#buckyballs

X-ray movies reveal how intense lasers tear a buckyball apart

X-rays captured a buckyball breaking apart under powerful lasers, uncovering hidden steps in its rapid collapse.

Understanding how many atoms move and interact inside laser-driven polyatomic molecules is essential for any attempt to guide chemical reactions using intense light. With the help of ultrashort, high-power X-ray pulses created by accelerator-based free electron lasers (FELs), scientists can now directly observe how strong laser fields rapidly reshape molecular structures. To explore these effects, researchers turned to the well-known football-like molecule "Buckminsterfullerene" C60. Teams from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS) in Dresden, working with collaborators at the Max Born Institute (MBI) in Berlin as well as groups in Switzerland, USA and Japan, studied C60 experimentally and theoretically. Their experiment at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory produced the first direct images of how C60 behaves when exposed to strong laser fields.

What Makes Nanotechnology so Valuable for Industrial Innovation?

A practical answer is this: nanotechnology allows engineers and researchers to work with materials at a scale where performance changes are not just smaller versions of bulk behavior.

At the nanoscale, surface area, particle interaction, optical response, conductivity, and reactivity can shift in ways that help companies design stronger, lighter, more efficient, and more functional products.

That is why nanoproducts are now relevant far beyond academic laboratories. They are being evaluated and used in electronics, energy systems, chemical processing, coatings, composites, healthcare research, agriculture, and advanced manufacturing.

For B2B buyers, the discussion is less about novelty and more about measurable performance.

Where Nanomaterials Create Value

Area

How It Creates Value

Electronics Sensors, conductive films, displays, semiconductor support materials, flexible circuits

Energy Battery materials, supercapacitors, solar cells, fuel cells, conductive additives

Chemicals Catalysts, process additives, high-reactivity powders, functional fillers

Materials Science Composites, protective coatings, polymers, ceramics, reinforcement additives

Medicine and Biotech Imaging research, diagnostics, drug delivery research, biosensing platforms

Agriculture and Environment Controlled release research, nanosensors, photocatalytic, and filtration materials

Why MKnano is Positioned For This Market

MKnano, a division of M K Impex Corp., was established in 2007 and is based in Mississauga, Canada. The company serves global markets across 35+ countries and supports industrial buyers, researchers, and technical procurement teams with a wide nanotechnology product portfolio.

Its product categories include Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, fullerenes, buckyballs, nanoparticles, nanopowders, quantum dots, nanowires, nanorods, nano additives, nano fillers, magnetic nanoparticles, nanolubricants, and dispersions.

This breadth is important because B2B nanotechnology projects rarely depend on a single material only. Engineers often compare purity, particle size, surface chemistry, dispersion needs, and end-use requirements before choosing the right nanomaterial.

Did I show you my fancy fancy orb? It’s my all-time most frivolous purchase :3

no cities, no hills or summer reading club

A new form of diamond has been created. Its unique structure gives it properties that are similar to those of natural diamonds, but it is more stable under extreme heat, so may be useful in tools that operate in hot conditions.

There are two main types of molecular structure in diamonds and many other materials: crystalline structures, in which all of the atoms are neatly organised in repeating arrangements, and amorphous structures, which are mostly disorganised. Howard Sheng at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and his colleagues have made a diamond with a structure between these two types for the first time.

The new material, called paracrystalline diamond, is made up of small structures called paracrystallites that consist of just a few carbon atoms. There is no particular order to the way the paracrystallites are arranged. “This is totally different from the diamond we know,” says Sheng.

Cage Lighting

Researchers have used laser beams to print microscopic three-dimensional 'cages' that they filled with living cells by using sound waves as tweezers. This isn't science fiction. Created in Vienna, the cage-like structures were made by steering a laser beam through a liquid, causing it to harden precisely where it was touched by the laser, in pentagon and hexagon patterns resulting in buckyballs (red). The balls were then placed into another liquid, containing individual cells taken from mice and human blood vessels. Cells were moved inside the balls using acoustic vibrations to whirl and swirl them towards their destination. Once inside, they grew out of the tiny openings and connected with cells in nearby balls to form networks, shown here as red string-like projections. The new technique was able to pack more cells inside each ball than has previously been possible. This will allow scientists to investigate how cells grow in health and disease.

Written by Deborah Oakley

Image from work by Tanchen Ren and colleagues

Bio-Acoustic MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratory, Stanford School of Medicine, CA, USA and Institute of Materials Science and Technology, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

Image copyright held by Stanford University

Published in Biofabrication, March 2020

NEOBALLS

I’m obsessed with these, it is so satisfying to play with and it makes so great and aesthetic pictures