News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Using imaging tools at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have detected a phenomenon known as pre-melting at temperatures far lower than those previously observed. Pre-melting is the reason a patch of ice can be slippery even on a frigid, clear day. Although the spot is frozen, some part at the surface is wet. To make this discovery, the team used Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility that enabled them grow and observe ice nanocrystals at temperatures below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit. 

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has developed nanoparticles that can selectively bind to brain cells that mediate inflammation in Alzheimer's disease. The researchers found that both Alzheimer's disease and aging strongly affect the ability of nanoparticles to cross the blood-brain barrier – a network of blood vessels surrounding the brain that tightly regulate which molecules can enter the brain. The researchers injected the nanoparticles into both older and younger mice that either had Alzheimer's disease or were healthy. In the brains of Alzheimer's disease mice, they found high concentrations of nanoparticles regardless of age (although older Alzheimer's disease mice had stronger concentrations than younger ones) and a significant amount of nanoparticles in the brains of healthy older mice.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have created a metasurface-based imager (meta-imager) that can potentially replace traditional imaging optics in machine-vision applications, producing images at higher speed and using less power. A metasurface is a thin material composed of arrays of subwavelength nanostructures. The nanostructuring of the material into the meta-imager filter reduces the typically thick optical lens and enables front-end processing that encodes information more efficiently.

Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, have found a way to rein in a protein responsible for making the majority of human cancer cases worse. What the researchers discovered is a peptide compound that binds to the protein and suppresses its activity. To deliver this peptide into cells, the researchers used lipid nanoparticles.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a battery-independent fluorescent nanosensor based on single-wall carbon nanotubes and an inactive form of an enzyme called glucose oxidase. This nanosensor enables the continuous, reversible, and non-invasive bioimaging of glucose levels in body fluids and tissues. Also, the use of inactive glucose oxidase molecules has major advantages. For example, the manufacturing process of the nanosensors can be simplified, and no toxic byproducts are created. 

Researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that automates the discovery and validation of chemically stable two-dimensional (2D) materials. With this breakthrough technique, the researchers have already found six promising new 2D candidates overlooked by previous manual searches. “The consistent discovery of realistic materials proves these AI techniques can recapitulate human chemical intuition and scientific knowledge to some extent,” said Jianjun Hu, one of the scientists involved in this study. 

Researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Molecular Foundry, a user facility at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the University of Maryland; and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China have provided an unprecedented view of the structure and characteristics of medium- and high-entropy alloys. Using an advanced imaging technique, the team mapped, for the first time ever, the three-dimensional atomic coordinates of such alloys. Medium-entropy alloys combine three or four metals in roughly equal amounts; high-entropy alloys combine five or more in the same way. In contrast, conventional alloys are mostly one metal with others intermixed in lower proportions.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and North Carolina State University have discovered that graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms, can enhance an important property of metals, called the temperature coefficient of resistance. This property explains why metal wires become hot when an electric current runs through them. The researchers were able to reduce the coefficient of resistance of copper by 11% by adding 18 parts per million of graphene without decreasing electrical conductivity at room temperature. This discovery is relevant for the manufacturing of electric vehicle motors.

A joint research effort from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has shown how coal can play a vital role in next-generation electronic devices. A process developed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory first converts coal char into nanoscale carbon disks called “carbon dots,” which the University of Illinois research group demonstrated can be connected to form atomically thin membranes for applications in both two-dimensional transistors and memristors – technologies that will be critical to constructing more advanced electronics.

Scientists from the Masonic Medical Research Institute in Utica, NY; the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC; Stanford University School of Medicine; and McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, have designed nanomaterials that mimic dead and dying red blood cells. These nanomaterials target and are retained in the spleen to deliver a payload of inhibitors, such as histone deacetylase (HDAC). HDAC and similar chemical inhibitors can be used to treat cancers and other diseases. The researchers demonstrated that HDAC also modulates the inflammatory response, potentially improving the healing response following a heart attack.