Topic description and stories

Gum Arabic

Nanomaterials Up Close: Gum Arabic

30 Jun 2014

This alien glob is a piece of gum arabic from the hardened sap of the Acacia tree, most likely collected from a tree in Sudan. Rox Middleton explains...

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Forest of carbon nanotubes

Nanomaterials Up Close: Forest of carbon nanotubes

26 Jun 2014

This image shows a ‘forest’ of carbon nanotubes – thousands upon thousands of tiny rolls of carbon atoms, grown on a scrap of copper foil. James...

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Cobalt oxide

Nanomaterials Up Close: Cobalt oxide superlattice

23 Jun 2014

These individual particles of cobalt oxide have been engineered to form a superlattice or 3D mesh structure to improve their chemical activity...

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Nanoengineered electron gun

Nanomaterials Up Close: Nanoengineered electron guns

19 Jun 2014

In this video we see an electron gun made of many thousands of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, each more than 1,000 times smaller than the width...

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Synthetic opal

Nanomaterials Up Close: Synthetic opal

13 Jun 2014

In this video we see a synthetic opal, which is made using polystyrene spheres surrounded by even tinier polystyrene spheres around 1,000 times...

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Salt baskets

Nanomaterials Up Close: Salt baskets

05 Jun 2014

This electron microscope picture, reminiscent of man-made baskets or children’s blocks, shows cubic salt crystals that have been forced to form in...

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