A powerful new microscopy technique unveils hidden nanoscale light interactions, offering a glimpse into physics that conventional tools cannot resolve.
Category: nanotechnology
Graphene as a charge mirror: Why water droplets ‘see’ graphene—but don’t show it
Research on graphene has made great strides in recent years. However, to fully harness its potential in applications such as desalination membranes, sensors, and energy storage and conversion, a deeper understanding of the interaction between graphene and water is required.
Until now, it was widely thought that graphene, when supported on a substrate, largely inherits the wetting properties of the underlying material, a phenomenon known as “wetting transparency.” An international research team led by Yongkang Wang and Yair Litman has now shown that, while graphene appears transparent on large scales, it exerts a subtle but significant influence on nearby water molecules at the nanoscale. The study is published in the journal Chem.
Graphene, a carbon layer just one atom thick, is considered a wonder material: extremely stable, highly conductive, and optically transparent. For a long time, it appeared just as transparent to water: measurements of the water contact angle—a measure of wettability—showed that graphene on a substrate lets through the substrates wettability virtually unchanged. This phenomenon of wetting transparency, observed for years, seemed to contradict the fact that graphene is highly polarizable and therefore reacts sensitively to charges in the substrate.
Unlocking unusual superconductivity in a lightweight element
Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss—are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields. In contrast, a class of superconductors containing heavy elements can sustain an unusual type of superconductivity in magnetic fields beyond the conventional limit. Now, new research has demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by sandwiching atomically thin films of a lightweight element called gallium between two other materials to engineer quantum interactions at the interfaces between the layers.
A paper describing the research, led by an interdisciplinary team at Penn State’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for Nanoscale Science, was published in the journal Nature Materials. The team showed that when just three atomic layers of gallium are layered between graphene and a silicon carbide substrate, the resulting structure maintains superconductivity in magnetic fields that are parallel to the surface of the material, or in-plane, well above the expected limit.
“This discovery highlights the strength of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Penn State MRSEC,” said Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics at Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “By bringing together expertise in materials synthesis, quantum transport and theoretical modeling, we were able to uncover a phenomenon that would have been difficult to realize within a single research group.”
Record-breaking photonics approach traps light on a chip for millions of cycles
For years, scientists have dreamed of using atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) materials to build faster, more efficient photonic chips. These materials can be stacked and tuned with extraordinary precision, opening possibilities far beyond those of conventional technologies. The challenge is that they are extremely fragile, making them notoriously difficult to shape with standard nanofabrication tools.
Now, an international team of researchers including scientists from Aalto University has overcome this long-standing barrier. By developing a method for what can be described as nanoscale surgery, they were able to sculpt these delicate materials without destroying them, achieving record-breaking performance in the process.
Published in Nature Materials, the work marks an important step forward for vdW materials, shifting them from passive coatings toward becoming the active building blocks of future photonic and quantum devices.
Scientists Discover Dual Treatment for Lung Cancer and Muscle Wasting
Researchers at Oregon State University have pioneered a transformative approach for simultaneously targeting lung cancer and the debilitating muscle-wasting syndrome known as cachexia—a condition that plagues many lung cancer patients. Their groundbreaking work employs lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) as a delivery vehicle for messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics, addressing critical challenges in precision drug delivery for aggressive tumors deep within the lung tissue.
Lipid nanoparticles, microscopic carriers composed of fatty compounds like lipids, have revolutionized drug delivery with their ability to ferry genetic material directly into cells. In this study, the OSU team engineered LNPs comprised of DC-cholesterol and a specialized ionizable lipid, 113-O12B, which exhibited a remarkable ability to bind a blood serum protein called vitronectin. This binding triggers the formation of a protein corona on the nanoparticles, a dynamic interface that actively guides the LNPs to lung tissue, and more importantly, lung tumor microenvironments.
Vitronectin’s recruitment is no coincidence. It interacts with integrin receptors—cellular docking proteins highly expressed on lung cancer cells. These integrins act as biological gateways, facilitating enhanced uptake of the therapeutic nanoparticles by tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. This receptor-mediated targeting marks a significant advance over conventional LNPs, which commonly accumulate in the liver, limiting their therapeutic index against lung malignancies.
A nanoscale robotic cleaner can hunt, capture and remove bacteria
Tiny robots—around 50 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—open up fascinating possibilities: they enable the controlled manipulation of objects far too small for human hands. This brings us closer to a long-standing dream—the direct interaction with the microscopic world.
Particularly relevant are biological objects in aqueous environments, such as single cells or bacteria. Handling such objects in a controlled and targeted way has remained a major challenge.
A team of researchers have demonstrated how such microscopic cleaners can be employed and precisely controlled. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The nanorobots presented demonstrate that controlled manipulation, including collection and relocation of bacteria, is already achievable.
One DNA letter can trigger complete sex reversal
Researchers at Bar-Ilan University have discovered that changing just one letter in DNA can completely alter sex development in mice. In the new study, published in Nature Communications, a single-letter insertion in a non-coding regulatory region caused XX mice, which would normally develop as females, to develop instead as males with testis and male genitalia.
The finding is especially striking because the mutation was not made in a gene itself, but in a distant stretch of DNA that helps control a key developmental gene. The study highlights the major role of the non-coding genome —the 98% of DNA that does not make proteins but helps regulate when and how genes are turned on and off.
“This is a remarkable finding because such a tiny change—just one DNA letter out of approximately 2.8 billion—was enough to produce a dramatic developmental outcome,” said Dr. Nitzan Gonen, from the Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan University. “It shows that non-coding DNA can have a profound effect on development and disease.”
Scientists turn ‘mess’ into breakthrough: Chaotic design unlocks next-generation optical devices
Researchers from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy have flipped a long-held assumption in optics, showing that deliberately introducing controlled disorder into ultra-thin optical devices can dramatically increase their power and versatility, without making them bigger or more complex.
Published in Nature Communications, the study reveals a new class of “disordered mosaic metasurfaces” nanostructured materials that manipulate light, capable of performing multiple optical functions simultaneously within a single device.
At the center of the breakthrough is a counterintuitive idea: instead of carefully arranging structures in perfect order, the team scattered them in a controlled, mosaic-like pattern, and found that performance didn’t degrade. In fact, it improved.
Cuproptosis in cancer: emerging mechanism and therapeutic opportunities
Cuproptosis mechanism in cancer!
As a copper-dependent regulated form of cell death, cuproptosis is critically important for developing targeted cancer therapies and overcoming drug resistance.
A multidimensional framework deciphers the physiological regulation of copper homeostasis, including hepatocentric organ-level regulation, organelle-specific cellular storage and transport, and iron– copper–zinc ion crosstalk.
Cuproptosis is mainly regulated by core cuproptosis proteins, mitochondrial respiratory function, and cellular copper homeostasis.
By depleting glutathione (GSH), alleviating hypoxia, modulating immunity, and enabling multimodal synergy, innovative copper-based nanomaterials enhance copper ion delivery and cytotoxicity, resulting in potent antitumor effects. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Cuproptosis-in-cancer
Cuproptosis is a mitochondria-and copper-dependent regulated form of cell death that has attracted growing interest as a therapeutic strategy in oncology. Its core mechanism involves the aggregation of lipoylated proteins in the tricarboxylic acid cycle to trigger proteotoxic stress and the destabilization of iron–sulfur cluster proteins, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction. These two effects synergize to initiate this regulated form of cell death. Recent studies have expanded this framework, revealing multilayered regulation through the core proteins of cuproptosis, mitochondrial respiratory function, and cellular copper homeostasis. Translational efforts have led to the development of copper-based therapeutics, including ionophores and nanomaterials. The utilization of smart-responsive nanomaterials also offers improved precision in tumor delivery and resistance circumvention.