Monthly Archives: May 2013

Shapeshifting, paradigm shifting nanoparticles

Leave a reply

Scientists at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) had approached the problem of targeting diseased cells in a new way, according to the May 28, 2013 UCSD news release (also available on EurekAlert) by Susan Brown,

Targeting treatments specifically to cancerous or other diseased cells depends on some means of accumulating high levels of a drug or other therapeutic agent at the specific site and keeping it there. Most efforts so far depend on matching a piece of the drug-delivering molecule to specific receptors on the surface of the target cell.

Inspiration for this new strategy came from biological systems that use shape to alter the ability of something to lock in place or slip away and escape, said Nathan Gianneschi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who led the project.

“We wanted to come up with a new approach,” Gianneschi said. “Specifically, we wanted to design switchable materials that we could inject in one shape and have them change to another between the blood and tumors.”

Here’s how they did it,

Some cancerous tissues produce high levels of a class of molecules called MMPs, for matrix metalloproteinases. These enzymes change how other proteins behave by altering their molecular configuration, leading to metastasis. Gianneschi and colleagues harnessed this ability to alter their nanoparticles in ways that would cause them to linger at the site of the tumor.

“We figured out how to make an autonomous material that could sense its environment and change accordingly,” Gianneschi said.

Each nanoparticle is made of many detergent-like molecules with one end that mixes readily with water and another that repels it. In solution, they self assemble into balls with the water-repellant ends inside, and in that configuration can easily be injected into a vein.

When mixed with MMPs in vials, the enzymes nicked the peptides on the surface of the spheres, which reassembled into netlike threads.

The team tested the concept further by injecting their new nanoparticles into mice with human fibrosarcomas, a kind of cancer that produces high levels of MMPs.

To mark when the spheres broke down to form other structures, the chemists placed one of two fluorecent dyes, rhodamine or fluorescein, inside the spheres. In close proximity, the dyes interact to create a specific light signal called FRET for Förster Resonance Energy Transfer, when energy jumps from rhodamine to fluorescein.

Within a day they detected FRET signals indicating that the spheres had reassembled at the sites of the tumors, and the signal persisted for at least a week.

The treatment is not inherently toxic. [emphasis mine] It did not appear to change the tumors in any way, and liver and kidney, the organs most vulnerable to collateral damage from treatments because they clear toxins from the body, were normal and healthy eight days after injection.

Different versions of these nanoparticles could be designed to respond to signals inherent to other types of cancers and inflamed tissue, the authors say. The spheres can also be engineered to carry drugs, or different diagnostic probes.

Right now, this same team is developing nanoparticles that carry an infrared dye, which would enable them to visualize tumors deeper inside the body along with other materials that can be imaged with instruments commonly available in the clinic.

I’m not sure I’d call this a ‘treatment’, it seems more like a new technique for drug delivery, diagnosis, etc. That quibble aside, this sounds very exciting and I hope the researchers will be able to start human clinical trials in the near future.

For those who’d like to read the research,

Enzyme-Directed Assembly of a Nanoparticle Probe in Tumor Tissue by Miao-Ping Chien, Matthew P. Thompson, Christopher V. Barback, David J. Hall, and Nathan C. Gianneschi.
ADVANCED MATERIALS, 2013, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201300823

This paper is behind a paywall.

NanoHigh in New York State

Leave a reply

I have much admiration for the State University of New York’s (SUNY) College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s (CNSE) outreach programs and this May 28, 2013 news item on Nanowerk highlights a particularly exciting one (Note: A link has been removed),

Governor [Mario] Cuomo today joined SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) and the City School District of Albany (CSDA) to announce that this year’s class of 23 Albany High School students have successfully completed the pioneering “NanoHigh” program. This program, which supports the Governor’s strategy to expand New York’s high-tech workforce through nanotechnology-based education, is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation – pushing the number of NanoHigh graduates to more than 100 since the program began in 2007.

…

Including this year’s NanoHigh class, 113 students have now graduated from the program since its inception. The nanotechnology curriculum is taught collaboratively at both Albany High School and at CNSE’s Albany NanoTech Complex. Taking place throughout the school year, the program also emphasizes opportunities for students from social groups that are typically underrepresented in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Students who take part in NanoHigh work with leading CNSE faculty and scientists in the college’s world-class laboratories and cleanrooms. They conduct hands-on experiments to explore a wide variety of nanotechnology-based applications, including integrated circuit technologies and nanoscale patterning and fabrication; nanobiomedical applications, such as innovations in nanomedicine and forensic DNA fingerprinting; clean energy technologies, such as dye-sensitized solar cells and ultracapacitors for energy storage; and nanoeconomics.

A ceremony to recognize the NanoHigh graduates was held at CNSE, with a new class scheduled to begin in the fall, allowing another group of 23 students to become engaged in the cutting-edge science of the 21st century.

You can learn more about NanoHigh here.

What do you do with a problem like regulating nanotechnology risks?

1 Reply

You get points for recognizing the “Sound of Music’ reference. Of course, the points aren’t useful for anything, which leads me in a roundabout way to Michael Berger’s fascinating May 28, 2013 Nanowerk Spotlight article, Does the EU’s chemical regulation sufficiently address nanotechnology risks? It’s a digest of a discussion, published in Nature Nanotechnology’s May 2013 issue, about nanotechnology regulations in light of the European Commission’s (EC; a unit in the European Union structure) Second Regulatory Review on Nanomaterials.

Berger summarizes Steffen Foss Hansen’s The European Union’s chemical legislation needs revision (article is behind a paywall) and Antonio Tajani’s response to Hansen, Substance identification of nanomaterials not key to ensuring their safe use (article is behind a paywall; Note: Links have been removed from the following excerpt),

The European Union’s chemical legislation known as REACH needs revision argues Steffen Foss Hansen, Associate Professor at DTU Environment, Technical University of Denmark. In a correspondence to the Editor of Nature Nanotechnology (“The European Union’s chemical legislation needs revision”), Hansen argues that REACH needs to be revised in three major areas.

First of all, a distinction needs to be made in the legal text of REACH between the bulk and the nano form of a given material and Hansen argues that the European Commission should acknowledge that nanomaterials cannot be identified solely by chemical composition. Additional main identifiers (such as primary particle size distribution, shape – including aspect ratio – specific surface area and surface treatment) are needed as this is the only manner in which it can be made clear that the properties and behavior of nanomaterials differ fundamentally from each other and from the bulk material.

…

In a response to Hansen’s Correspondence, Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, writes that substance identification of nanomaterials is not key to ensuring their safe use (“Substance identification of nanomaterials not key to ensuring their safe use”).

Tajani argues that substance identification is only one element and that trying to identify unambiguous rules for substance identification is probably elusive and might result in ever more complex rules on what is considered as the same substance as opposed to different substances, without necessarily resulting in more safety of nanomaterials. Instead, Tajani and the European Commission wish to focus on clarifying what is needed to demonstrate the safe use while also noting that the implementation of regulatory changes would take several years and hence is not desirable.

As per my Oct. 25, 2011 posting (Nanoparticle size doesn’t matter), my thinking on environmental, health, and safety issues regarding engineered nanomaterials has been in the process of change and I note that focusing on the size, shape, and other factors would make regulation next to impossible. So, I’m inclined to agree with Tajani’s arguments that trying to develop “unambiguous rules for substance identification” is not a worthwhile approach to dealing with any EHS issues that nanomaterials may present and will likely prove futile in the same way as gaining points for recognizing my attempted ‘Sound of Music’ reference.

I assume that Tajani and Hansen are referring to engineered nanomaterials as opposed to naturally occurring nanomaterials. (I too forget to specify but unless otherwise noted I’m usually referring to engineered nanomaterials.)

For me, two of the most compelling issues that Hansen presents revolve around a lack of data and standardized testing (from Hansen’s article in Nature),

… there are few measured exposure data and that few environmental fate and behaviour studies are available. …

… there are currently no standardized (eco)toxicity test guidelines in use …

I do wonder how many the word ‘few’ represents as I’m reminded of the plethora of studies on silver nanoparticles and on long, multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Certainly, they are attempting to address the situation regarding consistent testing protocols in the US as per my May 8, 2013 post about the NanoGo Consortium. Perhaps the EC folks could consider using these protocols as a model for a European version?  I assume that Hansen is commenting on a broader, European-inflected picture rather than the piecemeal, ‘globalish’ picture I have formed from my meanderings in the nanosphere.

Hansen also points this out in his Nature article (Note: Footnotes have been removed),

Another disturbing aspect of the Second Regulatory Review on Nanomaterials is that it focuses only on first-generation nanomaterials (that is, passive nanostructures such as nanoparticles). The Staff Working Paper acknowledges that second- and third-generation nanomaterials (for example, targeted drug-delivery systems and novel robotic devices) are entering early stages of market development, …

I’m beginning to find the discussion about definitions and resultant regulations wearing and am coming to the conclusion that the focus should be on bringing the information already gathered together, standardizing tests, determining what is  known and not known, and establishing some forward momentum.

Levitator helps turn liquid cement into liquid metal

Leave a reply

Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory have found a way to transform liquid cement into liquid metal according to a May 27,2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

In a move that would make the Alchemists of King Arthur’s time green with envy, scientists have unraveled the formula for turning liquid cement into liquid metal. This makes cement a semi-conductor and opens up its use in the profitable consumer electronics marketplace for thin films, protective coatings, and computer chips.

“This new material has lots of applications, including as thin-film resistors used in liquid-crystal displays, basically the flat panel computer monitor that you are probably reading this from at the moment,” said Chris Benmore, a physicist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory who worked with a team of scientists from Japan, Finland and Germany to take the “magic” out of the cement-to-metal transformation. Benmore and Shinji Kohara from Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute/SPring-8 led the research effort.

The May 27, 2013 Argonne National Laboratory press release by Tona Kunz details how the cement-to-metal transformation is performed (Note: Links have been removed),

The team of scientists studied mayenite, a component of alumina cement made of calcium and aluminum oxides. They melted it at temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius using an aerodynamic levitator with carbon dioxide laser beam heating. The material was processed in different atmospheres to control the way that oxygen bonds in the resulting glass. The levitator keeps the hot liquid from touching any container surfaces and forming crystals. This let the liquid cool into glassy state that can trap electrons in the way needed for electronic conduction. The levitation method was developed specifically for in-situ measurement at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source by a team led by Benmore.

The scientists discovered that the conductivity was created when the free electrons were “trapped” in the cage-like structures that form in the glass. The trapped of electrons provided a mechanism for conductivity similar to the mechanism that occurs in metals.

To uncover the details of this process, scientists combined several experimental techniques and analyzed them using a supercomputer.  They confirmed the ideas in experiments using different X-ray techniques at Spring 8 in Japan combined with earlier measurements at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source and the Advanced Photon Source.

As for why transforming liquid cement into liquid metal might be worthwhile (from the Argonne National Laboratory press release),

This change demonstrates a unique way to make metallic-glass material, which has positive attributes including better resistance to corrosion than traditional metal, less brittleness than traditional glass, conductivity, low energy loss in magnetic fields, and fluidity for ease of processing and molding.

Proteins which cause Alzheimer’s disease can be used to grow functionalized nanowires

Leave a reply

This is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything good resulting from Alzheimer’s Disease (even if it’s tangential). From the May 24, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

Prof. Sakaguchi and his team in Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University,jointly with MANA PI Prof. Kohei Uosaki and a research group from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have successfully developed a new technique for efficiently creating functionalized nanowires for the first time ever.

The group focused on the natural propensity of amyloid peptides, molecules which are thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease, to self-assemble into nanowires in an aqueous solution and controlled this molecular property to achieve their feat.

The May 23, 2013 National Institute for Materials press release, which originated the news item, offers insight into why functionalized nanowires are devoutly desired,

Functionalized nanowires are extremely important in the construction of nanodevices because they hold promise for use as integrated circuits and for the generation of novel properties, such as conductivity, catalysts and optical properties which are derived from their fine structure. However, some have remarked on the technical and financial limitations of the microfabrication technology required to create these structures. Meanwhile, molecular self-organization and functionalization have attracted attention in the field of next-generation nanotechnology development. Amyloid peptides, which are thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease, possess the ability to self-assemble into highly stable nanowires in an aqueous solution. Focusing on this, the research team became the first to successfully develop a new method for efficiently creating a multifunctional nanowire by controlling this molecular property.

The team designed a new peptide called SCAP, or structure-controllable amyloid peptide, terminated with a three-amino-acid-residue cap. By combining multiple SCAPs with different caps, the team found that self-organization is highly controlled at the molecular level. Using this new control method, the team formed a molecular nanowire with the largest aspect ratio ever achieved. In addition, they made modifications using various functional molecules including metals, semiconductors and biomolecules that successfully produced an extremely high quality functionalized nanowire. Going forward, this method is expected to contribute significantly to the development of new nanodevices through its application to a wide range of functional nanomaterials with self-organizing properties.

You can find the published paper here,

Formation of Functionalized Nanowires by Control of Self-Assembly Using Multiple Modified Amyloid Peptides by Hiroki Sakai, Ken Watanabe, Yuya Asanomi, Yumiko Kobayashi, Yoshiro Chuman, Lihong Shi, Takuya Masuda, Thomas Wyttenbach, Michael T. Bowers, Kohei Uosaki, & Kazuyasu Sakaguchi1. Advanced Functional Materials. doi: 10.1002/adfm.201300577 Article first published online: 23 APR 2013

The study is behind a paywall.

I have written about nanowires before and, in keeping with today’s theme of peculiar relationships  (Alzheimer’s disease), prior to this, the most unusual nanowire item I’ve come across had to do with growing them to the sounds  of music. From the Nanotech Mysteries (wiki), Scientists get musical page (Note: Footnotes have been removed),

After testing Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water‘, Chopin’s ‘Nocturne Opus 9 no. 1‘, Josh Abraham’s ‘Addicted to Bass‘, Rammstein’s ‘Das Model‘, and Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen‘, David Parlevliet found that music can be used to grow nanowires but they will be kinky.

Scientists want to grow straight nanowires and one of the popular methods is to “[blast] a voltage through silane gas to produce a plasma that pulses on and off at 1000 times a second. Over time the process enables molecules from the gas to deposit on a glass slide in the form of a mesh of crystalline silicon nanowires.”

Parlevliet, a PhD student at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, plugged in a music player instead of a pulse generator usually used for this purpose and observed the results. While there are no current applications for kinky nanowires, the Deep Purple music created the densest mesh. Rammstein’s music grew nanowires the least successfully. In his presentation to the Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network Symposium in March 2008, Parlevliet concluded that music could become more important for growing nanowires if applications can be found for the kinky ones.

Biofuels could be competitive with fossil fuels according to Australians

1 Reply

The University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology released a three-year study on biofuels and aviation fuel at a Weds., May 22, 2013 aviation environmental summit hosted by Boeing, according to a May 24, 2013 article by Steve Creedy for The Australian.com.au,

AVIATION biofuels produced in Australia using widely touted feedstocks and existing technology would be competitive only if crude oil was almost three times its present price, a three-year study by universities and industry has found.

The cheapest of three feedstocks studied, sugar cane, would be competitive if crude oil was at $US301 a barrel.

This increased to $US374 for oil-producing seeds from the pongamia tree and a huge $US1343 with microalgae. Brent crude is trading at about $US105 a barrel.

But technological improvements in key areas could significantly lower the price to $US168 for sugarcane, $US255 for pongamia seeds and $US385 for algae.

Peter Hannam’s May 22, 2013 article about the presentation for the Newcastle Herald provides some context for the airlines’ interest in biofuels,

… Nations and carriers continue to wrangle over rules to curb emissions. The European Union earlier this year suspended plans to impose emission permits for any flight arriving or leaving European airspace. The EU backed down after threats of non-compliance or retaliation from China, India and the US, although discussions continue for global restrictions to come into force from 2020.

As Creedy notes in his article, ” … technological improvements in key areas could significantly lower the cost …” and this would require funds. There isn’t any mention in either Creedy’s or Hannam’s article about increased funding.

You can find out more about the Queensland Sustainable Aviation Fuel Initiative here and this is where the group’s latest research study can be found,

Technoeconomic analysis of renewable aviation fuel from microalgae, Pongamia pinnata, and sugarcane by Daniel Klein-Marcuschamer, Christopher Turner, Mark Allen, Peter Gray, Ralf G Dietzgen, Peter M Gresshoff, Ben Hankamer, Kirsten Heimann, Paul T Scott, Evan Stephens, Robert Speight, and Lars K Nielsen.  Biofuels, Bioprod. Bioref.. doi: 10.1002/bbb.1404 Article First published online: 25 APR 2013

This study is behind a paywall.

Better photolithography and nanoscale manipulation and manufacturing (maybe) with flat lenses

Leave a reply

A flat spray-on lens sounded only mildly intriguing as per the May 23, 2012 University of British Columbia news release (UBC engineer helps pioneer flat spray-on optical lens) on EurekAlert. It was the May 24, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily that provided more exciting possibilities,

For the first time, scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new type of lens that bends and focuses ultraviolet (UV) light in such an unusual way that it can create ghostly, 3D images of objects that float in free space. The easy-to-build lens could lead to improved photolithography, nanoscale manipulation and manufacturing, and even high-resolution three-dimensional imaging, as well as a number of as-yet-unimagined applications in a diverse range of fields.

The May 24, 2013 NIST news release, which originated the news item, describes some of the optical principles at work,

An article published in the journal Nature* explains that the new lens is formed from a flat slab of metamaterial with special characteristics that cause light to flow backward—a counterintuitive situation in which waves and energy travel in opposite directions, creating a negative refractive index.

Naturally occurring materials such as air or water have a positive refractive index. You can see this when you put a straw into a glass of water and look at it from the side. The straw appears bent and broken as a result of the change in index of refraction between air, which has an index of 1, and water, which has an index of about 1.33. Because the refractive indices are both positive, the portion of the straw immersed in the water appears bent forward with respect to the portion in air.

The negative refractive index of metamaterials causes light entering or exiting the material to bend in a direction opposite what would occur in almost all other materials. For instance, if we looked at our straw placed in a glass filled with a negative-index material, the immersed portion would appear to bend backward, completely unlike the way we’re used to light behaving.

In 1967, Russian physicist Victor Veselago described how a material with both negative electric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability would have a negative index of refraction. (Permittivity is a measure of a material’s response to an applied electric field, while permeability is a measure of the material’s response to an applied magnetic field.)

Veselago reasoned that a material with a refractive index of -1 could be used to make a lens that is flat, as opposed to traditional refractive lenses, which are curved. A flat lens with a refractive index of -1 could be used to directly image three-dimensional objects, projecting a three-dimensional replica into free space.

A negative-index flat lens like this has also been predicted to enable the transfer of image details substantially smaller than the wavelength of light and create higher-resolution images than are possible with lenses made of positive-index materials such as glass.

It seems the metamateriels that solve the problem posed by lenses made of glass present a few problems of their own (from the NIST news release),

… For the past decade, scientists have made metamaterials that work at microwave, infrared and visible wavelengths by fabricating repeating metallic patterns on flat substrates. However, the smaller the wavelength of light scientists want to manipulate, the smaller these features need to be, which makes fabricating the structures an increasingly difficult task. Until now, making metamaterials that work in the UV has been impossible because it required making structures with features as small as 10 nanometers, or 10 billionths of a meter.

Moreover, because of limitations inherent in their design, metamaterials of this type designed for infrared and visible wavelengths have, so far, been shown to impart a negative index of refraction to light that is traveling only in a certain direction, making them hard to use for imaging and other applications that rely on refracted light.

To overcome these problems, researchers working at NIST took inspiration from a theoretical metamaterial design recently proposed by a group at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Holland. They adapted the design to work in the UV—a frequency range of particular technological interest.

According to co-authors Xu, Amit Agrawal and Henri Lezec, aside from achieving record-short wavelengths, their metamaterial lens is inherently easy to fabricate. It doesn’t rely on nanoscale patterns, but instead is a simple sandwich of alternating nanometer-thick layers of silver and titanium dioxide, the construction of which is routine. And because its unique design consists of a stack of strongly coupled waveguides sustaining backward waves, the metamaterial exhibits a negative index of refraction to incoming light regardless of its angle of travel.

This realization of a Veselago flat lens operating in the UV is the first such demonstration of a flat lens at any frequency beyond the microwave. By using other combinations of materials, it may be possible to make similarly layered metamaterials for use in other parts of the spectrum, including the visible and the infrared.

The metamaterial flat lens achieves its refractive action over a distance of about two wavelengths of UV light, about half a millionth of a meter—a focal length challenging to achieve with conventional refractive optics such as glass lenses. Furthermore, transmission through the metamaterial can be turned on and off using higher frequency light as a switch, allowing the flat lens to also act as a shutter with no moving parts.

“Our lens will offer other researchers greater flexibility for manipulating UV light at small length scales,” says Lezec. “With its high photon energies, UV light has a myriad of applications, including photochemistry, fluorescence microscopy and semiconductor manufacturing. That, and the fact that our lens is so easy to make, should encourage other researchers to explore its possibilities.”

I would have offered some information about what they are spraying onto the lens but neither the NIST nor the University of British Columbia (UBC) news releases provides any details about the ‘spray-on’ aspect of this flat lens. There is this from the UBC news release,

“The idea of a flat lens goes way back to the 1960s when a Russian physicist came up with the theory,” Chau [Kenneth Chau, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at UBC’s Okanagan campus] says. “The challenge is that there are no naturally occurring materials to make that type of flat lens. Through trial and error, and years of research, we have come up with a fairly simple recipe for a spray-on material that can act as that flat lens.”

The research team has developed a substance that can be affixed to surfaces like a glass slide and turn them into flat lenses for ultraviolet light imaging of biological specimens.

“Curved lenses always have a limited aperture,” he explains. “With a flat lens, suddenly you can make lenses with an arbitrary aperture size – perhaps as big as a football field.”

While the spray-on, flat lens represents a significant advancement in technology, it is only an important first step, Chau says.

“This is the closest validation we have of the original flat lens theory,” he says. “The recipe, now that we’ve got it working, is simple and cost-effective.

For those who want to pursue the research paper, here’s a link to and a citation for it,

All-angle negative refraction and active flat lensing of ultraviolet light by Ting Xu, Amit Agrawal, Maxim Abashin, Kenneth J. Chau, & Henri J. Lezec. Nature 497, 470–474 (23 May 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12158  Published online 22 May 2013

The paper is behind a paywall.

Infographic of nanotech patents

Leave a reply

You can find the full May 21, 2013 posting featuring the Infographic: Nanotechnology Patents in the United States and Beyond here on good.is. I’ve downloaded a copy as a preview,

Nanotech Patent Infographic downloaded from http://www.good.is/posts/infographic-nanotechnology-patents-in-the-united-states-and-beyond

Nanotech Patent Infographic downloaded from http://www.good.is/posts/infographic-nanotechnology-patents-in-the-united-states-and-beyond

I think it’s a good companion to today’s (May 24, 2013) earlier posting about Senior Scientific and its newly awarded patent.

Patent for detecting, imaging, and measuring cancer cells with nanoparticles awarded

Leave a reply

The patent awarded to Senior Scientific seems to offer a generous scope, from the May 23, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Senior Scientific, LLC, a unit of Manhattan Scientifics and a developer of molecular imaging and nanobiotechnology for the early detection and localization of cancer and other human diseases, today announced that the United States Patent Office (USPTO) has issued U.S. Patent No. 8,447,379 entitled “Detection, measurement, and imaging of cells such as cancer and other biologic substances using targeted nanoparticles and magnetic properties thereof.”

The patent includes claims directed to detecting and measuring biological substances such as cancer cells. The methods can be used in humans, with no harmful radiation, and can find cancers much earlier than is possible with conventional technologies.

I find this comment rather interesting, from the news item,

Dr. Flynn [Edward R. Flynn], Chief Scientist of Senior Scientific, said, “I am encouraged to see my work [based on NanoMagnetic RelaxometryTM] heading to market, and pleased that we now also have this patent to protect the business.” [emphasis mine]

I did search the USPTO website for U.S. Patent No. 8,447,379 to find this,

Detection, measurement, and imaging of cells such as cancer and other biologic substances using targeted nanoparticles and magnetic properties thereof


Abstract
The present invention can provide a method of determining the presence, location, quantity, or a combination thereof, of a biological substance, comprising: (a) exposing a sample to a plurality of targeted nanoparticles, where each targeted nanoparticle comprises a paramagnetic nanoparticle conjugated with one or more targeting agents that preferentially bind with the biological substance, under conditions that facilitate binding of the targeting agent to at least one of the one or more biological substances; (b) subjecting the sample to a magnetic field of sufficient strength to induce magnetization of the nanoparticles; (c) measuring a magnetic field of the sample after decreasing the magnetic field applied in step b below a threshold; (d) determining the presence, location, quantity, or a combination thereof, of the one or more biologic substances from the magnetic field measured in step (c).

Unfortunately, this does not clarify the situation for me. It looks as if they have granted a patent for a specific method or technique but given the nature of the ‘patent wars’ I imagine this language allows a fair degree of interpretation by the company that owns the patent. In any event, you can find out more about Manhattan Scientifics (Senior Scientific’s parent company) here.

Graphene and the next step according to ID TechEx

Leave a reply

Hats off to ID TechEx for a great promotional strategy. The consulting company sent out a May 22, 2013 news release about graphene and its current state of commercialization which was picked up as a May 23, 2013 news item at Nanowerk,

Graphene has already come a long way towards commercialisation, despite its short history. Manufacturers are busy closing their second or third round of financing and many are installing multi-tonne production capacities across the world. At the same, many are moving up the value chain beyond simple powders to offer formulations and master-batches. The industry is also slowly realising that graphene is still far away from high frequency application, and is therefore looking for more realistic and lower hanging fruits. All these factors indicate that the hype is beginning to pass. But really hard questions still remain about what comes next and how to grow revenues.

The ID TechEx May 22, 2013 news release goes on to describe the challenges and promote the company’s graphene report,

We find that two main factors are acting as hard brakes on commercial growth of graphene. The first is that there is market confusion (and thus risks for the end user) and the second is that the main go-to-market strategy is replacing a well-entrenched incumbent solution. The industry should address both challenges if it is to grow beyond the $100 million dollar market forecast by us in our market research report (www.IDTechEx.com/gra

…
The market confusion stems from the fact that there is no single graphene on the market. Instead, there are many graphene types. Each type is a departure from the ideal form and offers a different package of material properties. It will therefore be suitable for different end uses.
Graphene can also be manufactured using a variety of techniques. This is a positive factor in that it creates more pathways for entering the production business, but it also adds to the overall confusion. This is because each technique produces a somewhat different graphene type with a different price point.
It is currently mostly upon the potential end users and consumers – and there are many of them – to sift through this confusing market space to evaluate each graphene type and production technique for their own sets of requirements. While it does allow for differentiation between suppliers, it is a barrier against adoption. It therefore will be commercially beneficial if graphene producers collectively establish clear guidelines that will help reduce the risk and burden to the end users.
There are promising signs that the industry is moving to dispel the confusion. Business-driven conferences are playing a positive role in bringing clarity to the market. [emphasis mine] The industry is already speaking of an association, and players are moving up the value chain en masse to relieve the burden off the end users. [emphasis mine]

I’ll get back to the business-driven conferences later but there is already some sort of graphene association, it’s the Graphene Stakeholders Association as per my April 23, 2013 posting.

The company’s May 22, 2013 news release provides more analysis and self-promotion,

Graphene has yet not identified many applications where it has a first mover advantage. The prevalent go-to-market strategy today is replacing existing incumbent solutions. Here graphene attempts to do what already exists on the market, only a little bit better and/or a little bit cheaper.
There are many examples that verify this observation. CVD graphene pushes to replace ITO (or even ITO alternatives), but it is more expensive and has a higher sheet resistance. Graphene powders attempt to replace graphite or black carbon in composites as additives, but they are more expensive and the potential reduction in wt% may not be enough to create large and rapid market shares. Graphene competes with activated carbon in supercapacitors, and while it can offer a comparative performance advantage, its premium price will initially confine it to niche and low-volume corners of the business (more examples and more thorough assessment can be found in our report (www.IDTechEx.com/gra).
…
The industry is moving, albeit very slowly, beyond the ‘replacement’ phase too. We have seen several interesting product concepts such as transparent low-cost inks, IR images, low-noise sensors, etc, but more effort and imagination will be required. The alternative will otherwise inevitably be that suppliers will be forced to price to cost, and not to value. Graphene should be more than a “I am cheaper than the other guy” material.

The coup de grâce lies at the very end of the news release web page where the company mentions and provides a link to its upcoming “business-driven” conference, Graphene LIVE! 2013, Santa Clara, California 20-21 November 2013.

Revenons à mes moutons, the report webpage provides details about the report, a graph, and the report’s Table of Contents,

IDTechEx forecasts that 100 million dollars of graphene will be sold in 2018 into a range of applications, including RFID, smart packaging, supercapacitors, composites, ITO replacement, sensors, logic and memory, etc.
For each market segment, the forecasts are provided by both value and mass. The forecast models are based on (a) our detailed market knowledge at application level, (b) our critical assessment of graphene’s value proposition per target market, and (c) existing and projected commercial activity at company level. Our knowledge base was built up by interviewing relevant players across the industry and tracking and interpreting the latest around the globe.
IDTechEx finds that there is no single graphene, but they are different types of graphene. Each type has a different a microstructure, layer number, oxygen content, etc. And each type offers a different set of properties therefore targeting a different set of markets.
For the curious, here are the prices for the report,

Graphene Opportunities 2013-2018: Technology, Markets, Players
Electronic     £2595.00
Electronic and Hardcopy     £2750.00

 I like the fact that ID TechEx has included a lot of free information as they promote their report and their conference in a cohesive strategy.