Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have discovered a new family of nature-inspired polymers that, when placed in water, spontaneously assemble into hollow crystalline nanotubes up to 100 nanometers long with the same diameter.

“Creating uniform structures in high yield is a goal in nanotechnology,” says Ron Zuckermann, who directs the Biological Nanostructures Facility in Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, where much of this research was conducted. “For example,… read more

Researchers at at RMIT University in Australia have developed a cheap, efficient way to grow special copper- and silver-based nanostructures on textiles that can degrade organic matter when exposed to light.

Don’t throw out your washing machine yet, but the work paves the way toward nano-enhanced textiles that can spontaneously clean themselves of stains and grime simply by being put under a light or worn out in… read more

Researchers at NASA Ames and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center have developed a new method that uses plasma to print nanomaterials onto a 3-D object or flexible surface, such as paper or cloth.

The technique could make it easier and cheaper to build devices like wearable chemical and biological sensors, integrated circuits, and flexible memory devices and batteries.

Some nanomaterials can be printed currently using aerosol printing techniques, but… read more