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

Researchers from the University of Miami, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and Cleveland State University have treated a chromium-containing nanoscale metal-organic framework to expand its pore size and surface area. The puffed-up metal-organic framework, created by the addition of concentrated acetic acid, held more ibuprofen or a chemotherapy drug than the original version and showed improved performance as a potential drug-delivery vehicle. 

Researchers from Yale University, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reported new findings on the behavior of metallic glass and how these materials deform or respond to external stresses at very small size scales. Their finding of the size limits (approximately 100 nanometers) at which metallic glass does not deform provides insights that could lead to new ways of creating metallic glasses and provide researchers with a novel method to slowly grow metastable materials. 

Researchers at Oregon State University are developing cellulose nanofiber-based spray coatings for grapes to protect the plants from wildfire smoke before it reaches their vines. The coating aims to prevent potential off flavors in wines that result from contact with wildfire smoke. Recent smoke events have cost $3 billion in losses to the Pacific Northwest wine industry.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington State University, and Texas A&M University have harnessed the power of data science and machine learning techniques to help streamline synthesis development for iron oxide nanoparticles. This innovative approach represents a paradigm shift for metal oxide particle synthesis, potentially saving time and effort on ad hoc iterative synthesis approaches.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Columbia University, and Stony Brook University have developed a universal method for producing a wide variety of designed metallic and semiconductor 3D nanostructures. “[B]y building on previous achievements, we have developed a method for converting these DNA-based structures into many types of functional inorganic 3D nano-architectures, and this opens tremendous opportunities for 3D nanoscale manufacturing," said Oleg Gang, one of the scientists involved in this study. The research work was done at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a DOE-funded user facility at BNL. CFN is a leader in researching self-assembly – the process by which molecules spontaneously organize themselves – and scientists at CFN are experts at DNA-directed assembly. 

Researchers from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have grown a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure's key properties. The researchers added a layer of gold between two sheets of a traditional semiconducting material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). "With only a bottom MoS2 layer, the gold is happy to align with it, so no twist happens," said Yi Cui, one of the scientists involved in the study. "But with two twisted MoS2 sheets, the gold isn't sure to align with the top or bottom layer. We managed to help the gold solve its confusion and discovered a relationship between the orientation of Au and the twist angle of bilayer MoS2."

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have developed a model that uses lipid nanoparticles to deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) through the blood-brain barrier, offering new hope for treating conditions like Alzheimer's disease and seizures. The blood-brain barrier is a selective, semi-permeable membrane between the blood and the brain that blocks the passage of certain substances, including therapeutic drugs. "Our model performed better at crossing the blood-brain barrier than others and helped us identify organ-specific particles that we later validated in future models," said Michael Mitchell, one of the scientists involved in the study.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, have figured out why the membranes that enclose our cells can push away nanoparticles that approach them. The researchers discovered that this repulsion – which notably affects neutral, uncharged nanoparticles – happens in part because smaller, charged molecules the electric field attracts crowd the membrane and push away the larger nanoparticles. Since many drug treatments are built around proteins and other nanoparticles that target the membrane, the repulsion could play a role in the treatments' effectiveness.

Tumors constantly shed DNA from dying cells, which briefly circulates in the patient's bloodstream before it is quickly broken down. But the amount of tumor DNA circulating at any given time is extremely small, so it has been challenging to develop tests sensitive enough to pick up that tiny signal. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has now come up with a way to significantly boost that signal, by temporarily slowing the clearance of tumor DNA circulating in the bloodstream. The researchers developed a monoclonal antibody and a nanoparticle that can transiently interfere with the body's ability to remove circulating tumor DNA from the bloodstream.

Researchers from Northwestern University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, and the Technical University of Denmark have developed a novel method to host gas molecules as they are being analyzed in real time, using honeycomb structures found in nature as inspiration for an ultra-thin ceramic membrane used to encase the sample. The encapsulation strategy works within high-vacuum transmission electron microscopes to enhance imaging of solid nanostructures. With the new technique, the resolutions were down to around 1.02 angstroms, compared to about 2.36 angstroms in previous experiments. The researchers said they've achieved the highest spatial resolution and spectral visibility recorded in their field to date.