Technology

Scientists Capture Colliding Organic Nanoparticles on Video for First Time

Nanoparticles
Written by twitiq

Extraordinary View of nanoparticles in Motion

One of the first to capture the organic nanoparticles colliding and fusing together on video is Evanston, a North-western University research team.  This extraordinary view of chemistry in motion would be assisting North-western Nano scientists in the creation of new drug delivery techniques and also demonstrate to research all over the world on how an emerging imaging technique tends to open a fresh window on a very miniature world.

This is said to be unusual example of nanoparticles in motion wherein the dynamics are significant of two bubbles approaching together and integrating into one.  At first they tend to join and have a membrane between them and thereafter they are said to fuse and become one huge bubble.

Professor Nathan C. Gianneschi leading the interdisciplinary research and working at the intersection of nanotechnology and biomedicine stated that he had an image in mind though when he had viewed these fusing nanoparticles for the first time in black and white, had been amazed.

According to him it was literally a window opening up to the world one has always known but now eventually an image is portrayed which tends to be identical to that of Jupiter’s moons seen through a telescope and nothing can be compared to actually seeing it.

Technique – Observing Transformation / Characterize dynamics of nanoparticles       

Gianneschi is said to be the Jacob and Rosaline Cohn Profess I n the department of chemistry in Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences as well as in the departments of materials science and engineering together with biomedical engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering.

The research that comprises of videos of various nanoparticles fusion events had been published by the Journal of the American Chemical Society on November 17. Liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy had been utilised by the research team in order to image directly on how polymer-based nanoparticles or micelles, which Gianneschi has been developing in his lab for the treatment of cancer and heart attacked tend to change over a period of time. This amazing technique has assisted the scientists in directly observing, the transformation as well as to characterize the dynamics of the particles. Lucas R. Parent, the first author of the paper as well as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Companion in the research group of Gianneschi, had commented that they can visualize on the molecular level how the polymeric matter rearranges when the particles tend to fuse into one object.

First Study – Dynamic Phenomena in Organic Material System nanoparticles

This is the first study of several to come wherein researcher would be utilising this system in order to view all types of dynamic phenomena in organic materials system on the nanoscale.

Organic particles in water, in the North-western research, tends to bounce off each other and some are inclined to collide and merge, thereby going through a physical transformation.  The researchers had the capability of capturing the action by shining an electron beam through the sample wherein the tiny particle, which the largest seem to be only around 200 nanometers in diameter.

Member of North-western’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, Gianneschi had commented that they had observed classical fusion behaviour on the nanoscale and capturing the fundamental growth as well as the evolution processes of these particles in motion had supported them greatly in their work with synthetic materials together with their interactions with biological systems.

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