Media Resources

The NanoVision Centre Launch, 9 January 2008

Queen Mary's NanoVision centre will be formally launched on Wednesday, 9 January 2008, by Professor Nigel Brown, Director of Science and Technology at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Journalists are welcome to attend - for more information (under embargo), please download the press release (Acrobat PDF) or contact Sian Halkyard on 020 7882 7454 or s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk.

The following images and videos are also available for press use (embargoed until 00.01am Wednesday, 9 January 2008):

Videos (click to watch)


NanoVision Centre launch video: watch as the team cut through a nanofibre ribbon hung across the Centre logo, all on a pinhead.	The cantilever of a scanning probe microscope can be used to push, pull or dissect samples. By placing the scanning probe microscope inside a scanning electron microscope we can perform tests on samples and watch the process unfold. Here we pull out a carbon nanotube (2nm diameter) from a polymer and measure the force needed.

Images (click to enlarge)


‘Porotic bone’ scanning electron micrograph by Alan Boyde. The inner honeycomb structure of bone. Changes in these structures are important in bone diseases such as osteoporosis	‘Live bacteria’ directly imaged in the scanning probe microscope by Asa Barber. Being able to image the proteins on the surface of bacteria is important in understanding how bacteria recognise and adhere to surfaces


‘Calcite crystals’ imaged in the environmental scanning electron microscope by Andy Bushby. Many seashells are formed from protein embedded in proteins. How the proteins influence the crystal growth is important in understanding biomineralisation.	‘Stitch-up’ imaged in the scanning electron microscope by Alan Leong. Woven glass fibre bundles, stitched with polymer fibres. Using methods usually associated with textiles, these engineering composite materials are made for applications requiring high strength and toughness, such aircraft structures and protective armour.	‘Mayo’ imaged in the cryo-scanning electron microscope by Marilyn Carey. The structure of complex soft materials that are normally too squishy to view at this scale can be seen by freezing to -130ºC and sectioning with an ion beam. The large blobs are the oil droplets suspended in a mixture of water and egg proteins.


‘Raspberries’ imaged in the scanning electron microscope by Jianchao Zheng. Synthetic bone mineral deposited on titanium for orthopaedic implant materials. Understanding the crystal growth is important in developing biocompatible implant materials.	‘Rubrene Butterflies’ imaged in polarised light microscopy by Natalie Stingelin-Stutzmann. Thin polymer semiconducting materials have interesting colour changing and electronic properties for use in flexible electronic display screens and low cost solar cells.	‘Bone tear drop’ imaged in confocal fluorescence microscopy by Amanpreet Bembey. The coloured lines show increments of bone growth around a blood canal in a rabbit leg bone. This is used to study bone growth rates and the impact of bone diseases.


Zooming in on the top of the pinhead, we see that a pit has been etched away from the surface using a ‘focused ion beam’ (stream of charged particles, focused to a spot about 20nm in diameter), which can knock away atoms from the surface of the pin. Next, platinum metal is deposited on the surface and the logo patterned into it, again using the ion beam. For the traditional ‘ribbon cutting’ a polymer nanofibre is positioned over the logo, held down with platinum, and ‘cut’ using a robot arm (or manipulator) – see video.		The ‘dual beam’ 3D environmental scanning electron microscope.