Items Tagged With Metrology

Echoing the journey through the human body in Fantastic Voyage, doctors might soon be able to track individual donor cells after a transplant, or to find where and how much of a cancer treatment drug there is within a cell. New technology described in a study published today in the open access journal Journal of Biology makes it possible to image and quantify molecules within individual mammalian or bacterial cells. Claude Lechene and colleagues describe the development of multi-isotope imaging mass spectrometry (MIMS), which has applications in all fields of biology and biomedical research.

NanoSight Ltd has announced that the Organic Materials Team within AWE Aldermaston has successfully tested and validated NanoSight’s characterisation systems for accurate analysis of nanoparticles in suspension. The team has found that the system offers an excellent way to quickly and reliably assess the dispersion of nanoparticles in a range of aqueous and non aqueous solvents.

FEI Company announced that Brazil's National Institute of Metrology, Standardisation and Industrial Quality—INMETRO—has selected FEI to supply a suite of tools that enable nanoscale materials research. The selected systems include FEI's ultra-high resolution Titan™ S/TEM, a Tecnai™ TEM and a Nova NanoLab 600 DualBeam™ tool. These systems will be used by the institute and other Brazilian institutions at INMETRO's new nano-materials centre in Rio de Janeiro.

Research at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory has shown that incorporating nanoparticles into body armour can make it lighter, more flexible and more effective. Current body armour relies on a stiff and relatively heavy layer of ceramic material to absorb ballistic impact. This makes body armour heavy and unwieldy. The Daresbury team, together with researchers from Tuskegee and Florida Atlantic universities in the USA, are evaluating new nanocomposite materials which can be woven into fabrics to provide greater flexibility as well as better ballistic protection. They have found that incorporating spherical nanoparticles of silicon or titanium dioxide or carbon nanotubes in a plastic or epoxy matrix offers improved ballistic resistance together with greatly improved flexibility.

FEI Company announced that it has received US Department of Energy (DOE) contracts for four Titan™ scanning/transmission electron microscopes (S/TEMs) developed as part of the TEAM (Transmission Electron Aberration-Corrected Microscope) project announced in November 2004. The goal of the collaborative TEAM project is to build the highest resolution S/TEM in the world, capable of direct observation and analysis of individual nanostructures at an unprecedented resolution of 0.5 Å—a key dimension for atomic level research.