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Nanoscale Issue 12 out now!

02 Dec 2011

The latest issue of Nanoscale is now online. You can read the full issue here:

The outside front cover features an article on Autonomous interfacial creation of nanostructured lead oxide by Youngkook Kwon, Hyejin Lee and Jaeyoung Lee.

Direct electrospinning of Ag/polyvinylpyrrolidone nanocables is the article highlighted on the inside front cover by Jie Song, Menglin Chen, Mikkel Buster Olesen, Chenxuan Wang, Rasmus Havelund, Qiang Li, Erqing Xie, Rong Yang, Peter Bøggild, Chen Wang, Flemming Besenbacher and Mingdong Dong.

Issue 12 contains the following Reviews and Feature articles:

Fancy submitting an article to Nanoscale? Then why not submit to us today !

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Nanoscale Issue 11 out now!

14 Nov 2011

The latest issue of Nanoscale is now online. You can read the full issue here:

The outside front cover features an article on Carbon-based layer-by-layer nanostructures: from films to hollow capsules by Jinkee Hong, Jung Yeon Han, Hyunsik Yoon, Piljae Joo, Taemin Lee, Eunyong Seo, Kookheon Char and Byeong-Su Kim

Oxide nanocrystal based nanocomposites for fabricating photoplastic AFM probes is the article highlighted on the inside front cover by Chiara Ingrosso, Cristina Martin-Olmos, Andreu Llobera, Claudia Innocenti, Claudio Sangregorio, Marinella Striccoli, Angela Agostiano, Anja Voigt, Gabi Gruetzner, Jürgen Brugger, Francesc Perez-Murano and Maria Lucia Curri.

Issue 11 contains the following Review and Feature articles:

Fancy submitting an article to Nanoscale? Then why not submit to us today !

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Probes inspired by butterflies

20 Oct 2011

Inspired by the feeding tube of butterflies, US scientists have made a flexible and porous artificial proboscis that could be used to collect tiny liquid samples. The probe can be operated remotely to collect hazardous liquids.

Konstantin Kornev from Clemson University and his team wanted to find a way to sample miniscule amounts of liquid. They needed a probe that would be flexible and easy to manipulate. After seeing the effective way that butterflies and moths suck up their food using proboscises, they decided to make an artificial version.

‘A proboscis has two types of pores: very small to draw the liquid in and large, to transport the liquid as pipes would do,’ says Kornev. To mimic this system, the team made a bundle of porous polymer fibres and twisted them into a yarn using a new electrospinning technique. Electrospinning works by charging a liquid medium and accelerating it from a high electrical potential to a lower one to produce long fibres. The new part of the technique involves collecting the fibres with rolled brushes that act as arms. The arms are then spun in opposite directions to make a yarn. ‘Twisting these fibres into a yarn was a challenge,’ says Kornev. The yarn’s large interfibre pores provide rapid wicking and the small pores provide a strong capillary action.

Butterfly

Mimicking a butterfly proboscis: the diagram shows the artificial proboscis absorbing a droplet. The solid black fibre on the left is the artificial proboscis; the grey fibre on the right is a nylon yarn

To manipulate the proboscis so it could be directed to its target – a droplet or even a single cell or gland – Kornev embedded magnetic particles into the porous polymer so that it could be controlled by applying an electric or magnetic field. With this flexibility, the proboscis can be attached to a microfluidic device for sampling hard to reach areas, in sensors or in forensic probes, or to sample hazardous substances.

Joshua Edel, an expert in nanobiotechnology from Imperial College London, comments: ‘They are one of the first groups to develop nanoporous flexible probes that work as artificial proboscises. Assuming they can be made in a reproducible manner, I see no reason why this system would not have commercial implications.’

‘We developed a special automated technique to make reproducible proboscises,’ says Kornev, who is now working on adding a sensing function to the proboscises in the hope of developing a probe that can sample and analyse minute amounts of fluids.

Holly Sheahan

Read the paper from Nanoscale:

Nanoporous artificial proboscis for probing minute amount of liquids
Chen-Chih Tsai, Petr Mikes, Taras Andrukh, Edgar White, Daria Monaenkova, Oleksandr Burtovyy, Ruslan Burtovyy, Binyamin Rubin, David Lukas, Igor Luzinov, Jeffery R. Owens and Konstantin G. Kornev
Nanoscale, 2011
DOI: 10.1039/c1nr10773a

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Beating the counterfeiters

19 Oct 2011

Scientists from China have created nanoparticles with dual mode colour for anti-counterfeiting ink, making it harder to imitate than current inks.

Lehui Lu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, have designed dual mode fluorescent lanthanide doped nanocrystals to make the ink. The nanocrystals display upconversion, in which particles absorb light of one wavelength and emit light of a shorter wavelength, and downconversion, in which a high energy photon is split into two lower energy photons. These are triggered by near infrared and ultraviolet light, respectively, to produce different colours. The crystals would make the ink difficult to replicate if used on important documents as an anti-counterfeiting measure.

Traditional anti-counterfeiting materials only emit one colour so are more easily replicated. Including more colours involves mixing different nanocrystals, which could affect ink quality. Now, ‘colour tuning can be achieved from a single nanocrystal, avoiding a decrease in the ink’s quality’, says Lu.

Beating the counterfeiters

Exposing film stamped with the ink to near infrared light caused a green emission, while under ultraviolet light, a colour change from green to blue was seen

The team bound the nanocrystals to oleic acid, which stabilises them in organic solvents so that they can be applied to paper. They tested the crystals by stamping the ink onto a transparent film. In daylight, the effect was invisible. However, when they shone infrared light on the film the stamped section was clearly seen, with a bright green upconversion emission. When they changed to ultraviolet light, the colour changed to blue because of the downconversion.

The nanocrystals could also be developed for use in biological imaging, as Yadong Li, an expert in lanthanide-doped nanocrystals from Tsinghua University, P. R. China, points out. ‘The near infrared emission is suitable for in vivo imaging, owing to the weak autofluorescence background and deeper penetration,’ he says.

The next step for Lu is to increase the nanocrystals’ quantum yield by increasing the number of molecules participating in the process. ‘Compared to traditional organic dyes,’ explains Lu, ‘the quantum yield of oleic acid-stabilised lanthanide doped fluoride nanocrystals is relatively low. Improving the quantum yield is a big challenge.’

Rachel Cooper

Read the paper from Nanoscale:

Designing lanthanide-doped nanocrystals with both up- and down-conversion luminescence for anti-counterfeiting
Yanlan Liu, Kelong Ai and Lehui Lu
Nanoscale, 2011
DOI: 10.1039/c1nr10752f

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Nanoscale Most-Read Articles for Q2 2011

06 Sep 2011

Top 25 most-read Nanoscale articles for Q2

Controlled assembly of Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles on graphene oxide
Yi Zhang, Biao Chen, Liming Zhang, Jie Huang, Fenghua Chen, Zupei Yang, Jianlin Yao and Zhijun Zhang
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00776E

Controlled assembly of plasmonic colloidal nanoparticle clusters
José M. Romo-Herrera, Ramón A. Alvarez-Puebla and Luis M. Liz-Marzán
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00804D

Fabrication of carbon nanofiber–polyaniline composite flexible paper for supercapacitor
Xingbin Yan, Zhixin Tai, Jiangtao Chen and Qunji Xue
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00470G

Luminescent nanomaterials
Claus Feldmann
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR90008K

Graphene edges: a review of their fabrication and characterization
Xiaoting Jia, Jessica Campos-Delgado, Mauricio Terrones, Vincent Meunier and Mildred S. Dresselhaus
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00600A

A multiscale simulation study of carbon nanotube interactions with designed amphiphilic peptide helices
E. Jayne Wallace, Robert S. G. D’Rozario, Beatriz Mendoza Sanchez and Mark S. P. Sansom
DOI: 10.1039/B9NR00355J

Preparation of functional magnetic nanocomposites and hybrid materials: recent progress and future directions
Silke Behrens
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00634C

Surfactant-assisted, shape-controlled synthesis of gold nanocrystals
Junyan Xiao and Limin Qi
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00814A

Electrostatics at the nanoscale
David A. Walker, Bartlomiej Kowalczyk, Monica Olvera de la Cruz and Bartosz A. Grzybowski
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00698J

Facile synthesis of metal oxide/reduced graphene oxide hybrids with high lithium storage capacity and stable cyclability
Jixin Zhu, Ting Zhu, Xiaozhu Zhou, Yanyan Zhang, Xiong Wen Lou, Xiaodong Chen, Hua Zhang, Huey Hoon Hng and Qingyu Yan
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00744G

Graphene-wrapped TiO2 hollow structures with enhanced lithium storage capabilities
Jun Song Chen, Zhiyu Wang, Xiao Chen Dong, Peng Chen and Xiong Wen (David) Lou
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR10162E

Liquid-phase exfoliation, functionalization and applications of graphene
Xu Cui, Chenzhen Zhang, Rui Hao and Yanglong Hou
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR10127G

Current directions in core–shell nanoparticle design
Wolfgang Schärtl
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00028K

Mechanised nanoparticles for drug delivery
Karla K. Cotí, Matthew E. Belowich, Monty Liong, Michael W. Ambrogio, Yuen A. Lau, Hussam A. Khatib, Jeffrey I. Zink, Niveen M. Khashab and J. Fraser Stoddart
DOI: 10.1039/B9NR00162J

2D materials: to graphene and beyond
Rubén Mas-Ballesté, Cristina Gómez-Navarro, Julio Gómez-Herrero and Félix Zamora
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00323A

Fabrication of hybrids based on graphene and metal nanoparticles by in situ and self-assembled methods
Fu-An He, Jin-Tu Fan, Fei Song, Li-Ming Zhang and Helen Lai-Wa Chan
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00672F

Microwave chemistry for inorganic nanomaterials synthesis
Idalia Bilecka and Markus Niederberger
DOI: 10.1039/B9NR00377K

Semiconductor nanostructure-based photovoltaic solar cells
Genqiang Zhang, Scott Finefrock, Daxin Liang, Gautam G. Yadav, Haoran Yang, Haiyu Fang and Yue Wu
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR10152H

Solution synthesis of one-dimensional ZnO nanomaterials and their applications
Benjamin Weintraub, Zhengzhi Zhou, Yinhua Li and Yulin Deng
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00047G

TiO2nanotubes and their application in dye-sensitized solar cells
Poulomi Roy, Doohun Kim, Kiyoung Lee, Erdmann Spiecker and Patrik Schmuki
DOI: 10.1039/B9NR00131J

Small-sized silicon nanoparticles: new nanolights and nanocatalysts
Zhenhui Kang, Yang Liu and Shuit-Tong Lee
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00559B

Gold nanoparticles for the colorimetric and fluorescent detection of ions and small organic molecules
Dingbin Liu, Zhuo Wang and Xingyu Jiang
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00887G

Surface charge of gold nanoparticles mediates mechanism of toxicity
Nicole M. Schaeublin, Laura K. Braydich-Stolle, Amanda M. Schrand, John M. Miller, Jim Hutchison, John J. Schlager and Saber M. Hussain
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00478B

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Nanoscale & Nanoscale Advances Blog

Author Archive

Nanoscale Issue 12 out now!

Top Ten most-read Nanoscale articles in October

Nanoscale Issue 11 out now!

Top Ten most-read Nanoscale articles in September

Probes inspired by butterflies

Beating the counterfeiters

Top Ten most-read Nanoscale articles in August

Top Ten most-read Nanoscale articles in July

Nanoscale Most-Read Articles for Q2 2011

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