Nanoparticles are small, but how small? To put things in context consider a gold bar. Without doubt, we can all image a gold bar - they are international symbols of wealth, the target of many heist movies, and something we'd all probably like to get our hands on. If we were to stroll into Fort Knox or a Federal Reserve Bank and pick up a gold bar how much gold would we actually be clutching? Well, according to the London Bullion Market Association (the organization that sets the worldwide accepted benchmark standards) an acceptable gold bar is called a Good Delivery bar and should ..read more

GET YOUR NEXT TATTOO FROM YOUR DOCTOR Picture yourself sitting in your doctor’s office. Is it time for your checkup? Nope. It’s time to get tattooed! Most people tend to think of tattoos as just being an expression of personal aesthetics but researchers have been exploring different ways to monitor and treat disease using tattoos. A future with diagnostic and therapeutic tattoos may give this old art form a new functionality.   USEFUL NANOPARTICLE TATTOOS POLYMERIC NANOPARTICLES The idea of smart tattoos first garnered attention in 2009 when a team led by Heather Clark at Draper Laborator ..read more

On New Year's Eve one of the most time honored traditions in the US is to watch the ball drop in New York City's Times Square. As a fun fact, we consider the relative size of the Times Square Ball to NanoHybrids Gold NanoSpheres.   Gold Nanospheres come in a range of sizes from 2nm to 100nm, but for this exercise we consider the popular nanoparticle diameter of 10 nanometers. Additionally, the NYE Ball in New York is 12 feet in diameter, which is approximately 3.66 meters.   Therefore, the New Years Ball is roughly 366 million times larger than a 10nm gold nanosphere. For compar ..read more

To all of our readers, subscribers, customers, partners, suppliers, collaborators, and all the nanoparticle particle enthusiasts out there we thank you for a wonderful 2017. From all of us, we wish you Happy Holidays and a very prosperous New Year! We will look forward to continuing to grow and continually striving to better serve your nanoparticle needs with new and exciting products, services, news and stories, research updates, and much more in 2018. Cheers! -The NanoHybrids Team ..read more

In 2016 there was a major concern in the US over the rising number of cases of the Zika Virus. The virus is spread by mosquitoes and can also be transmitted through sex, blood transfusion, and from a pregnant woman to her fetus. The greatest risk from Zika is to pregnancies, as it causes severe birth defects including brain defects like microcephaly, miscarriage, stillbirth, and other problems. Aside from the scary danger posed to unborn babies, people usually don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika, most not even knowing they have been infected allowing t ..read more

Treating Cancer via Hyperthermia Thermal therapy, where heat is used to inflict tumor cell death, is known to be a viable treatment for cancer. It has fewer side effects than chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and is less invasive than surgery. Hyperthermia can be achieved by numerous methods including: microwave, radiofrequency, high-intensity ultrasound, photothermal, or magnetic induction. However, without tight control over local temperatures or cellular targets healthy tissue can be killed just like cancerous tumor. The problem is that cancer cells and surrounding tissue both absorb light ..read more

Lateral Flow Assays (LFAs) are powerful and easy to use diagnostic tools. They most frequently rely on the power of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) to indicate the presence of target analytes or biomolecules. These tests are commonly found on the shelves of your neighborhood pharmacy, in addition to being used by top hospitals and researchers. Let’s take a look at how these simple, yet highly reliable nanoparticle tests work to give us valuable information about our health and more.   A Test by Any Other Name... Lateral Flow Assays have many names including: Lateral Flow Tests Lateral Flow Im ..read more

The “Glaring” Problem with Using Devices Outdoors If you have ever taken your smartphone or laptop outside to read or get some work done on a beautiful sunny day, then you are familiar with the struggle: you might tilt the screen downward or try to block the sunlight with your hand, but you cannot escape the glare making it nearly impossible to see the screen. Fortunately for the millions of smartphone and laptop users around the world, researchers at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a solution: nanostructured glass.   Nanocone ..read more

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every year an estimated 722,000 people in the U.S. develop infections during a hospital stay, and about 75,000 die. Put another way, 1 out of every 25 inpatients in U.S. acute care hospitals acquires at least one infection.   Source: 2011 HAI Prevalence Survey; Published 2014 in New England Journal of Medicine Many hospital acquired infections (HAIs), otherwise known as nosocomial infections, are caused by bacteria that have become resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics, including MRSA and VRE. Some studies have even ..read more

Mercury is considered one of the top ten chemicals of major public health concern, and exposure to even small amounts can cause serious health problems. This issue is especially prevalent in developing nations. Source: World Health Organization Current Testing Methods Current environmental testing methods include spectroscopic analysis and colorimetric analysis. Spectrometry has high sensitivity and selectivity, but requires expensive instrumentation with labor-intensive sample preparation. This makes field-analysis difficult and unpractical. On the other hand, colorimetric analysis is simple ..read more