For the first time, researchers from CNRS and Aix Marseille Université (FR) have succeeded in producing a nanoantenna from short strands of DNA, two gold nanoparticles and a small fluorescent molecule that captures and emits light.

For the first time, researchers from the Langevin and Fresnel Institutes have developed such a bioinspired light nanoantenna, which is simple and easy to handle. They grafted gold particles (36nm diameter) and a fluorescent organic colorant onto short synthetic DNA strands (10 to 15nm long). This work could in the longer term lead to the development of more efficient light-emitting diodes, more compact solar cells or even be used in quantum cryptography.

Mickaël P. Busson, Brice Rolly, Brian Stout, Nicolas Bonod and Sébastien Bidault: Accelerated single photon emission from dye molecule driven nanoantennas assembled on DNA, In: Nature Communications, Vol. 3, Article number: 962, July 17, 2012, DOI:10.1038/ ncomms1964:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1964

Researchers at The University of Manchester (UK) have demonstrated that graphene can be used as a building block to create new 3D crystal structures which are not confined by what nature can produce. Sandwiching individual graphene sheets between insulating layers in order to produce electrical devices with unique new properties, the method could open up a new dimension of physics research. Writing in Nature Materials, the scientists show that a new side-view imaging technique can be used to visualize the individual atomic layers of graphene within the devices they have built. They found that the structures were almost perfect even when more than 10 different layers were used to build the stack. The researchers’ side-view imaging approach works by first extracting a thin slice from the centre of the device.

S. J. Haigh, A. Gholinia, R. Jalil, S. Romani, L. Britnell, D.C. Elias, K. S. Novoselov, L. A. Ponomarenko, A. K. Geim and R. Gorbachev: Cross-sectional imaging of in- dividual layers and buried interfaces of graphene-based heterostructures and superlattices, In: Nature Materials AOP, July 29, 2012, DOI:10.1038/nmat3386: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3386

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNOpzDViAhE http://www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk/

Researchers at Alzahra University successfully made it to modify a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) to obtain an efficient catalyst for the oxidation reaction of sulfaguanidine (SG) as well as its detection within environmental samples.

Lida Fotouhi, Maryam Fatollahzadeh, Majid M. Heravi: Electrochemical Behavior and Voltammetric Determination of Sulfaguanidine at a Glassy Carbon Electrode Modified With a Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube, In: International Journal of Electrochemical Science, 7 (2012), Pages 3919-3928: http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol7/7053919.pdf