Lithium-ion battery technology is a critically important component of the emerging renewable energy infrastructure. Since battery technology was first commercialized in the 1990s, significant progress has been made in materials development, motivated by the prospect of higher energy and power densities, increased cycling longevity, and faster charging and discharging rates....
Nanocarriers, structures with at least one dimension on the nanoscale (1-1000 nm), have been engineered for delivery of various cargoes. The shape and flexibility of nanocarriers are important parameters that influence their biological performance. Self-assembling polymeric filamentous nanocarriers, known as filomicelles (FM), are of great interest to nanomedicine due to...
Like many diseases, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is driven by the activity of inflammatory cells. Using molecular imaging to target and analyze populations of inflammatory cells is one promising strategy to non-invasively assess atherosclerosis progression. However, current molecular imaging contrast agents are not suited for such targeted imaging applications. Nanomaterial-based strategies...
Materials that exist as well-defined individual entities at the nanoscale typically have properties that sets them apart from their bulk form. Consequently, there has been much time and effort invested in developing new well-defined nanoscale entities, but few attempts to assemble them into bulk materials. On the other hand, there...
The advancement of nanotechnology is at least partially dependent on the ability to synthesize and arrange complex nanostructures on a substrate. Nanolithography, or the patterning of materials at the sub-micrometer length-scale, has been traditionally performed using a number of methods such as conventional photolithography, ion-beam etching, and electron-beam lithography. While...
Non-planar and curved architectures of otherwise flat 2D materials present an important paradigm for nanoscale analysis and design of emergent material properties. Atomically-thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged at the forefront of the 2D materials field in recent years largely due to their attractive and tunable chemical, optical, and...
Multimetallic nanoparticles represent an important class of electrocatalysts which are critical for many energy and environmental applications including fuel cells, hydrogen production, and greenhouse gas elimination. The properties of these nanoparticles depend on their composition, size, shape, and structure. Therefore, developing new strategies which provide a high level of control...
As demonstrated by efforts in graphene commercialization, scalable synthesis and high-quality material availability are primary limiting factors for the realization of technologies based on two-dimensional (2D) materials. Thus, in considering the fate of emergent 2D materials such as the metal chalcogenides, the challenge of scalable synthesis is a highly relevant...
Light trapping with standing waves has been achieved using photonic bandgap crystals, metal-dielectric waveguides and periodic metal nanocavity arrays. Compared with photonic materials, plasmonic metal nanocavities can provide light confinement at the sub-wavelength scale with strong near-field electric enhancement. The localized surface plasmons of individual metal nanoparticles can collectively couple...
Nucleic acid drugs promise to revolutionize the development of therapeutics. They offer a platform for digital medicine, where systematic changes to the nucleic acid sequence can be utilized to target the entire human genome. However, nucleic acids suffer from a number of drawbacks, such as negligible cellular uptake and rapid...
