Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross surveyed the interplay between programmability of bits and atoms in the development of technology, asking how the recent successes with programming bits can help nanotechnology progress in programming atoms.
Simple molecular switches based upon bistable mechanically interlocked molecules can be incorporated within pre-assembled metal organic frameworks and addressed electrochemically.
A review of molecular parts that act as switches, motors, and ratchets illuminates similarities between artificial and biological molecular machines and argues that useful applications are coming.
Adding nanotechnology-based optoelectronic sensors to human cells cultured on a chip keeps the cells healthy long enough to replace animal testing with a human liver-on-a-chip.
A pliers-shaped molecule in which two covalently linked naphthalene moieties serve as the hinge connecting the two halves of the pliers, and each naphthalene connects the hydrophobic handle with the hydrophilic jaw of that half, opens and closes in response to surprisingly little energy applied to a molecular monolayer.
Analysis of multiple diffraction images provides high contrast, high quality, full field 3D imaging of surfaces illuminated by extreme ultraviolet photons from a tabletop laser.
A vertical electrical field from dopant atoms of potassium added to the surface of a few stacked layers of phosphorene tunes the band gap of black phosphorous, possibly leading to novel electronic and optoelectronic devices.
A new set of design rules enables constructing any wireframe nanostructure, which may lead to new medical applications and new nanomachines.
Modeling DNA strand displacement cascades according to three simple rules can in principle mimic the temporal dynamics of any other chemical system, presenting a method to model regulatory networks even more complicated than those of biology.
A novel nanostructured material based on tantalum oxide could make possible non-volatile crossbar array memories that store up to 162 gigabits in 3-D memory stacks.
Functional ribosomes with subunits engineered to not separate at the completion of each protein translation cycle make possible engineering systems to make a variety of novel polymers with novel properties.
An automated design process folds arbitrary meshes to produce DNA origami structures difficult to design by previous methods, including more open structures that are stable in ionic conditions used in biological assays.
Nanobreadboards made of DNA bricks provide twice the positional precision, twice the packing density, and faster prototyping than do alternative means to arrange functional molecules.
Recent research demonstrates that certain non-aqueous solvents can not only be used to assemble DNA nanostructures, but offer certain advantages over conventional aqueous solvents.
To educate potential entrepreneurs on strategies for moving discoveries from the benchtop to successful commercialization, Foresight co-sponsored an event in the “Ph.D. to Startup” Workshop Series of the Berkeley Postdoc Entrepreneur Program.
Technology developed by Nanobiosym, founded by Anita Goel, to enable personalized diagnostic testing won the Grand Prize of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE in 2013, and this month was awarded the top prize in the Galactic Grant Competition.
At the 2013 Conference Joseph Puglisi described how single molecule fluorescence techniques were used to study changes in the conformation and composition of the ribosome, a large biomolecular nanomachine, during the process of translation of genetic information.
Using the enzyme DNA ligase and small DNA strands as building blocks provides an efficient and less expensive path to a large variety of DNA scaffolds and other structures.
A molecular ring shuttles back and forth between two positions on a molecular axle held rigidly inside a solid state molecular lattice made from a metal organic framework.
By precise control of several factors, uniform high-performance monolayers of the semiconductor MoS2 have been obtained and used to fabricate field-effect transistors.