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46 / March 2020 powderbulk.com NANOTECHNOLOGY EU announces guidelines for nanomaterial occupational safety NanoStreeM, an EU-funded proj- ect that addresses the safety risks involved with nanomaterials, has released a document with recom- mendations for safety procedures. Nanomaterials are used in a wide range of industries due to the versa- tility of the particles and can present unique safety risks that need to be addressed. NanoStreeM (NANO- materials: Strategies for Safety Assessments in advanced Integrated Circuits Manufacturing) studied nanomaterials from 2016 to 2018. According to Dimiter Prodanov, project coordinator, "The Nano- StreeM consortium has taken up the challenge in defining a road map of occupational safety of nano- materials in nanoelectronics where we have identified the existing gaps in our knowledge and formulated a number of recommendations for their mitigation." The organization has released nanosafety training packages that focus on semiconductor industry processes and the cleanroom envi- ronment. "The NanoStreeM project demonstrated that the nanoparti- cle emissions in normal operation mode of cleanroom processing tools are not likely to occur," Prodanov says. "Therefore, future studies in the semiconductor industry should focus on the assessment of the environmental impact, product end-of-life, and recovery of valuable elements through recycling." For more information on Nano- StreeM's recommendations, visit www.nanostreem.eu. Study suggests wearable gas sensor to monitor worker health According to researchers at Penn State and Northeastern Univer- sity, a wearable gas sensor for environmental and worker-health monitoring may become a reality soon. The sensor uses a self-heating element, improving on existing sen- sors and increasing sensitivity. "People like to use nanomateri- als for sensing because their large surface-to-volume ratio makes them highly sensitive," says Huanyu Cheng, a professor at Penn State. "The problem is the nanomaterial is not something we can easily hook up to with wires to receive the signal, necessitating the need for something called interdigitated electrodes, which are like the digits on your hand." The research team used a laser to create a porous line of nanomate- rial as well as a series of serpentine lines coated with silver. When electrical current is applied, the gas-sensing region will heat up due to its significantly larger electrical resistance. The serpentine lines allow the platform to stretch like springs to adjust to the flexing of the body for wearable sensors. The US Defense Threat Reduc- tion Agency is interested in this new sensor as a way to detect chemical and biological threats to the nerves or lungs. Cheng and his team published their findings in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Researchers create picoscience materials using elements Researchers at Yale University have released a study covering the creation of new materials by manipulating elements at the sub- atomic level. According to the study, Sangjae Lee, a Yale student and the study's author, designed and grew a layered crystal material composed of lanthanum, titanium, cobalt, and oxygen. The material was created by layering elements one atomic plane at a time. One-atom-thick sheets of titanium oxide transfer an electron to one-atom-thick sheets of cobalt oxide, which changes the electronic configuration and magnetic proper- ties of the cobalt oxide sheet. "We were able to manipulate the constituent atoms with a pre- cision much smaller than the atom itself," Lee says. "These types of new crystals may form the basis for developing new magnetic materials where a delicate balance between magnetism and electronic conduction at such small-length scales can be manipulated in novel, transistor-like devices that have performance advantages over today's transistors." The research team used quan- tum mechanical computations to compute the structure of the new material and the effect on its elec- tronic configuration, including its magnetic state. The full study can be found in the Physical Review Let- ters journal.