Small Wonders Nanoparticles 1600X800
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This story appeared in the Fall 2019 Letters & Science magazine.

Seen under a powerful microscope, they resemble luminous blue sugar crystals, the kind of thing you might sprinkle on a cookie or a bowl of cereal. But if a farmer were to apply them to a field of corn, the plants could better ward off fungal diseases.

They’re thousands of copper phosphate flakes, an example of an extremely useful nanoparticle compound the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology helped develop and refine. Researchers affiliated with the center, a virtual hub directed by professor of chemistry Robert Hamers, have been working for nearly a decade to understand the behavior and potential beneficial impact of nanopar­ticles. What began as a regional center with five researchers has since expanded to 15 senior investigators and hundreds of students, located at 12 institutions in the Midwest and, now, across the country.

Robert Hamers, professor of chemistry.

Broadly speaking, nanotechnology is the science of small things—more specifically, understanding the unique properties of solid materials that occur when they’re extremely small (think 100 nanometers or less). In this case, smaller size means greater numbers and more surface area—and more room for chemical reactions to occur. Critical technologies like lithium-ion cell phone batteries are made significantly more efficient through nanoparticles.

Hamers first got involved in nanotechnology in 1985, when he created one of the world’s first functional scanning tunneling microscopes, a tool that allowed scientists to see the discrete structures and imperfections of atoms.

“Once you see things, you begin to control things,” says Hamers. “Once you can control things, you can make things. This opens up a million things you can do.”

Over the last few years, Hamers and his colleagues have focused on a pair of promising research paths: Understanding the environmental impact of chemically sustainable metal oxides (aluminum and iron) that can serve as replacements for the far less efficient materials (like cobalt) that currently power modern tech, and nano-agriculture, the use of nanomaterials to improve crop outcomes.

“By controlling the composition and size and shape of nanomaterials, we can do a lot to improve the world of agriculture,” says Hamers, noting that up to 25 percent of the world’s food supply is lost to plant diseases. “There’s a huge potential economic impact.”

Other research paths beckon, including using unique quantum properties of nanoparticles as a way to to achieve new types of sensing and chemical detection.

“We have gone from the ability to observe these materials to the ability to understand and predict what they can do. As a scientist, that’s really satisfying.”