Tag Archives: T.D.Nguyen

Supraparticles, self-assembly, and uniformity and Futurity

I’m not sure what I find more interesting the research  or the website. First the research, from the August 25, 2011 news item on Futurity,

In another instance of forces behaving in unexpected ways at the nanoscale, scientists [at the University of Michigan] discovered that if you start with small nanoscale building blocks that are varied enough in size, the electrostatic repulsion force and van der Waals attraction force will balance each other and limit the growth of the clusters, enabling formations that are uniform in size. The findings are published in the Nature Nanotechnology.

Researchers created the inorganic superclusters—technically called “supraparticles”—out of red, powdery cadmium selenide In many ways the structures are similar to viruses. They share many attributes with the simplest forms of life, including size, shape, core-shell structure, and the abilities to both assemble and dissemble, says co-author Nicholas Kotov.

Here’s a graphic that accompanies the news item,

Under the right circumstances, basic atomic forces can be exploited to enable nanoparticles to assemble into superclusters that are uniform in size and share attributes with viruses. (Credit: T.D.Nguyen)

I’m particularly interested in that comment about the resemblance to viruses. Now on to Futurity, a science news aggregator (from the About Futurity page)

Futurity features the latest discoveries in all fields from scientists at the top universities in the US, UK, and Canada. The site, which is hosted at the University of Rochester, launched in 2009 as a way to share research news with the public.

Who is Futurity?
A consortium of participating universities manages and funds the project. The university partners are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and of the Russell Group. Futurity aggregates the very best research news from these top universities.

There are two universities from Canada involved, University of Toronto and McGill University.