https://phys.org/nanotech-news/nano-materials/ en-us The latest science news on nanomaterials, nanotechnology, nanoparticles and nanoscience. Researchers at Sultan Qaboos University have developed engineered surfaces that combine microscopic patterns with zinc oxide nanorods to reduce the attachment of bacteria and microalgae—a process that contributes to biofouling on submerged marine and industrial equipment. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nanostructured-surfaces-limit-marine-biofouling.html Nanomaterials Wed, 30 Sep 2026 07:00:01 EDT news709951563 Nanoparticles could someday provide a new way to help soldiers fight back against deadly nerve agents on the front lines. In a new study, Northwestern University scientists developed a nanoparticle-based compound that, when mixed into clothing dyes, could limit the impact of chemicals commonly found in pesticides, insecticides and nerve agents. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-wearable-nanotech-combat-nerve-agents.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:40:02 EDT news709889641 The research group at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Pontedera (Pisa), led by Gianni Ciofani, has developed new organic nanoparticles that combine multiple therapeutic functions in a single material for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-dopamine-based-nanotubes-combine-electrical.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:40:08 EDT news709831081 Lithium, magnesium, potassium and many other ions usually occur together in natural and industrial solutions. Separating them from one another is a challenge, for example, in the extraction and processing of raw materials. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-electricity-ion-membranes.html Nanophysics Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:20:22 EDT news709812541 Electrolysis can reduce CO2 to CO, a raw material for chemical products such as fuels. Within the GreenQUEST project, an international team led by HZB chemist Prashanth Menezes has systematically investigated catalyst layers made of silver nanoparticles, varying both particle size and density. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-sparse-layers-nanometer-silver-particles.html Nanomaterials Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:00:01 EDT news709473348 Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have teamed up with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company to uncover how storage conditions affect mRNA lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines and other treatments, and how to make them more effective. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-threatens-mrna-delivery-tris-buffer.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:40:05 EDT news709550701 Honeycomb-shaped structures are familiar from beehives. Researchers have now designed molecules that self-assemble into a similar pattern on a scale far too small to see with the naked eye. These molecules are peptides: short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Each peptide consists of only nine amino acids. Many identical copies assemble into tiny fibers with a honeycomb-like interior filled with water. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-short-peptides-honeycomb-fibers-tiny.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:20:17 EDT news709474573 An international collaboration led by the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), Germany, has developed a labeling method that distinguishes fluorescent labels not by color but by how long it takes a dye to emit fluorescence. This makes it possible to visualize eight different proteins in a cell simultaneously in a single step using standard microscopes. The results have been published in the journal ACS Nano. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fluorescence-proteins-cell.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:00:10 EDT news709393321 For the first time, researchers have directly imaged the magnetization dynamics inside a spin Hall nano-oscillator—a nanoscale device that converts direct current into tunable microwave signals and is a promising building block for energy-efficient wireless communication and brain-inspired computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nano-oscillator-imaged.html Nanophysics Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:20:10 EDT news709380362 Engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have designed a new type of quantum nanostructure that could enable optical neural networks. This emerging technology has the potential to make artificial intelligence systems, like large language models and image generation, faster and significantly more energy efficient. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-quantum-nanostructures-ai-energy.html Nanophysics Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:40:06 EDT news709307761 In their earliest years of development, computers used mechanical gears and levers to store information. Today, researchers are exploring whether a material itself can hold onto information, storing memory in how it bends and springs back to its original shape. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-carbon-nanotube-foams-reveal-kind.html Nanophysics Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:10:01 EDT news709286482 A drop of coffee on a tabletop often leaves a dark ring behind. This everyday mark is a reminder that a drying droplet is not passive: As water evaporates, it can transport the particles suspended inside it toward the edge. Scientists call this the coffee-ring effect. For inkjet printing and surface coatings, however, a ring is often exactly what engineers do not want. They need the material to land in a controlled, predictable pattern. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-spider-webs-mosaics-nanosheets-graphene.html Nanophysics Mon, 21 Sep 2026 18:00:05 EDT news709199310 Seeing a bachelor's thesis published in a scientific journal is relatively uncommon. For three theses linked to the same research group to result in scientific publications within just three months is downright rare. Yet that is exactly what has happened in Elsebeth Schröder's research group at the Division of Quantum Device Physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-amino-acids-bone-mineral-magnesium.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:40:01 EDT news708954721 Researchers have engineered a new material that is an extreme thermal insulator, is exceptionally stiff and can be printed as a thin film at large scales. The material has one of the lowest thermal conductivity profiles of any dense, or nonporous, material—approaching the theoretical limit of how good a material can be as a thermal insulator. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-thermal-insulator-outperforms-material-nature.html Nanophysics Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:00:06 EDT news708832946 The humble coffee filter has the relatively simple job of letting the coffee through and leaving the grounds behind. But researchers from the ARC Center of Excellence for Carbon Science and Innovation (COE-CSI) are exploring whether a filter operating on the molecular scale can do something much more difficult: separate the caffeine from the coffee itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-coffee-nanoscale-graphene-oxide-membrane.html Nanomaterials Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:40:04 EDT news708945541 Nanodiamonds are tiny diamond particles that usually measure mere millionths of a millimeter. They are extremely hard, stable and heat-resistant and highly adaptable for various purposes in medicine, new materials, catalysis and energy technology. By compressing plastic with lasers, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Rostock are now able to systematically produce high-purity, ultra-small diamonds with a narrow size distribution. This is impossible to achieve with conventional methods such as explosions. As a scalable technology, laser compression offers great potential for improved, clean and sustainable production of ultra-small nanodiamonds. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-laser-plastic-ultra-small-high.html Nanophysics Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:40:06 EDT news708870182 Beauty and mystery—it is hard to imagine a more alluring combination, and this is precisely what we encounter when we observe phenomena in the nanoworld. But are we really sure that observations made using modern microscopic techniques do not influence what is happening there? A comparison of images of copper oxide nanoparticles reacting with chloroauric acid, obtained using electron and photon beams, has yielded unexpected results. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-electron-photon-gold-reaction-nanoscale.html Nanophysics Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:30:01 EDT news708882841 MXenes are two-dimensional nanomaterials first synthesized at Drexel University in 2011. They have been recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry as an emerging technology with "true potential to transform our world." But their widespread use has thus far been limited by the complicated process required to produce them. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-vapor-phase-synthesis-mxenes-technological.html Nanomaterials Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:50:02 EDT news708876901 Iron rusts on its own, slowly, over months or years. Now, researchers at Tohoku University have found a way to compress the process of metal reacting with water to form oxide, taking mere hours and using nothing more than ultrasound. Details were published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-iron-magnetic-nanoparticles.html Nanomaterials Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:40:06 EDT news708864602 Forty-four years ago, Nadrian Seeman published his groundbreaking ideas on using DNA as a structural material, expanding DNA's significance far beyond its role as a carrier of genetic information. Since then, the steadily growing field of DNA nanotechnology has seen numerous innovations. One was the DNA origami technique, which enables researchers to fold a single long strand of DNA into a desired 2D or 3D shape. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-big-dna-software.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 16 Sep 2026 19:30:01 EDT news708795841 New research led by the ARC Center of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) at the University of Melbourne demonstrates a new way to make invisible infrared light visible without relying on the expensive detector technology used in today's infrared cameras. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-compact-optical-screen-pave-cheaper.html Nanophysics Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:10:04 EDT news708790681 Very small biological samples and even individual biomolecules can now be examined under near-physiological conditions with high confidence at the BESSY II infrared beamline using a newly validated and improved technique: nanoscale infrared (IR) spectroscopy (s-SNOM) with ultrathin silicon-based membranes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ultrathin-membranes-nano-infrared-views.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:10:01 EDT news708789601 Physicists at Leipzig University and Charles University in Prague have developed a method for changing the swimming style of tiny artificial microswimmers in real time. They can make a single microscopic particle switch at will between modes of swimming inspired by bacteria and algae. The researchers have thus turned a property that was previously fixed during production into a programmable parameter. They believe their findings pave the way for an evolutionary approach to the development of synthetic active matter. Their study has now been published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-microswimmers-bacteria-algae-propulsion.html Nanophysics Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:20:02 EDT news708781981 Put a drop of water into a very hot pan, and it can skitter across the surface on a cushion of vapor. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect. Now, scientists have observed a related phenomenon involving ice and an extremely hot surface—on a length scale of billionths of a meter (nanometers) and within billionths of a second (nanoseconds). https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nanometer-vapor-barrier-insulates-ice.html Nanomaterials Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:06 EDT news708768541 A team of researchers from University of Toronto Engineering has created a new type of dye-sensitized nanoparticle that can detect target chemicals at very low concentrations while also distinguishing between molecules with very similar shapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-emitting-nanoparticles-subtle-chemical-differences.html Nanomaterials Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:40:01 EDT news708621481 Artificial intelligence is transforming how information is generated, processed and stored, but its rapid expansion is also driving unprecedented demand for computing power and electricity. Developing hardware that can process information more efficiently is therefore becoming one of the major technological challenges of the AI era. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-room-temperature-skyrmion-based-synapses.html Nanophysics Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:20:01 EDT news708620821 The position of biomineralization peptides within liposomes can influence how gold nanoparticles grow, reports a research team from the Institute of Science Tokyo. Peptides localized at the membrane interface promote branched structures, while those confined to the liposome interior favor spherical nanoparticles. The findings offer a new strategy for controlling nanoscale reaction environments in nanoparticle synthesis. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-peptide-position-gold-nanoparticles-stay.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:00:04 EDT news708609646 Monash University-led researchers have directly imaged tiny swirling structures inside an atomically thin semiconductor, opening new possibilities for future low-energy electronic technologies. Published in Science Advances, the study reveals structures known as merons and antimerons, nanoscale "whirlpools" of electrical polarization, in twisted layers of the semiconductor tungsten diselenide (WSe₂). https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-whirlpools-atom-thin-semiconductor.html Nanophysics Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:20:04 EDT news708593821 Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an artificial intelligence framework that helps researchers use atomic force microscopes to identify important nanoscale features while autonomously targeting the most informative areas of a sample for closer study. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-microscopes-nanoscale-features-sample.html Bio & Medicine Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:00:01 EDT news708262090 "Color coatings are expected to provide vivid color, brightness, gloss and long-term durability, yet no existing technology satisfies all of these requirements simultaneously," says Kobe University materials engineer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Conventional coatings usually rely on relatively thick pigment layers that fade and add significant weight. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-silicon-nanosphere-coatings-glossy-nonfading.html Nanomaterials Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:00:01 EDT news708084509