Nanotechnology News

April 7, 2025

Top Headlines

Researchers Discover Why Plastic Sheds Dangerous Fragments

Apr. 7, 2025 — The world is littered with trillions of micro- and nanoscopic pieces of plastic. These can be smaller than a virus -- just the right size to disrupt cells and even alter DNA. Researchers find them almost everywhere they've looked, from Antarctic ...

Physicists Uncover Electronic Interactions Mediated Via Spin Waves

Apr. 3, 2025 — Physicists have made a novel discovery regarding the interaction of electronic excitations via spin waves. The finding could open the door to future technologies and advanced applications such as optical modulators, all-optical logic gates, and ...

MIT Engineers Develop a Way to Mass Manufacture Nanoparticles That Deliver Cancer Drugs Directly to Tumors

Apr. 3, 2025 — Researchers developed a manufacturing technique that rapidly generates large quantities of nanoparticles coated with drug-delivering polymers, which hold great potential for treating cancer. The ...

Carbon Capture Could Become Practical With Scalable, Affordable Materials

Apr. 3, 2025 — Researchers have expanded the potential of carbon capture technology that plucks CO2 directly from the air by demonstrating that there are multiple suitable and abundant materials that can facilitate direct air capture. Researchers present new, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:07pm EDT

Scientists Merge Two 'Impossible' Materials Into New Artificial Structure

Apr. 2, 2025 — An international team has merged two lab-synthesized materials into a synthetic quantum structure once thought impossible to exist and produced an exotic structure expected to provide insights that ...

Metasurfaces: Bilayer Device Can Control Many Forms of Polarized Light

Apr. 1, 2025 — Researchers have created a bilayer metasurface made of two stacked layers of titanium dioxide nanostructures, opening new possibilities for structuring ...

We Know Nanoplastics Are a Threat -- This New Tool Can Help Us Figure out Just How Bad They Are

Apr. 1, 2025 — While the threat that microplastics pose to human and ecological health has been richly documented and is well known, nanoplastics, which are smaller ...

New Approach Makes One Type of Clean Fuel Production 66% More Efficient

Mar. 28, 2025 — Researchers have uncovered a more efficient way to turn carbon dioxide into methanol, a type of alcohol that can serve as a cleaner alternative ...

Physics Meets Art: A New Twist on Interference Patterns

Mar. 27, 2025 — Researchers have discovered brand new interference patterns in twisted two-dimensional tungsten ditelluride lattices. These so-called moir patterns can be tuned to look like periodic spots or even ...

Scientists Discovered Chemical Oscillations in Palladium Nanoparticles, Paving the Way for Recycling Precious Metal Catalysts

Mar. 26, 2025 — Scientists have for the first time filmed the real-time growth and contraction of Palladium nanoparticles, opening new avenues for utilising and ...

Cleverly Designed Carbon Nanohoop Enables Controlled Release of Iron

Mar. 26, 2025 — Researchers have developed a molecular system for controlled release of iron. They integrated ferrocene, a molecular sandwich that encloses an iron atom, with a carbon 'nanohoop'. As a result, the ...

Uniquely Shaped, Fast-Heating Nanoparticles Halt Ovarian Tumor Growth

Mar. 19, 2025 — New magnetic nanoparticles in the shape of a cube sandwiched between two pyramids represent a breakthrough for treating ovarian tumors and possibly other types of ...

Nanomaterials Used to Measure Nuclear Reaction on Radioactive Nuclei Produced in Neutron Star Collisions

Mar. 18, 2025 — Physicists have measured a nuclear reaction that can occur in neutron star collisions, providing direct experimental data for a process that had ...

RNA Origami: Artificial Cytoskeletons to Build Synthetic Cells

Mar. 17, 2025 — With the long-term goal of creating living cells from non-living components, scientists in the field of synthetic biology work with RNA origami. This tool uses the multifunctionality of the natural ...

Twisting Atomically Thin Materials Could Advance Quantum Computers

Mar. 17, 2025 — Researchers show that precisely layering nano-thin materials creates excitons -- essentially, artificial atoms -- that can act as quantum information bits, or ...

Breakthrough Nano-Spring Technology Boosts Battery Durability and Energy Density

Mar. 13, 2025 — Scientists improved battery durability and energy density with a nano-spring ...

Decoding Nanomaterial Phase Transitions With Tiny Drums

Mar. 12, 2025 — When water freezes into ice or boils into vapor, its properties change dramatically at specific temperatures. These so-called phase transitions are fundamental to understanding materials. But how do ...

Lighting the Way: How Activated Gold Reveals Drug Movement in the Body

Mar. 12, 2025 — Tracking targeted drug delivery is often a challenge due to limitations in the current imaging techniques. A recent study reports a breakthrough imaging technique that allows direct and highly ...

Molecular Motors in Action: Visualizing Alpha-Cyclodextrin Movement Along Polymer Chains

Mar. 11, 2025 — Imagine a microscopic locomotive moving back and forth along a track, propelling itself without any external force. At the molecular level, this concept forms the foundation of molecular motors -- ...

Scientists Discover Smart Way to Generate Energy With Tiny Beads

Mar. 11, 2025 — Researchers have discovered a new method to generate electricity using small plastic beads. By placing these beads close together and bringing them into contact, they generate more electricity than ...

Untangling Quantum Entanglement With New Calculation Formulas

Mar. 11, 2025 — Physicists developed simplified formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems. Their approach was applied to nanoscale materials, revealing unexpected quantum ...

Super Sapphire Resists Scratches, Glare, Fog and Dust

Mar. 6, 2025 — Researchers have discovered techniques to bestow superpowers upon sapphire, a material that most of us think of as just a pretty ...

Precision Cancer Treatment Using Magnet-Guided, Heat-Activated Nanoparticles

Mar. 6, 2025 — Cancer treatment has advanced significantly, focusing on targeted approaches that destroy tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. Researchers have developed magnetic nanoparticles that can be ...

Nanoscale Tweaks Help Alloy Withstand High-Speed Impacts

Mar. 5, 2025 — Engineers devised a new method for designing metals and alloys that can withstand extreme impacts, which could lead to the development of automobiles, aircraft and armor that can better endure ...

Single-Qubit Sensing Puts New Spin on Quantum Materials Discovery

Mar. 5, 2025 — Working at nanoscale dimensions, billionths of a meter in size, a team of scientists revealed a new way to measure high-speed fluctuations in magnetic materials. Knowledge obtained by these new ...

Controlling Conformational Changes in Protein Aromatic Side Chains

Mar. 5, 2025 — A novel protein cage system can control and visualize orientational changes in aromatic side chains upon ligand binding. By inducing coordinated molecular changes, this approach enables precise ...

Scientists Unravel the Spiraling Secrets of Magnetic Materials for Next-Generation Electronics

Mar. 4, 2025 — Engineers have developed a new computational approach to accurately model and predict the properties of a class of magnetic molecules called chiral helimagnets. Their work could accelerate the ...

Quantum Properties in Atom-Thick Semiconductors Offer New Way to Detect Electrical Signals in Cells

Mar. 3, 2025 — For decades, scientists have relied on electrodes and dyes to track the electrical activity of living cells. Now, engineers have discovered that quantum materials just a single atom thick can do the ...

Scientists Use AI to Better Understand Nanoparticles

Mar. 3, 2025 — A team of scientists has developed a method to illuminate the dynamic behavior of nanoparticles, which are foundational components in the creation of pharmaceuticals, electronics, and industrial and ...

Breaking the Surface: How Damage Reshapes Ripples in Graphene

Mar. 3, 2025 — Scientists discover how defects in the surface of two-dimensional sheets alter ripple effects, even freezing the sheet's motion ...

New Low-Cost Challenger to Quantum Computer: Ising Machine

Feb. 26, 2025 — A low-energy challenger to the quantum computer also works at room temperature. The researchers have shown that information can be transmitted using magnetic wave motion in complex ...

Critical Nanoscale Phenomena for More Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

Feb. 26, 2025 — In a significant advancement for boosting renewable energy generation development, engineers have examined nanoscale properties of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). This initiative has resulted in the ...

Researchers Create the World's Smallest Shooting Video Game Using Nanoscale Technology

Feb. 26, 2025 — A research team demonstrated the 'world's smallest shooting game,' a unique nanoscale game inspired by classic arcade games. This achievement was made possible by real-time control of ...

Mesoporous Silicon: Semiconductor With New Talents

Feb. 25, 2025 — Silicon is the best-known semiconductor material. However, controlled nanostructuring drastically alters the material's properties. Using a specially developed etching apparatus, a team has now ...