Recently researchers from Surrey in the UK have
reported a method of developing a Zinc Oxide (ZnO)
nanowire detector that is 10,000times more sensitive to UV radiation than traditional ZnO detectors.
Besides being awesome what does this mean for you? Well the researchers predict
applications for this new nanowire ZnO detector in gas and fire and pollution detection
(think ultra sensitive smoke alarms) to integration in personal
devices. The paper On-chipFabrication of High Performance Nanostructured ZnO UV Detectors is open
access from Scientific Reports
An interesting study was recently reported
in Biosensors andBioelectronics in which yeast cells (S. cerevisiae) were engineered to
contain quantum dots (QDs). These cells where then monitored over generations
to see the fate of the QDs after. The fate was tracked using confocal microscopy and fluorescence
emission profiles. The researchers found the progeny cells lost their cell-bound QDs
during the third generation time (~360min). They also determined (via imaging
and cytotoxic tests that the cells were unaffected by the QDs and retained
their 'normal cellular growth, cell architecture and metabolic activities'. The
paper can be found here.
And in other news this week is the exciting
work from Linköping University and Technische Universität München (TUM) has
managed to follow and model the motion of a single molecule, trapped in a
nanoscale pore. In their paper published in Nature
this week they report a method to explore equilibrium thermodynamics of single
molecules by confining single molecules to a 2D nanopores using temperature-controlled
scanning tunnelling microscopy and carrying out extensive computational
modelling.