Tag Archives: NanoInk

Samsung ‘GROs’ graphene-based micro-antennas and a brief bit about the business of nanotechnology

A Feb. 22, 2013 news item on Nanowerk highlights a Samsung university grant (GRO) programme which announced funding for graphene-based micro-antennas,

The Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communication project, one of the award-winning proposals under the Samsung Global Research Outreach (GRO) programme, aims to use graphene antennas to implement wireless communication over very short distances (no more than a centimetre) with high-capacity information transmission (tens or hundreds of gigabits per second). Antennas made ??of [sic] graphene could radiate electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band and would allow for high-speed information transmission. Thanks to the unique properties of this nanomaterial, the new graphene-based antenna technology would also make it possible to manufacture antennas a thousand times smaller than those currently used.

The GRO programme—an annual call for research proposals by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (Seoul, South Korea)—has provided the UPC-led project with US$120,000 in financial support.

The Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communication project is a joint project (from the news item; Note: A link has been removed),

“Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communications” – a proposal submitted by an interdepartmental team based at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)—will receive US$120,000 to develop micrometre-scale graphene antennas capable of transmitting information at a high speed over very short distances. The project will be carried out in the coming months.

The Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communication project, one of the award-winning proposals under the Samsung Global Research Outreach (GRO) programme, aims to use graphene antennas to implement wireless communication over very short distances (no more than a centimetre) with high-capacity information transmission (tens or hundreds of gigabits per second). Antennas made ??of graphene could radiate electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band and would allow for high-speed information transmission. Thanks to the unique properties of this nanomaterial, the new graphene-based antenna technology would also make it possible to manufacture antennas a thousand times smaller than those currently used.

There’s more about the Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communication project here,

 A remarkably promising application of graphene is that of Graphene-enabled Wireless Communications (GWC). GWC advocate for the use of graphene-based plasmonic antennas –graphennas, see Fig. 1- whose plasmonic effects allow them to radiate EM waves in the terahertz band (0.1 – 10 THz). Moreover, preliminary results sustain that this frequency band is up to two orders of magnitude below the optical frequencies at which metallic antennas of the same size resonate, thereby enhancing the transmission range of graphene-based antennas and lowering the requirements on the corresponding transceivers. In short, graphene enables the implementation of nano-antennas just a few micrometers in size that are not doable with traditional metallic materials.

Thanks to both the reduced size and unique radiation capabilities of ZZ, GWC may represent a breakthrough in the ultra-short range communications research area. In this project we will study the application of GWC within the scenario of off-chip communication, which includes communication between different chips of a given device, e.g. a cell phone.

A new term, graphenna, appears to be have been coined. The news item goes on to offer more detail about the project and about the number of collaborating institutions,

The first stage of the project, launched in October 2012, focuses on the theoretical foundations of wireless communications over short distances using graphene antennas. In particular, the group is analysing the behaviour of electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band for very short distances, and investigating how coding and modulation schemes can be adapted to achieve high transmission rates while maintaining low power consumption.

The group believes the main benefits of the project in the medium term will derive from its application for internal communication in multicore processors. Processors of this type have a number of sub-processors that share and execute tasks in parallel. The application of wireless communication in this area will make it possible to integrate thousands of sub-processors within a single processor, which is not feasible with current communication systems.

The results of the project will lead to an increase in the computational performance of these devices. This improvement would allow large amounts of data to be processed at very high speed, which would be very useful for streamlining data management at processing centres (“big data”) used, for example, in systems like Facebook and Google. The project, which builds on previous results obtained with the collaboration of the University of Wuppertal in Germany, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, and Georgia Tech in the United States, is expected to yield its first results in April 2013.

The project is being carried out by the NaNoNetworking Centre in Catalonia (N3Cat), a network formed at the initiative of researchers with the UPC’s departments of Electronic Engineering and Computer Architecture, together with colleagues at Georgia Tech.

Anyone interested in  Samsung’s GRO programme can find more here,

The SAMSUNG Global Research Outreach (GRO) program, open to leading universities around the world, is Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd. & related Samsung companies (SAMSUNG)’s annual call for research proposals.

As this Samsung-funded research project is being announced, Dexter Johnson details the business failure of NanoInk in a Feb. 22, 2013 posting on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website), Note: Links have been removed,

One of the United State’s first nanotechnology companies, NanoInk, has gone belly up, joining a host of high-profile nanotechnology-based companies that have shuttered their doors in the last 12 months: Konarka, A123 Systems and Ener1.

These other three companies were all tied to the energy markets (solar in the case of Konarka and batteries for both A123 and Ener1), which are typically volatile, with a fair number of shuttered businesses dotting their landscapes. But NanoInk is a venerable old company in comparison to these other three and is more in what could be characterized as the “picks-and-shovels” side of the nanotechnology business, microscopy tools.

Dexter goes on to provide an  analysis of the NanoInk situation which makes for some very interesting reading along with the comments—some feisty, some not—his posting has provoked.

I am juxtaposing the Samsung funding announcement with this mention of Dexter’s piece regarding a  ‘nanotechnology’ business failure in an effort to provide some balance between enthusiasm for the research and the realities of developing businesses and products based on that research.

Chad Mirkin, spherical nucleic acids, and a new ‘periodic table’

There was a big splash in July 2012 with the announcement that Chad Mirkin’s team at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) had devised a skin cream that penetrated the skin barrier to deliver medication (my July 4, 2012 posting),

A team led by a physician-scientist and a chemist — from the fields of dermatology and nanotechnology — is the first to demonstrate the use of commercial moisturizers to deliver gene regulation technology that has great potential for life-saving therapies for skin cancers.

The topical delivery of gene regulation technology to cells deep in the skin is extremely difficult because of the formidable defenses skin provides for the body. The Northwestern approach takes advantage of drugs consisting of novel spherical arrangements of nucleic acids. These structures, each about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, have the unique ability to recruit and bind to natural proteins that allow them to traverse the skin and enter cells.

Mirkin has just finished presenting (Feb. 15, 2013 and Feb. 17, 2013) more information about spherical nucleic acids and their implications at the AAAS  (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2013 meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. From the Feb. 15, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

Northwestern University’s Chad A. Mirkin, a world-renowned leader in nanotechnology research and its application, has invented and developed a powerful material that could revolutionize biomedicine: spherical nucleic acids (SNAs).

Potential applications include using SNAs to carry nucleic acid-based therapeutics to the brain for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, as well as other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Mirkin is aggressively pursuing treatments for such diseases with Alexander H. Stegh, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“These structures are really quite spectacular and incredibly functional,” Mirkin said. “People don’t typically think about DNA in spherical form, but this novel arrangement of nucleic acids imparts interesting chemical and physical properties that are very different from conventional nucleic acids.”

Spherical nucleic acids consist of densely packed, highly oriented nucleic acids arranged on the surface of a nanoparticle, typically gold or silver.  [emphasis mine] The tiny non-toxic balls, each roughly 15 nanometers in diameter, can do things the familiar but more cumbersome double helix can’t do:

  • SNAs can naturally enter cells and effect gene knockdown, making SNAs a superior tool for treating genetic diseases using gene regulation technology.
  • SNAs can easily cross formidable barriers in the human body, including the blood-brain barrier and the layers that make up skin.
  • SNAs don’t elicit an immune response, and they resist degradation, resulting in longer lifetimes in the body.

“The field of medicine needs new constructs and strategies for treating disease,” Mirkin said. “Many of the ways we treat disease are based on old methods and materials. Nanotechnology offers the ability to rapidly create new structures with properties that are very different from conventional forms of matter.”

“We now can go after a whole new set of diseases,” Mirkin said. “Thanks to the Human Genome Project and all of the genomics research over the last two decades, we have an enormous number of known targets. And we can use the same tool for each, the spherical nucleic acid. We simply change the sequence to match the target gene. That’s the power of gene regulation technology.”

###

A member of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Mirkin is known for invention and development of biological and chemical diagnostic systems based upon nanomaterials. He is the inventor and chief developer of Dip-Pen Nanolithography, a groundbreaking nanoscale fabrication and analytical tool, and is the founder of four Chicago-based companies: AuraSense, AuraSense Therapeutics, Nanosphere and NanoInk.

Mirkin, in addition to his work with spherical nucleic acids, has been busy with other nanoparticles and possible dreams of a new ‘periodic table of elements’, from the Feb. 17, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

Forging a new periodic table using nanostructures

Northwestern University’s Chad A. Mirkin, …, has developed a completely new set of building blocks that is based on nanoparticles and DNA. Using these tools, scientists will be able to build — from the bottom up, just as nature does — new and useful structures.

“We have a new set of building blocks,” Mirkin said. “Instead of taking what nature gives you, we can control every property of the new material we make. We’ve always had this vision of building matter and controlling architecture from the bottom up, and now we’ve shown it can be done.”

Using nanoparticles and DNA, Mirkin has built more than 200 different crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. Some of the lattice types can be found in nature, but he also has built new structures that have no naturally occurring mineral counterpart.

Mirkin can make new materials and arrangements of particles by controlling the size, shape, type and location of nanoparticles within a given particle lattice. He has developed a set of design rules that allow him to control almost every property of a material.

New materials developed using his method could help improve the efficiency of optics, electronics and energy storage technologies. “These same nanoparticle building blocks have already found wide-spread commercial utility in biology and medicine as diagnostic probes for markers of disease,” Mirkin added.

With this present advance, Mirkin uses nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds.” He starts with a nanoparticle, which could be gold, silver, platinum or a quantum dot, for example. The core material is selected depending on what physical properties the final structure should have.

He then attaches hundreds of strands of DNA (oligonucleotides) to the particle. The oligonucleotide’s DNA sequence and length determine how bonds form between nanoparticles and guide the formation of specific crystal lattices.

“This constitutes a completely new class of building blocks in materials science that gives you a type of programmability that is extraordinarily versatile and powerful,” Mirkin said. “It provides nanotechnologists for the first time the ability to tailor properties of materials in a highly programmable way from the bottom up.”

If I read these two news releases rightly, the process (nanoparticles as atoms and DNA as bonds), Mirkin uses to create new structures is the same process he has used to create spherical nucleic acids. Given Mirkin’s entrepreneurial inclinations, I am curious as to how many and what kind of patents might be ‘protecting’ this work.

nano tech 2013 in Tokyo

I usually mention International Nanotechnology Exhibition and Conference held in Tokyo as it is one of the larger nanotechnology shows in the world. Last year, over they recorded over 45,000 visits, 649 exhibitors, and 802 booths during the three day show which was held Feb. 14 – 17, 2012 according to the report on 2012 show.

This year’s nano tech 2013 will run from Jan. 30 – Feb. 2, 2013 and thanks to the folks at NanoInk for reminding me of the show in their Jan. 10,2013 news release,

NanoInk, Inc.® is pleased to announce that its NanoFabrication Systems and NanoProfessor® Divisions will be exhibiting and making presentations at the 12th International Nanotechnology Exhibition and Conference, from Wednesday, January 30 through Friday, February 1 in Tokyo, Japan. The conference will be held at the East Exhibition Hall 4, 5, 6 & Conference Tower at Tokyo Big Sight. NanoInk’s NanoFabrication Systems and NanoProfessor Divisions will be at booth number 5F-15. Technical staff will be available to provide demonstrations of the NLP 2000 System, and answer questions about NanoInk’s Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®) technology, applications, and products for both research and education.

On Friday, February 1, at 11:30, Dean Hart, chief commercial officer for NanoInk, will be making a presentation in the Main Theater (East Hall 5) titled, “Meeting the Nanotech Workforce Needs Through Hands-On Education.” Following that, Saju Nettikadan, applications director for NanoInk, will be making a presentation at 13:00 in the same location titled, “New Advances in Applications Using Dip-Pen Nanolithography.”

The NLP 2000 is also the cornerstone of NanoInk’s NanoProfessor Division, which is the global leader in handson undergraduate nanotechnology education. In just over 24 months, the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program has been chosen to serve as the foundation for hands-on undergraduate nanotechnology education by over 20 institutions in five countries. It alternates between classroom lectures and engaging, handson nanoscale lab work. The NanoProfessor curriculum includes a textbook authored by leading nanotechnology experts, covering the topics of Nanotechnology Instrumentation, Imaging and Nanofabrication Techniques, Nanophysics, Nanochemistry, Nanobiology, and Perspectives on Environmental, Health, and Safety within Nanotechnology. In conducting the hands-on lab experiments, students work with state-of-the-art, nano-centric instrumentation including NanoInk’s NLP 2000 Desktop NanoFabrication System.

You can read the full news release here.  I did previously note that NanoInk’s NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program had come to the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada)  in an April 12, 2011 posting.

Two cells on a single computer chip—NanoInk offers new services

I seem to be in an ‘assay’ mood (Feb. 7, 2012) as this is today’s second posting where the topic arises.  NanoInk has issued a Feb. 7, 2012 press release announcing some new contract services from its NanoFabrication Systems Division. The bit I found most interesting was this,

Saju Nettikadan, Ph.D., director of applications development at NanoInk, said, “NanoInk findings also show that two different cell types can be placed at defined locations on a single chip to form single cell co-cultures. [emphasis mine] We have demonstrated the single cell co-culture proof-of-concept using 3T3 fibroblasts and C2C12 myoblasts. As part of our live single cell assay contract research program, we welcome requests to design and develop custom assays.”

Let’s get back to the new service being offered,

NanoInk’s® NanoFabrication Systems Division announced today that it introduced a new contract services program dedicated to the development of live single cell array assays. This offering supplements NanoInk’s portfolio of Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®)-based systems and tools used for micro and nanopatterning applications to include a service component. Life scientists now have even more ways to access the advantages of DPN for their research.

At the heart of the NanoFabrication Systems’ contract services program is its DPN nanofabrication instruments capable of constructing complex multiplexed patterns of biocompatible materials at subcellular scales. This capability can be utilized to construct defined microenvironments for attaching live single cells and subsequently investigating cellular responses. Single cells (up to 5,000 individual cells on a single NanoInk chip) can be exposed to different external stimuli (including biological, chemical and topographical stimuli) and the downstream effects of these stimuli can be monitored at the cellular, proteomic or genomic levels. Additionally, studies on limited or rare cells harvested from a patient can potentially be exposed to many conditions, making theranostic applications possible. This new contract services program will enable researchers to engage NanoInk to design, develop and construct custom single cell assays.

“We believe that NanoInk’s single cell assay technology has the potential to revolutionize in vitro cell biology research, including applications in drug toxicity testing and drug screening. Micropatterned single cells can also be harnessed to probe underlying mechanisms of cell behavior like cell-cell interactions, cell-surface interactions, cell migration, and cell invasion,” explained Tom Warwick, general manager of the NanoFabrication Systems Division.

For anyone who’s not familiar with the word assay or, like me, knows it only as a term used in mining and geology, here’s a definition of assay as it relates to diagnoses (from TheFreeDictionary),

diagnostic test assay – a quantitative or qualitative test of a substance (especially an ore or a drug) to determine its components; frequently used to test for the presence or concentration of infectious agents or antibodies etc. [emphasis mine]

Yes, I was surprised to realize the meaning is roughly the same.

Here’s one final tidbit from the news release and contact information should be you in need of their services,

NanoInk has already demonstrated the ability of its nanofabrication platform to place single cells at defined locations on a substrate and to then expose individual cells to small molecules and nanoparticles.

For more information on nanofabrication instruments and tools, as well as the new single cell assay contract services program, please contact Tom Warwick at twarwick@nanoink.net, (847)679-NANO (6266) or visit www.nanoink.net/divisions.html#NanoFabrication.

You can find out more about NanoInk here.

NanoProfessor education programme comes to the University of Calgary

In what appears to be a Canadian first, the University of Calgary has purchased a nanotechnology curriculum, NanoProfessor, from a company that also sells nanofabrication products, NanoInk. From the April 11, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

NanoProfessor™, a division of NanoInk, Inc.® focused on nanotechnology education, announced today that the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada is the first school in Canada to implement the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program. The University of Calgary’s Nanoscience program aims to provide participants with working knowledge of nanotechnology and valuable exposure to cutting-edge instrumentation used to fabricate nanomaterials. The NanoProfessor Program helps the University of Calgary meet this objective by providing instrumentation, curriculum, and hands-on labs to expand students’ understanding, skills, and real-world experience needed to succeed in the growing nanotechnology industry.

“We are proud to be the first school in Canada to implement the cutting-edge NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program. We are committed to providing our students with a meaningful education based on the principle of learning science by doing science,” said David Cramb, Director of the Nanoscience program at the University of Calgary. “Not only does the NanoProfessor Program enhance our ability to provide students with a practical learning experience, but NanoInk’s NLP 2000 Desktop Nanofabrication System allows us to expand our research capability through the versatility of Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®).”

This reminds me of some of the product placement on television programmes but here the product placement is part of the curriculum. As I recall, Apple pioneered this technology incursion into schools. The idea being that if you give (or sell computers for a good price to schools) so children learn using your equipment they are more likely to purchase it as they look to own it for themselves.

Here’s a bit more about NanoProfessor,

NanoProfessor is an exciting and comprehensive Nanoscience Education Program combining cutting-edge desktop nanofabrication instruments with a stimulating curriculum. Students will be immersed into the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology through real hands-on experience in building custom-engineered nanoscale structures. With an incredible range of new applications from building solar cells to fighting cancer cells, nanotechnology is the future of science and engineering education.

And for more about NanoInk, you can go here.

By the way, I have an interview with David Cramb in my March 8, 2010 posting.

Nano education in Colombia, in Russia and in Iran

In the last month there have been three nano education announcements. Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast featured a project with NanoProfessor (a division of NanoInk)  in Colombia. From Dexter’s May 26, 2010 post,

According to Tom Levesque, General Manager of NanoInk in the Americas, he visited a school in Bogota, Colombia where about 350 teenagers in conjunction with the NanoProfessor curriculum work with atomic force microscopes [AFM] and end up with better training than many receive at private universities in the country.

While making available an AFM for 350 kids seems almost as incredible as the idea that these kids have a better education than those at the best private schools, one has to wonder why this program has taken off in foreign countries and has not fared as well in the United States.

I too find the idea of an AFM for 350 kids extraordinary and his point about the initiative (or something else like it) not being widely adopted in the US, as I understand it, holds true for Canada.

Meanwhile, the Russians held an international conference on nanoeducation, May 18 – 20, 2010. From the news item on Nanowerk,

On May 18-20th the nanotechnology equipment manufacturer in Russia NT-MDT Co. and one of the main Russian scientific nanocenters the Kurchatov Institute held an international conference “Nanoeducation: the main approaches and perspectives”. The meeting had a unique format – the first educational international conference with trainings on working with nanoeducational equipment for teachers. 185 participants took part in the event, including representatives from Russia, the USA, Europe and CIS. The conference has become an essential part of Russian Government Federal Program.

The main goal of the conference was to overcome the gap between impetuous development of the modern nanoscience and the conservative system of education, especially in schools, where the teachers suffer serious problems in working with new equipment.

I find their direct approach to describing some of the issues quite refreshing. The topics covered were,

… controversial areas as contemporary approaches to nanoeducation, educational process organizing and leading, the newest educational technologies, international university cooperation all over the world concerning personnel trainings for teachers and professors and etc. The discussion has touched all the educational levels at schools as well as in universities.

In Iran, they’re launching a student competition (from the Fars News Agency item),

Iran’s Nanoclub (a club for students that works under the supervision of Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council) plans to hold the first stage of Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students in a number of provincial capitals on June 25.

All students familiar with nanotechnology will compete scientifically in two stages in this scientific competition entitled ‘Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students’ throughout the country. The Olympiad will be held in two stages on June 25 and August 9, 2010.

The test for the first stage will be held in 2010-2011 educational year in 10 capitals of Iranian provinces that are more active in the field of nanotechnology and enjoy more students familiar with nanotechnology, according to statistics.

The Promotion and Public Education Workgroup of Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council will give three 1000-dollar awards to the top three winners of the first Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students.

Very exciting news and if you know of any comparable programmes for children in Canada, please do let me know.