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A team of researchers at Leicester University in the UK have developed a new technique for growing nanoparticles, which they say could have a broad range of applications in electronics, medicine and catalytic converters in car exhausts.
The technique involves the use of helium nanodroplets, droplets of superfluid liquid helium, consisting of thousands, even millions, of helium atoms loosely bound together. Atoms and molecules can enter these droplets and be assembled into structures that cannot be made by any conventional chemical synthesis.
The technique provides the ability to design nanoparticles layer by layer. These layers can be a solid, gas or liquid. This would make it possible to have a liquid or gaseous core with a solid shell round it.
The researchers believe it will enable them design new types of catalysts for improved manufacture of chemicals. Other possibilities include the construction of nanoparticles for storing information in smaller hard disk drives in PCs, or targeted drug delivery.
The layer-by-layer growth of nanoparticles inside ultra-cold helium droplets will allow the researchers to synthesise entirely new classes of nanoparticles.
Some possibilities include engineering gold nanoparticles used in catalytic converters. The researchers believe it will be possible to improve efficiency by controlling the size of nanoparticles, and think it may be possible to put a gold coating onto a core made from another material.
In drug delivery it would be possible to trap a drug molecule in a water-filled shell and wrap it in a thin protective layer.
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