A new type of electron microscope allows nanotech researchers to look at the nanostructures they produce and identify individual atoms and how they are bonded to other atoms. From a Cornell University press release “By color-coding atoms, new Cornell electron microscope promises big advance in materials analysis” (via AAAS EurekAlert, written by Bill Steele):

A new electron microscope recently installed in Cornell’s Duffield Hall is enabling scientists for the first time to form images that uniquely identify individual atoms in a crystal and see how those atoms bond to one another. And in living color.

“The current generation of electron microscopes can be thought of as expensive black and white cameras where different atoms appear as different shades of gray,” explained David Muller, Cornell associate professor of applied and engineering physics. “This microscope takes color pictures — where each colored atom represents a uniquely identified chemical species.”

…The microscope incorporates new aberration-correction technology designed by Krivanek that focuses a beam of electrons on a spot smaller than a single atom — more sharply and with greater intensity than previously possible. This allows information previously hidden in the background, or “noise,” to be seen. It also provides up to a hundredfold increase in imaging speed.

…It allows scientists to peer inside a material or a device and see how it is put together at the atomic scale where quantum effects dominate and everyday intuition fails. One of the most important applications of the new instrument will be to conduct what Silcox calls “materials pathology” to aid researchers in their development of new materials to use in electronic circuits, computer memories and other nanoscale devices. “We can look at structures people have built and tell them if they’ve built what they thought they did,” Silcox explained.

The research was published in Science (abstract)
—Jim

In “Nanotech Puts Cancer In The Cross Hairs” at Forbes.com, Josh Wolfe describes the approaches of a number of companies developing nanotechnology-based treatments for cancer. Although only a snapshot of an area of intense activity, this overview highlights a number of the important issues.

Unfortunately, when it comes to treating cancer, modern medicine is still in its infancy. By and large, we still rely on debilitating chemotherapy regimens which take a shotgun approach to curing cancer by essentially poisoning patients in an effort to eradicate tumors.

But nanotech represents a bright spot in the fight against cancer. Researchers are increasingly turning to new, innovative therapies, based on particles measuring less than 200 nanometers. At that scale, particles passively target weaker-walled cancer cells and help localize treatment, increasing its effectiveness while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

—Jim

All this week, NanoBusiness Vice President Aatish Salvi debates nanotechnology with the Center for Technology Assessment’s George Kimbrell over at the LA Times online. An excerpt from the former:

Realizing the benefits of nanotechnology will take time. That should come as no surprise. Nanotech is trying to solve some of the hardest and most meaningful challenges in our world today. We have been spoiled by the Internet boom, which taught us to expect massive, explosive technological growth and multibillion-dollar companies emerging practically overnight from a garage with a computer and a 20-year-old. Nanotech isn’t about a better way to sell books and CDs, it is about solving the problems fundamental to the survival of the human race. Success in defeating those challenges and creating a new industrial economy is going to require the dedication, innovation and creative energy that we showed as a nation during the Apollo project. Responsible development is critical, but ignoring the need for this technology in the face of nebulous and poorly defined fears would be truly hazardous.

Check out the debate to see the response. Each day, one of them makes a statement, and the other responds. —Christine

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden are using noble metal nanoparticles to produce more efficient and cheaper solar cells.

Researchers from Clemson University in the U.S. have developed nanoparticles that can be added to chicken feed to target and bind to pathogens in chickens, allowing them to be purged through the bowels.

Researchers from the University of South Australia have developed nanoparticles of pure silica coated with a hydrocarbon-based active material that can potentially be used to remove chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and other contaminants from water more efficiently and cheaply than conventional water treatment methods that often require complicated machinery and expensive maintenance.

Stanford University scientists have achieved new, detailed understanding of how a polymer folds into a unique three-dimensional structure by using an “optical trap” to precisely unfold a functional RNA molecule. Some nanotech approaches toward developing atomically precise manufacturing envision building molecular machinery from building blocks of folding polymers. Among the biopolymers considered as building blocks for advanced nanotechnology, moderately complex DNA structures can be engineered using the straightforward molecular recognition properties of DNA base pairing, and proteins present an exquisite array of functional 3-D structural motifs, but the folding rules are difficult to elucidate. RNA presents an intermediate case. RNA molecules exhibit a greater variety of structural and functional motifs than do DNA molecules, but the 3-D structures are not determined by simple base-pairing alone. Progress in understanding the complex folding patterns of functional RNA molecules may facilitate building molecule machinery from RNA. Nanowerk News brings us a Stanford University press release “Researchers make first direct observation of 3-D molecule folding in real time“. A few excerpts:

All the crucial proteins in our bodies must fold into complex shapes to do their jobs. These snarled molecules grip other molecules to move them around, to speed up important chemical reactions or to grab onto our genes, turning them “on” and “off” to affect which proteins our cells make.

Recently, scientists have discovered that RNA—the stringy molecule that translates our genetic code into protein—can act a lot like a protein itself. RNA can form loopy bundles that shut genes down or start them up without the help of proteins. Since the discovery of these RNA clumps, called “riboswitches,” in 2002, scientists have been striving to understand how they work and how they form. Now, researchers at Stanford University are looking closer than ever at how the three-dimensional twists and turns in a riboswitch come together by grabbing it and tugging it straight. By physically pulling on this loopy RNA, they have determined for the first time how a three-dimensional molecular structure folds, step by step.

The researchers used a machine called an “optical trap” to grab and hold the ends of an RNA molecule with laser beams. Based on technology developed by Bell Labs researchers in 1986, the machine was designed by a team led by Steven Block, the Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D., Professor and a professor of applied physics and of biology. The optical trap allows them to hold the ends of the RNA tightly, so they can pull it pin-straight, then let it curl up again. In the Feb. 1 issue of Science, their paper, of which Block is senior author, describes the development of every loop and fold in one particular RNA riboswitch, and the energy it takes to form or straighten each one—an unprecedented achievement that opens the door for equally thorough studies of other molecules and their behaviors.

The research was published in Science (abstract)
—Jim

Kodak has a long history of enabling both individuals and businesses to produce images, usually in hard-copy form. These images invariably contain polymers, particles (usually nano-sized) and surfactants.