a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
Heinrich (“Heini”) Rohrer, a nanotechnology pioneer, Nobel Prize winner, and personal mentor to me and many other scientists, has died. The field of nanotechnology was largely enabled by Heini’s co-invention of the scanning tunneling microscope along with his collaborator, Gerd Binnig, in the early-1980s. This microscope scans an atomically sharp tip across a surface to …
Continue reading "A Giant of Nanotechnology Falls – Heinrich Rohrer"
“Hey do you guys want to see some fluorescent nanodiamond water?!” I eagerly yelled out as two little boys walked by. Honestly, they probably had no idea what I was talking about, but they still excitedly wandered over. I handed them an ultraviolet flashlight and encouraged them to take a look underneath the black drape …
Continue reading "Kids Learn About Nanodiamonds and I Learn About Kids"
You’ve heard about how lasers work, but what does this mean for science?! We see everyday how light interacts with matter. Ever wonder how a rainbow is formed? Or why your straw looks bent or even broken when it is placed in a cup of water? Both of these phenomena have to do with light …
Continue reading "Laser Science. Light Can Do Way More Than Just Bend"
Science doesn't always look like this: Sometimes it looks like this! We have scientists in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and even Washington! Every week we get together for a videoconference to coordinate all the different kinds of research happening here at the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. Above is a series of screenshots Franz Geiger took during …
Continue reading "How Do Scientists in Four Different States Work Together?"
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of nanotechnology is how close in size the nanoparticles we can make are to the nano-sized components of living organisms. These nano sized proteins, lipids and nucleic acids have evolved to form the network of biological machines to support the abundance of life on this planet. Just as …
Continue reading "Nature’s Nanomachines Harnessed to Enable Healthier Delicious Ice Cream"
Some cells in our body have elongated structures or microvilli at their surface. These microvilli have many functions that help the cell to survive, and some features that make them act like train tracks that shuttle substances along them. We recently captured a movie of nanoparticles hitching a ride on these cellular train tracks. Nanoparticles …
Continue reading "Surfing Particles: taking a ride using living cell machinery"
Nanodiamonds are far too small to be seen by the naked eye, but everything changes if you make them glow! We at the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology have developed a new way to make nanodiamonds absorb and then release light—a property known as fluorescence (see this explainer post). I just made these fluorescent nanodiamonds and …
Continue reading "Fluorescent Nanodiamonds – the movie!"
Beer. It’s one of humanity’s finest inventions and is the topic of several blogs on its own. There is a lot that beer can teach us. For example, recently a group of hard working scientists invented a new way to brew batches of nanoparticles that is reminiscent of beer brewing. For those of you not …
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I was talking to my mom the other day, about nanoparticles of course, and she said: "Wait a second! Are there different sizes of nanoparticles?? I thought nano was just nano! You know?" Thanks for the question mom! 🙂 Refresher: nanoparticles are just spherical or nearly-spherical nanomaterials. To answer my mom's question: There are LOTS of different …
Continue reading "In which my Mom questions the size of my nanoparticles"
I love a good dystopian novel where technology has gotten out of hand and changed some futuristic society into a place none of us would want to live – think Brave New World, 1984, Cat’s Cradle, or Oryx and Crake. I think these fictional stories are great thought experiments, revealing the importance of science done …
Continue reading "To Label or Not To Label"
Sustainable Nano 