How different surfaces affect properties Nature is filled with examples of surfaces that have particular properties due to their structure. A special nano- and microstructure, for instance, allows butterfly wings to shimmer in different colors without any pigments at all. Some leaf surfaces cause water and dirt to simply roll off them, and cicada wings […]
Basel chemist Thomas Ward, Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at the University of Basel and Director of the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering, is the Royal Society of Chemistry Bioinorganic Chemistry Award winner for 2017. Professor Ward’s group has been combining chemical and biological tools for fifteen years. They create artificial metalloenzymes that can be used for […]
Enzymes behave differently in a test tube compared with the molecular scrum of a living cell. Chemists from the University of Basel have now been able to simulate these confined natural conditions in artificial vesicles for the first time. As reported in the academic journal Small, the results are offering better insight into the development […]
Scientists from the University of Basel have succeeded in organizing spherical compartments into clusters mimicking the way natural organelles would create complex structures. They managed to connect the synthetic compartments by creating bridges made of DNA between them. This represents an important step towards the realization of so-called molecular factories. The journal Nano Letters has […]
A new type of atomic force microscope (AFM) uses nanowires as tiny sensors. Unlike standard AFM, the device with a nanowire sensor enables measurements of both the size and direction of forces. Physicists at the University of Basel and at the EPF Lausanne have described these results in the recent issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Nanowires […]
This year`s submissions for the Nano Image Award have again shown how beautiful the nanoworld can be. The winners are: Marietta Batzer, Dominik, Rohner, University of Basel, Gulibusitan Abulizi, University of Basel, Rémy Pawlak, University of Basel
SRF interviewed the Nanodragster team, that will participate in the first international nanocar race. Tobias Meier, co-pilot of the team from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and Departement of Physics, explains the race, the goals and the challenges the teams are facing. To the interview
In 2013, the first doctoral students at the SNI’s newly established PhD school started work on their research projects. Jan Nowakowski was one of them. Now he has become the first to complete his doctorate. Understanding nature Jan Nowakowski was born and grew up in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He became interested in science early on. In […]
This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz for their investigations of topological phases and phase transitions in matter. This could have practical relevance one day for novel materials, for data storage, and for quantum computers. The Academy also cited, in its background report, experiments carried out by […]
