the twist angle – the tiny #electric fields that are applied to switch the material from being an #insulator versus a superconductor – making it very easy to explore all sorts of exciting regimes in this material.” https://lnkd.in/gYvRjNpv (Work funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)) Juan Felipe Méndez-Valderrama Dan Mao

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University, the University of Virginia, Cleveland Clinic, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center Inc., the Louis Stokes Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Cleveland, OH), and CVPath Institute, Inc. (Gaithersburg, MD) have identified a new target to treat #atherosclerosis, a condition where plaque clogs arteries and causes major cardiac issues, including #stroke and #HeartAttack. The researchers identified an #inflammation-reducing molecule, called #itaconate, and developed a new #lipid #nanoparticle-based treatment that allows itaconate to accumulate in plaque and #BoneMarrow, where it reduces inflammation. "We've found that itaconate is crucial to the diet's ability to stabilize plaques and reduce inflammation, which has been a mystery until now," said Andrei Maiseyeu, one of the scientists involved in this study. "This discovery marks a major leap forward in the understanding of how diet-induced plaque resolution occurs at a molecular level."? https://lnkd.in/e5MVZ7Ww (Work funded by The National Institutes of Health)

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and UMass Chan Medical School in Springfield, MA, have invented a new, sprayable delivery system for #psoriasis medication that can be applied easily and locally to psoriasis lesions. The delivery system makes use of #nanoparticles that contain psoriasis drugs, and these nanoparticles act like a trojan horse – the #immune cells do not recognize the nanoparticles as a threat, but the medication they carry disrupts the overactive immune response. The researchers designed and tested nanoparticles in different shapes: rods, ellipses and spheres and discovered that #nanorods inhibited 3.8 times more inflammation due to psoriasis than nanoellipses and 4.5 times more than nanospheres.? https://lnkd.in/e5yddjPk (Work funded by The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (NSF)) Ashish Kulkarni

Many messenger RNA (#mRNA) medicines contain tiny fatty spheres, known as #lipid #nanoparticles, that encode #proteins used by the body to treat or prevent a variety of illnesses. But most versions of lipid nanoparticles for the delivery of mRNA don't work for inhalable medications, because the nanoparticles clump together or increase in size when sprayed into the air. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown that a #polymer with repeating units of positively and negatively charged components – called a #zwitterionic polymer – can enable mRNA-containing lipid nanoparticles to withstand #nebulization (turning a liquid into a mist). https://lnkd.in/em8dEa_m (Work funded by The National Institutes of Health) Allen Jiang Sushil Lathwal

Researchers from Florida State University, the Shanghai Institute Of Microsystem And Information Technology, and Wuhan University have revealed how various physical manipulations of #graphene, such as layering and twisting, impact its #optical properties and #conductivity. The researchers found that the #OpticalConductivity of twisted bilayer graphene is not heavily impacted by such manipulations and instead depends more on how the material's geometry structure changes by interlayer twisting. To conduct the study, the team captured images of #plasmons – tiny waves of energy that happen when #electrons in a material move together – that appeared in various regions of the twisted bilayer graphene. https://lnkd.in/e-mf3nKA (Work funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)) NI GUANGXIN Cyprian Lewandowski

Of the 36.8 million people in the STEM workforce in 2021, over half had no university degree. Learn how chemical technical professionals contribute to research and help build the technology of tomorrow. Read the report: https://brnw.ch/21wOA2e

The Micro Nano Technology Education Center advances micro nano technology education, facilitates workshops and professional conferences on emerging micro nano technologies, delivers hands-on laboratory education, and produces industry and education #podcasts. Learn more about MNT-EC here: https://lnkd.in/dijnRbY. #nanotechnology #nanotech

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) are delighted to congratulate Professors Suman Datta (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Michael Flynn (University of Michigan), the recipients of the 2024 University Research Awards! "“Professors Datta and Flynn have advanced groundbreaking semiconductor research, propelled technological advancement in the chip industry, and helped to create a more sustainable, reliable, and innovative future for our country and the world." says SIA's John Neuffer. Read more at https://lnkd.in/eUJ2_Nnc