67 nanotimes News in Brief

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed a cell-sorting microchip that takes advantage of this natural cell-rolling mechanism. The device takes in mixtures of cells, which flow through tiny channels coated with sticky molecules. Cells with specific receptors bind weakly to these molecules, rolling away from the rest of the flow, and out into a separate receptacle.

Sungyoung Choi, Jeffrey M. Karp and Rohit Karnik: Cell sorting by deterministic cell rolling, In: Lab on a Chip, Vol. 12, Issue 8, Pages 1427-1430, DOI: 10.1039/C2LC21225K:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C2LC21225K

http://web.mit.edu/karnik/www/home.htm

http://meche.mit.edu/

Despite several years of research into graphene electronics, sufficient Ion/Ioff in graphene transistors with conventional device structures has been impossible to obtain. Researcher at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (Korea), and Columbia University (US) report on a three-terminal active device, a graphene variable-barrier "barristor" (GB), where the key is an atomically sharp interface between graphene and hydrogenated silicon.

Heejun Yang, Jinseong Heo, Seongjun Park, Hyun Jae Song, David H. Seo, Kyung-Eun Byun, Philip Kim, InKyeong Yoo, Hyun-Jong Chung, Kinam Kim: Graphene Barristor, a Triode Device with a Gate-Controlled Schottky Barrier, In: Science, Vol. 336, No. 6085, June 01, 2012, Pages 1140-1143, DOI:10.1126/science.1220527:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1220527

Luke Hanley, professor and head of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, received a $390,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to test methods of coating solar panel films using nanoparticles from a chemical group called metal chalcogenides. The inexpensive films could be wrapped over everything from vehicles to buildings to gain maximum sunshine exposure and produce electricity. Chalcogenides are fairly abundant, relatively cheap, and don‘t contain toxic elements like cadmium or tellurium, which are often used in solar cells. "Using less expensive, less toxic materials - and using processes where you could coat inexpensively and not use much of the material - could make these solar cells more viable," Hanley said.

http://www.chem.uic.edu/hanley/

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (US) published their research on bioinspired nanofibers support chondrogenesis for articular cartilage repair in an article in PNAS. The unique, low-density nature of the described nanofiber scaffolds allows for immediate cell infiltration for optimal tissue repair. The capacity for the scaffolds to facilitate cartilage-like tissue formation was evaluated in vitro. © PNAS

Jeannine M. Coburn, Matthew Gibson, Sean Monagle, Zachary Patterson, and Jennifer H. Elisseeff: Bioinspired nanofibers support chondrogenesis for articular cartilage repair, In: PNAS, Vol. 109, No. 25, June 19, 2012, Pages 10012-10017, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1121605109:

http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1073/pnas.1121605109