Archive for March, 2009
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March 31st, 2009
GOLD 2009 – update
The decisions of the various technical committees and organising committee,with respect to oral and poster presentations at GOLD 2009,will be communicated to authors this week. The very high quality of submitted abstracts means we are promised an excellent event.The various plenary and keynote talks should also be a highlight. The following are confirmed invited speakers:
Plenaries:Richard Puddephatt, University of Western Ontario, ‘Molecular engineering in gold chemistry: From molecules to polymers and network materials’
Paul Mulvaney, University of Melbourne, ‘Single gold nanocrystal spectroscopy – Steps towards active plasmonics’
Pietro Cavalotti, Politechnico Milano, ‘The art and future of gold electroplating’
Wayne Goodman, Texas A & M University, ‘Catalysis by Au and Au Alloys: From Single Crystals to Nanoparticles’
Masatake Haruta, Tokyo Metropolitan University ‘A New Frontier in Heterogeneous Catalysis: Gold Clusters’
Dean Toste, UC Berkeley ‘Homogenous Catalysis with Gold: Development, Applications and Enantioselective Catalysis’
Graham Hutchings, Cardiff University ‘Nanocrystalline gold catalysts for selective chemical synthesis’
Keynotes:Luigi Messori, University of Florence (Gold cytotoxicity)
Mohammad Omary, University of North Texas (Gold luminescence)
Konrad Seppelt, University of Berlin ‘Gold Fluorides and their role in Metal-Xenon Compounds’
Boonrat Lohwangwatana, Chulalongkorn University ‘Design and Synthesis of Gold Metallic Glass and its Applications’
Tobias Müller, W. C. Heraeus GmbH ‘Gold wire bonding in microelectronics – an overview’
Brahim Lounis, Université Bordeaux ‘Optical detection of individual Gold Nanoparticles’
Ulrich Heiz, Technische Universität München ‘Catalysis of Gold: Each atom counts!’Didier Astruc, Université Bordeaux, ‘Interplay between Gold Nanoparticles and Dendrimers’
Vincent Rotello, University of Massachusetts, ‘Gold Nanoparticles as Diagnostics and Therapeutics’
Mikael Käll, Chalmers University of Technology, ‘SPR goes nano : using gold nanostructures for efficient refractive index sensing’
Avelino Corma, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia ‘Gold (III)-Metal organic frameworks for bridging the gap between homogeneous and heterogeneous gold catalysts’ -
March 30th, 2009
Gold Grows Semiconductor Materials Market
SEMI is the US-based industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the microelectronics industry. They have just released their 2008 market survey for the semiconductor packaging materials market, which includes the use of gold bonding wire. The market for packaging materials in 2008 was $18.6 billion compared to $17.5 billion for 2007. It was the higher gold metal price in 2008 that contributed to the year-on-year growth in this market.
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March 27th, 2009
Visit BASF and FEM
The preliminary programme for GOLD2009 will be announced in a few weeks. Those of you planning to attend the conference should take the opportunity to visit two organisations, the world’s largest chemical company BASF and the world’s leading research institute on the precious metals, FEM.
The BASF site at Ludwigshafen is immense – virtually a stand alone town! If you have an interest in the industrial application of precious metal catalysts and wish to see where gold can be used in the future, the tour is a highly recommended.
Since 1922, FEM (the Research Institute for Precious Metals and Metals Chemistry) in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany has been an independent
copyright BASF
non-profit research centre focusing on the electrochemistry, metallurgy, materials science and surface technology of the precious metals.
Booking for these tours can be found on the registration page of the GOLD 2009 website.
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March 26th, 2009
Helping the battle against addiction
Is there anything gold nanoparticles cannot do in the biomedical field?
The latest promising application for gold nanomaterials is from researchers at the University at Buffalo who have developed gold nanorods to deliver short RNA molecules in the brain to turn off a gene that plays a critical role in many kinds of drug addiction. Gold nanorods were used rather than particles because they allow for more short RNA molecules to be loaded on to their surface and allow for better penetration into cells.
The researchers in vitro findings were published online this week (March 23) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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March 25th, 2009
New 3M Patents on Gold Catalysts for Environmental and Chemical Applications
The team working on preparation of gold catalysts via physical vapour deposition (PVD) at 3M in the USA have had two new patents published, i.e. ‘Selective oxidation of carbon monoxide relative to hydrogen using catalytically active gold’ (WO Patent 2008/076137 A2) (PROX) and ‘Catalyst production process’ (WO Patent 2009/026035 A2). This PVD method for making gold catalysts means gold is deposited onto oxide supports in an oxidising atmosphere. They are chloride-free, and there is therefore no need for washing with water to remove unwanted chloride. Carbon can also be used as a support. These gold catalysts have characteristics useful for removing carbon monoxide from hydrogen for fuel cell feeds, and in respirators to protect users from carbon monoxide poisoning during escape from fires, etc. Other uses claimed are in vehicle and building protection, purification of exhaust gases from internal combustion engines, oxidation of carbonaceous soot in diesel exhaust streams and selective oxidation of organic compounds. The catalysts are active and durable.
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March 24th, 2009
Adding value to paper
One of the research networks that have an interest in gold is the Sentinel Bioactive paper Network in Canada. The network is a grouping of universities and businesses focused on developing paper that will detect, capture and deactivate water and airborne pathogens.To test for pesticides, the network has developed the use of gold nanoparticles and the technology is available for licensing here. In the video on their website, you will see that the paper strip, embedded with gold nanoparticles, changes colour from red to blue when it comes into contact with the substance being analyzed in the solution.
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March 23rd, 2009
Gold Pyramids Most Effective
It is now a well established property of gold nanoparticles that they can be heated up by certain wavelengths of light in order to kill cancer cells.
A report on MedicalPhysicsWeb describes the recent work of researchers from NorthWestern University in the US (published in NanoLetters). This work has specifically looked at which shape of gold nanoparticle is optimum for generating maximum heat.
The answer according to the team is a pyramid structure with a thin gold shell. Whilst this is an important step forward in this potential application, I wonder if the complexity and cost of manufacturing these structures would prove to be prohibitive? Nanospectra are using gold particle-based therapies in human trials already – a more readily prepared spherical gold-silica shell structure.
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March 20th, 2009
Corpus Clock
Question:What do Al Bustan Palace in Oman, The Corpus Clock at Cambridge University and the ‘golden snitches’ from the Harry Potter films all have in common?
Answer: Gold electroplating was used for decoration on each of them.
The electroplating was carried out by BJS in the UK. This company has a Royal Warrant granted from HM Queen Elizabeth II. As well as this seal of quality, what sets BJS Gold apart from its many competitors is that it has invested in the installation of super size electroplating tanks in its manufacturing facility – each with a 10 cubic metre capacity – large enough to hold a small car. That’s well over a million dollars worth of gold in the form of electroplating solution!
Using these large tanks they are able to electroplate hard gold onto very large stainless steel items and they are seeing a growing market for this service in the yachting, architectural and aircraft markets. Interested industrial designers should contact the company to explore the design opportunities.
The electroplating of gold for mainly decorative purposes has been extensively written about in the journal Gold Bulletin.
The Corpus Clock
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March 19th, 2009
Testing for Prostate Cancer
The front page of the UK’s Daily Telegraph has a very interesting story today. It suggests that all men over the age of 50 could be regularly tested for prostate cancer. This has been reported after the largest international study ever conducted suggested that screening could save thousands of lives a year in the UK alone.Why is this interesting to us in the gold industry?
Well, current test protocols check for high levels of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) which increases with the presence of a tumour. However, elevated levels of PSA are not 100% accurate, producing false negatives and false positives.
Finding better tests (so-called biomarkers) for cancers has been a high priority for researchers for decades. One promising technology is based on gold nanoparticles, led by Prof Huo at the University of Central Florida. Read about it here in Drug Discovery and Development (halfway down the article).
By the way, Dr Huo has begun to commercialise her technology and will be presenting her progress on the World Gold Council stand at NSTI’s NanoTech 2009 exhibition.
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March 18th, 2009
New Scientist article
A new article on the New Scientist website - DNA cages guide self-assembly of [gold] nanoparticles
Richard Holliday
David Thompson
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