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Nanoparticles are extremely useful but are difficult to contain because they are invisible and are easily carried in the air. They can also enter the body easily, creating a concern for the safety of industrial workers and the public. A new method to stick nanoparticles to one another into something you can handle safely with your fingers, without changing their useful properties, could have implications for a range of everyday applications.

鈥淯sing ultrasound is a very gentle low-energy process compared to traditional furnaces and welding, so even active drugs and enzymes can easily be built into carriers to make new hybrid materials,鈥� says Prof. Barralet, lead investigator of the study and Director of Research in the Department of Surgery at the Research Institute of the 91社区 Health Centre (RI-MUHC).

Ultrasound induces short-lived bubbles (known as cavitation) that create, for a fraction of a microsecond, when they collapse, 鈥榟otspots鈥� of thousands of degrees. Because this bubble formation is a random and infrequent process, scientists have struggled with ways to harness this incredibly powerful phenomenon for assembling materials rather than for destroying them. The key to the 91社区 team鈥檚 finding was developing a way to localize cavitation at the nanoparticles鈥� surface. This led to the discovery that their phosphate coating interacts with unstable radicals created at these hotpots and makes the nanoparticles 鈥榳eld鈥� together irreversibly.

Just as a mixologist (cocktail waiter) shakes drinks together to create your favourite martini, materials scientists can now simply mix preformed nanoparticles together and zap them in the ultrasonic bath to create new weird and wonderful hybrid and fully functional microparticle materials, such as conductive ceramic catalysts, magnetic polymers, and drug-loaded metals.

鈥淥ur discovery may help alleviate the loss of platinum from catalytic converters in car exhausts, for example. Half of the platinum mined annually worldwide is used to make catalytic converters and up to half of this platinum is lost into the atmosphere during the lifetime of the car. This results from a lack of a better method 鈥� up to now 鈥� for bonding nanoparticles in a robust and durable manner while still maintaining their activity.鈥�

The study鈥檚 co-author and former 91社区 doctoral student, David Bassett, helped make the discovery when he spotted something unusual in the bottom of his ultrasonic bath.

鈥淚nstead of getting smaller, these things grew and kept on growing. We went up many blind alleys and it took me three years to unravel what was going on. It was painstaking but now it鈥檚 really satisfying to finally have a grip on it.鈥�

IMAGE CAPTION: Scanning electron micrographs of TiO 2聽PFC showing gradual disintegration after聽a) 5 mins b) 30 mins and c) 60 mins ultrasound treatment, and (d-f) TiO 2聽PTX at the same聽timepoints. Inserts in a and d show surface details of the cavitation pits. Insert in e is a high magni铿乧ation SEM of a PBM intermediate. The black arrow points to a microparticle consisting of rounded agglomerates of phosphate bonded gel fragments and the white arrow indicates a homogeneous and presumably 鈥榤ature鈥� PBM in which the individual particles have consolidated but rough surface texture is still evident. Closer inspection of the intermediate stage PBM revealed that the individual particles from which they were assembled were clearly discernible (g), inter-particle bridges were formed from nanoparticulate gel (h), however the nanostructure appeared homogeneous in both particles and bridges (i).聽Reproduced with permission. Copyright 2013, Wiley-VCH.