Jim Lewis’s Weekly News Digest (see Join Email List at upper right) brings to our attention a New Scientist piece on work by Mihri Ozkan of UC Riverside and colleagues in the US and Italy combining quantum dots and viruses to make nanoscale memory devices:
The researchers have successfully performed a number of read-write-erase cycles on their single hybrids, and are now looking at how inorganic particle size affects the viruses and the final memory effect.
She’s also gutsy enough to describe advanced applications:
…More exotically, such a system could eventually perhaps be used to record its journey through sites of interest in the human body – for example, diseased tissue or arteries. “In Star Trek terms, the hybrids could act like nanomachines or nanorobots built for treating disease,” quips Ozkan.
Go, UC Riverside! —Christine