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Wednesday, 3rd December 2008 (4276 views)

Students from Purdue University have used gold to develop a technique that enabled them to precisely position tiny nanoparticles in seconds, a development that could be useful in areas such as medicine and manufacturing.

They designed a study in which they used a gold plate to carry out the 'nanoassembly' technique, an achievement that the university described as important as gold is frequently used in biomedical applications.

Doctoral student Aloke Kumar explained that traditional methods like mechanical tweezers cannot be used to arrange materials on such a small scale as they are "too delicate and will be damaged".

His colleague Stuart Williams remarked: "This technique has not been done before ... we can pattern light, we can pattern particles, we can pattern the vortex. No other tool can do all of these."

Meanwhile, a team from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have created an efficient way to make gold nanoparticles using imidazolium salts.

 

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