Archive for the ‘Coatings’ Category
-
August 11th, 2010
Antimicrobial gold
This paper from Professor Carole Perry’s lab at Nottingham Trent University has been getting a lot of press attention this week, for good reason. The article describes the development of a method which allows the generation of gold nanoparticles tethered to the antibiotic Cefaclor which is known to neutralise dangerous bacteria such as Escherichia Coli (E Coli). The real promise lies in the fact that these functionalised GNPs could then be inpregnated into various materials, potentially offering all sorts of robust antibacterial surfaces.
Professor Perry will be presenting this work at the Fall ACS meeting in a couple of weeks time in Boston. I will also be attending the meeting, so drop me a line if you are attending and want to meet up.
-
June 28th, 2010
Nanoscale gold coatings made easy
Last week I got chatting to Sang-Kee Eah of The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. His team have just published this nice paper in Langmuir, the surface science journal. The crux of the research focuses on the identification of a simple, quick and clean way of synthesising gold nanoparticles, and then depositing them reproducibly on a range of surfaces. Check out the paper or Dr Eah’s press release for more details. Or you could even see the team demonstrating their technique on YouTube! -
June 18th, 2010
Gordon Research Conference
Next week sees the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Nobel Metal Nanoparticles take place near Boston. The GRCs are world-renowned for attracting the very best speakers, and this is certainly true of next week’s meeting with keynotes from the likes of Mostafa El-Sayed (Georgia Tech) and Chad Mirkin (Northwestern). Chaired by Terri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica), the event promises to be a key meeting in the field.
The World Gold Council were delighted to be given the opportunity to part-sponsor the event. I will blog every day next week with updates from the meeting
-
June 1st, 2010
A touch of gold
This story on Discovery News intrigued me. It is reporting that…. “cheap, flexible touch screens made with silver and gold nanowires could soon be rolling off the presses and into cell phones, computers and more. The same technology could even be used in solar panels. Writing in the journal ACS Nano, scientists from Stanford University say the new technology could be immediately used in consumer electronics.”The story continues “….most touch screens and solar panels are glass-based. The hard, insulating glass helps protect and support the thin coating of electrically conductive metals. But glass is also brittle and heavy. When an object strikes a solar panel, or a person drops a cell phone, the glass can shatter. Touch screens made from thin plastic coated with silver and gold would weigh less, take up less volume, be more flexible and could be produced much more quickly than glass plates.”
What the story doesn’t mention is that one of the major problems with current touch screen technology concerns the use of indium tin oxide (ITO) for the conductive transparent layer. At current levels of mine production and consumption, some analysts predict that there is only 15 years supply of indium left.
-
May 7th, 2010
Golden plastic
We’ve picked up on this interesting press release from the Queensland University of Technology, which is entitled ‘Gold nanoparticles enrich every day products’. The release details the work of Adrian Fuchs, a researcher in the department, who has just completed his PhD developing a way to disperse gold nanoparticles evenly through plastic. Such work has broad potential application, especially in fields such as catalysis, drug delivery, and novel coatings.
For a more in depth look at this work, see this recent publication in the journal Polymer
-
February 12th, 2010
Gold for good – a new article from the WGC
Yesterday we released a new publication written by the World Gold Council and Cientifica called ‘Gold for good – gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation’. The article, which is freely available on both the WGC and Cientifica websites, discusses the past, present and future of gold-based nanotechnology, focusing on key areas in medicine, the environment and technology.I am attending the 2010 Nanotech Japan event in Tokyo next week where I will be launching the article, and will follow this with a trip to the ACS spring meeting in California towards the end of March. Feel free to drop me a line if you are attending either event, I’d be happy to discuss any aspect of the WGCs activities, including our funding and investment programmes.
-
January 22nd, 2010
Fault current limiters using gold-alloy coatings
Some months ago I blogged on the use of superconductors for fault current limiters devices. These require the use of a metallic shunt top layer to give a degree of thermal and electrical protection should a fault in the superconducting tape develop. This metallic layer is typically 50-100nm thick and must be resistant to oxidation at the high temperatures which can arise during both processing steps and in service during current overload situation. It must also serve as a barrier to prevent ingress of moisture into the YBCO superconductor. This story (although from last year – I’ve only just been told about here in Japan) shows the use of silver-gold alloy layers in a practical example of this technology.
-
January 13th, 2010
Seeing through gold
Chemical and Engineering News is reporting that thin layers of evaporated gold are being used to help study the layer-dependent surface property of graphene. Advances in graphene technology have been hampered by the small number of microscopy and spectroscopy techniques capable of “seeing” graphene and distinguishing between samples of various thicknesses. The research from the National Center for Nanoscience & Technology, in Beijing has been published in JACS.
-
December 21st, 2009
New Book – Gold Science and Applications
I’m excited to announce that a new book ‘Gold – Science and Applications’ has now been published.
There have been many excellent books written on certain aspects of the science and technology of gold, most notably the book of the Hanau gold conference, held in 1996 (“Gold. Progress in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Technology”, edited by Hubert Schmidbaur and published in 1999) and there are several new books covering specific sectors of gold science e.g. on catalysis, chemistry and nanotechnology (see here). However, for those seeking a broader reference source on gold and covering all technical sectors, the most appropriate book on gold, Gold Usage by Bill Rapson and Theo Groenewald, was published over 30 years ago in 1978. The world of gold has changed considerably since then. A few years ago Chris Corti and I believed it was time for an updated book that reflects the more recent developments.
With the co-operation of some of the leading experts in their field, we have attempted to produce a book that is a worthy successor to ‘Rapson’ and to provide an authoritive source of information. We have attempted to cover all the main scientific areas as well as the main areas of application. In some cases this has required some very detailed scientific chapters; other fields require less specific detail and have focused more on the practical application. In addition, to help readers place this science and technology in the context of a much wider gold market, a chapter on the supply, demand and pricing of gold is included. Taken together, our aim for the book is to appeal to both those working in academia and industry.
If you are interested, your can read more and purchase it here .
-
December 2nd, 2009
Catch a rainbow
Catching a rainbow might sound like the storyline of a children’s fantasy adventure, but scientists in the US have done just that using glass and gold. See New Scientist for more on this story. Long-term the phenomenon may have relevance for optical computing and electronics.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
Recent comments: