Posts Tagged ‘gold nanoparticles’
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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.
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August 2nd, 2010
Normal service to be resumed
Some of you may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet here of late. The reason is that we (in London) have just moved office, an activity which makes a house move resemble a walk in the park…So, we hope to be back to normal in the coming few days. Until then you may want to check out this book which is due for release any day now.
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July 21st, 2010
Kavli lectureship article published
Last year Chad Mirkin of Northwestern was awarded the 2009 Kavli prize for his work in the field of nanoscience. He delivered his award lecture at the 2009 Fall MRS meeting in Boston, and has now published an article based on the lecture in this month’s MRS Bulletin. It’s well worth a look as it covers much of his group’s work using gold nanoparticles, and how this research is moving on to deliver novel applications in all areas of materials science.
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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! -
May 14th, 2010
Another new line for Nanopartz
Nanopartz are at it again – take a look at this video they have posted on YouTube. The vial contains solution of gold nanoparticles at an extremely high concentration. The quote below is taken from their website, and explains further:
“Nanopartz has developed a patent pending method that results in such high concentrations of gold nanoparticles (50mg/mL, >1000 OD) the resultant product no longer acts as a liquid but rather a metamaterial. This novel material will find uses in many new medical applications, including cancer therapy”
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May 12th, 2010
Salmonella – seek and destroy
A team of reseachers at Jackson State University, led by Paresh Ray, have just had a nice paper published in Chemistry – A European Journal. The article, which also graced the journal’s inside cover (shown left), describes how oval-shaped gold nanoparticles have been used to both identify salmonella bacteria via a simple colorimetric assay, and then destroy them when the samples were exposed to near-infrared radiation. Yet another promising diagnostic application, with gold at the core… -
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
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May 4th, 2010
Gold-decorated carbon nanotubes
Two of the most commonly discussed nanomaterials are gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In this review, written by Kurt Geckeler of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, potential applications of a combination of these two materials are discussed. The paper details how the attachment of metal nanoparticles to carbon nanotubes is new way to obtain novel hybrid materials with interesting properties for various applications such as catalysts and gas sensors as well as electronic and magnetic devices.
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April 30th, 2010
New Gold Nanoparticle reviews
The latest issue of Angewandte Chemie carries 2 great review articles from leading researchers. The first, entitled “Gold Nanoparticles for Biology and Medicine” is a comprehensive review written by Chad Mirkin and team at Northwestern. The second comes from Vince Rotello at the University of Massachusetts and Uwe Bunz at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is titled “Gold Nanoparticle-Fluorophore Complexes: Sensitive and Discerning “Noses” for Biosystems Sensing“
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April 7th, 2010
Detecting melamine in dairy products (part 2)
Last year Richard wrote a blog on a recently published JACS article describing a gold nanoparticle-based test for the presence of melamine in milk (this was in response to a terrible spate of melamine contamination of babies milk in China which resulted in a number of infant fatalities). This was nice work, but was complicated slightly by the need for cyanuric acid derivatives to be grafted on the surface of the gold nanoparticles.
A new paper has just been published in Applied Physics Letters which seems to simplify this test even further. The team, led by Na Li of the University of Miami, has designed a test which requires naked gold nanoparticles rather than modified ones, a considerable improvement on existing technologies.
Trevor Keel
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