Nanoscale & Nanoscale Advances Blog

Nanoparticles make glowing leaves

22 Oct 2010

Can street lights be replaced by trees? Scientists report in Nanoscale they believe they can by using gold nanoparticles.

Light emitting diodes are used in street and bicycle lights and have a higher efficiency than traditional light bulbs. Now Yen Hsun Su has synthesised gold nanoparticles shaped like sea urchins and diffused them into Bacopa caroliniana chloroplast which creates a bio-LED.

Chlorophyll shows bioluminescence upon high wavelength (400 nm) ultra violet excitation. In contrast, the gold nanoparticles are excited at shorter wavelengths and emit at 400 nm. By implanting the nanoparticles in the plants, the chlorophyll in the leaves can be induced to produce a red emission.

In addition, the nanoparticles were able to suppress emission blinking – a known problem for gold nanoparticles –as they have a strong surface plasmon resonance. Su says that this bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night once the efficiency is improved and are also planning to apply the same strategy to other plant biomolecules.

Read this exciting paper today for free:
Influence of surface plasmon resonance on the emission intermittency of photoluminescence from gold nano-sea-urchins
Y. H. Su, S.-L. Tu, S.-W. Tseng, Y.-C. Chang, S.-H. Chang and W.-M. Zhang, Nanoscale, 2010
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00330A

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Issue 10, out now

11 Oct 2010

By Amaya Camara.

Nanoscale Issue 10, just published

Cover Article
Polyelectrolyte and carbon nanotube multilayers made from ionic liquid solutions
Takuya Nakashima, Jian Zhu, Ming Qin, Szushen Ho and Nicholas A. Kotov
Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 2084-2090

Highlight
Amplified energy transfer in conjugated polymer nanoparticle tags and sensors
Zhiyuan Tian, Jiangbo Yu, Changfeng Wu, Craig Szymanski and Jason McNeill
Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 1999-2011

Read the issue now

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Physics Nobel Prize 2010 Web Collection: Graphene

08 Oct 2010

By Amaya Camara.

Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov

“for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”

At Nanoscale we congratulate the new Nobel Laureates. To celebrate this great news for the nano-community, we have prepared a Web Collection on Graphene bringing together 17 high-quality graphene articles recently published in the journal.

Physics Nobel 2010 Web Collection: Graphene

Read the collection for free today

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Lithography themed issue

24 Sep 2010

By Jane Hordern, Deputy Editor.

We are delighted to announce a high-profile themed issue on Lithography, to be published in the exciting new journal Nanoscale in 2011. The themed issue will be Guest Edited by Karl Berggren (MIT).

Submit to this themed issue – submission deadline 14 January 2011

The aim of this issue is to present the latest results in the area of lithography, with a particular focus on emerging methods.

The field of nanotechnology has grown extensively in recent years, with tremendous progress being made both in the areas of devices and materials. Further technology development requires new methods of patterning and control, i.e. lithography.

To keep up with the demands of both large-scale manufacturing, small-scale industrial prototyping, and most importantly, the pace of new developments in the research community, a broad array of nanolithography tools and techniques must be developed. These tools and methods span length scales from microns to angstroms, ranging from top-down control to bottom-up self-assembly.

Techniques of interest to this issue include:

templated self-assembly
ultra-high-resolution resists
nano-optical methods
novel charged-particle-beam methods
directed assembly at the nano and atomic scales using mechanical probes
self-assembly using directed biological systems
Lithographic modalities both with and without resists
chemical patterning
beam-induced etching
beam-induced deposition

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2D materials: Nanoscale Review out now

24 Sep 2010

By Amaya Camara.

2D materials: to graphene and beyond

R. Mas-Ballesté, C. Gómez-Navarro, J. Gómez-Herrero and F. Zamora

Nanoscale, 2010, Advance Article, DOI: C0NR00323A, Review

This review is an attempt to illustrate the different alternatives in the field of 2D materials. Graphene seems to be just the tip of the iceberg, and the discovery of alternative 2D materials is starting to show the rest of this iceberg. The review comprises the current state-of-the-art of the vast literature in concepts and methods already known for isolation and characterization of graphene, and rationalizes the quite disperse literature in other 2D materials such as metal oxides, hydroxides and chalcogenides, and metal–organic frameworks.

You can read this review now

See more Nanoscale Advanced Articles

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RSC 2011 Prizes and Awards

23 Sep 2010

By Amaya Camara.

Nominations for the 2011 Prizes and Awards are now open

The RSC currently presents around 60 prestigious Prizes and Awards annually to scientists in all the main chemical science disciplines allowing for the greatest range of scientists to be recognised for their work; individuals, teams and organisations working across the globe.

There are nine categories of awards including specific categories for Industry and Education so whether you work in business, industry, research or education recognition is open to everyone.

Our Prizes and Awards represent the dedication and outstanding achievements in the chemicals sciences and are a platform to showcase inspiring science to gain the recognition deserved.

Do you know someone who has made a significant contribution to advancing the chemical sciences?

View our full list of Prizes and Awards and use the online system to nominate yourself or colleagues.

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Nanoscale now listed in MEDLINE/PubMed

13 Sep 2010

By Jane Hordern, Deputy Editor.

We are delighted to announce that Nanoscale is now listed in the prestigious MEDLINE abstracting / indexing service.

All articles published in Nanoscale (going back to the very first issue) are now included, and are searchable using PubMed. This will provide even greater visibility to the great research being published in the journal, particularly in the bio / medical communities.

Nanoscale is already fully-indexed in other leading databases, including Web of Science, and Scopus. ISI have confirmed Nanoscale will appear in the 2010 Journal Citation Report (and receive an official Impact Factor) – this will be published in June 2011.

Nanoscale publishes leading research in nanoscience and nanotechnology, including the areas of nanobiotechnology; bionanomaterials and nanomedicine.

Read some of the great work published so far in these areas:

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,
Nanoscale, 2009, 1, 16

Electrospun nanofibers for neural tissue engineering
Jingwei Xie, Matthew R. MacEwan, Andrea G. Schwartz and Younan Xia,
Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 35

Multimodal drug delivery using gold nanoparticles
Chae-kyu Kim, Partha Ghosh and Vincent M. Rotello
Nanoscale, 2009, 1, 61

Nanotechnology for in vitro neuroscience
Daniel R. Cooper and Jay L. Nadeau
Nanoscale, 2009, 1, 183

Nanoscale will also be publishing a themed issue in late 2010 on Surface Nanotechnology for Biological and Medical Applications. The Guest Editors are Darrell Irvine (MIT), Marcus Textor (ETH Zurich) and Xingyu Jiang (NCNST, Beijing). Sign-up to our contents e-alerts to receive this issue direct to your inbox.

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Nanoscale Issue 9, highlights

10 Sep 2010

By Amaya Camara.

Nanoscale Issue 9, INSIDE FRONT COVER ARTICLE

Hydrothermal transformation from Au core–sulfide shell to Au nanoparticle-decorated sulfide hybrid nanostructures

Zhihong Bao, Zhenhua Sun, Manda Xiao, Linwei Tian and Jianfang Wang
Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 1650-1652

Au nanoparticle-decorated sulfide nanostructures with morphologies similar to those of sea cucumbers arehydrothermally synthesized with Au nanorods and metal thiobenzoates

Highlight: REVIEW

Label-free biological and chemical sensors

Heather K. Hunt and Andrea M. Armani
Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 1544-1559

The development of label-free biochemical sensors, including sensor modalities, measurand recognition techniques, and microfluidic delivery systems are discussed to provide a roadmap for future sensor design

Read the latest issue now