Nanoscale & Nanoscale Advances Blog

Chinese scientists studying the wings of the Trogonoptera Brookiana butterfly have discovered that the light trapping structures which cause the iridescent colours we see are caused by two distinct types of nanostructure one on the front and one on the back of the wing.

Understanding how these natural structures function can give great insight for engineering materials with these properties and could have applications from solar cells to stealth technology.

Read this HOT article in full:

Light Trapping Structures in Wing Scales of Butterfly Trogonoptera Brookiana
Zhiwu Han , shichao niu , Chunhui Shang , Zhenning Liu and Luquan Ren
Nanoscale, 2012
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR12059C 

Mercury pollution can cause major problems for the health of humans, fish and wildlife. Scientists based in Singapore now report a sensitive sensor for the Hg²⁺ ions present in aqueous environments which is also inexpensive and easy to produce. The system is based on Ag⁺-based nanoparticles the luminescence of which is quenched in the presence of mercury ions.

Read this HOT Nanoscale communication today:

Highly luminescent Ag⁺ nanoclusters for Hg²⁺ ion detection
Xun Yuan , Teik Jin Yeow , Qingbo Zhang , Jim Yang Lee and Jianping Xie
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR11999D

Scientists working in China, the USA and Korea have reported a new material – tungsten-doped MoO₂ – which displays enhanced lithium storage capability. The material takes the best attributes of  of MoO₂ and WO₂– high capacity and superior electroactivity, respectively – to give a material with an overall improved performance, and with great potential for use in lithium ion batteries.

Read this HOT Nanoscale communication today:

Enhanced Li storage performance of ordered mesoporous MoO₂ via tungsten doping
Xiangpeng Fang , Bingkun Guo , Yifeng Shi , Bin Li , Chunxiu Hua , Chaohua Yao , Yichi Zhang , Yong-Sheng Hu , Zhaoxiang Wang , Galen D. Stucky and Liquan Chen
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR12017H

This high-profile Feature Article discusses the balance between beneficial and adverse health effects of engineered nanomaterials.

It concludes that current evidence suggests that the beneficial effects of engineered nanomaterials far outweigh the concerns for their safety.

Read this highly topical feature review article today:

Feature Article
Health implications of engineered nanomaterials
Antonio Pietroiusti
Nanoscale, 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2NR11688J

This Feature Article forms part of a series of review articles which cover the theme ‘Nanotechnology: Health, Environmental and Societal Impacts’.

Further articles will be published soon so watch this space!

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A recent Nanoscale Feature article by Svetlana V. Boriskina and Björn M. Reinhard has been highlighted in the Nanotimes magazine, Nanowerk News , R&D Magazine, and Energy Harvesting Journal. The article describes a new way to efficiently trap and enhance light in nanoscale structures and nanopatterned thin films, which could have exciting applications in biosensing, photovoltaics and quantum computing.

Read this fascinating Nanoscale article today!

Molding the flow of light on the nanoscale: from vortex nanogears to phase-operated plasmonic machinery
Svetlana V. Boriskina and Björn M. Reinhard
Nanoscale, 2012, 4, 76-90
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR11406A

Carbon quantum dots with honeycomb structures have been made by scientists in China and the US to support gold nanoparticles in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications. The dots enable SERS sensitivity 8–11 times stronger than the currently used gold nanoparticles.

SERS is an ultrasensitive technique used to detect trace molecules. The gold’s function is to enhance Raman scattering to result in the surface enhanced Raman scattering effect. A current way to improve this effect for a more sensitive signal is to replace the planar surface on which the gold nanoparticles are placed with unique nanoporous superaligned carbon nanotube films with cross-stacking.

Now, the team have achieved further enhancement with their honeycomb quantum dots.

Read the ‘HOT’ Nanoscale article:

Honeycomb Architecture of Carbon Quantum Dots: A New Efficient Substrate to Support Gold for Stronger SERS
Y Fan et al, Nanoscale, 2012
DOI: 10.1039/c2nr12015a

Recently knighted Sirs Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov must feel a bit like The Beatles. Not because they have legions of adoring screaming fans (well, they might, but science isn’t as sexy as rock music), but because you could probably draw parallels between the influences of the Liverpudlian quartet on music and the isolation of graphene on materials science.

Graphenemania doesn’t seem to be abating any time soon either. The latest episode of this incredible craze sees Tian-Ling Ren and his team at Tsinghua University in Beijing taking advantage of single-layer graphene’s (SLG) very low heat capacity per unit area (one of its many remarkable properties) to use it as a sound-emitting material.

Device structure of the grapene "speaker".

The researchers created a device using electrodes deposited onto two ends of a sheet of SLG, which itself is placed on an anodic aluminium oxide substrate. When an electric sound-frequency signal is applied to the graphene, sound is produced through the thermoacoustic effect. In short, when electricity passes through the graphene, the heat produced is transferred to the air around the device surface. The fluctuations in this heat as the current itself fluctuates causes the air to vibrate, producing sound.

Although a previous piece of work has already used graphene in a thin and transparent sound-emitting device, it was merely used as electrodes. Significantly, this is the first time that the material has been demonstrated to actually be able to produce sound itself.

The team found that SLG has a sound pressure level of about 95 dB, which puts it on a par with that experienced when standing a metre from a disco speaker. This makes it ideal for uses such as speakers and earphones, perfect for science’s own ‘Fab Two’ to use to listen to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Read more about this ‘rocking’ new application for graphene here.

Single-layer graphene sound-emitting devices: experiments and modeling
He Tian, Dan Xie, Yi Yang, Tian-Ling Ren, Yu-Feng Wang, Chang-Jian Zhou, Ping-Gang Peng, Li-Gang Wang and Li-Tian Liu
Nanoscale, 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2NR11572G