Weighing any and all types of atoms individually has been a long-standing goal in science, and now efforts done by experts from the University of Melbourne, in Australia, have brought these attempts one nano-step closer to success. In their studies of gold nanoparticles of highly uniform shapes and sizes, the investigators have looked at how the atoms lose their energy, and have determined to some extent how this happens. The find could lead to the development of nanodetectors that could measure the mass of single atoms in the future.

Additionally, the discovery could have significant implications for the field of medicine and biology. Infectious agents such as viruses and bacteria could ultimately be weighed as well, which would be of a great help to doctors seeking to devise the best course of treatment in forms of personalized medicine.

“Previous measurements of nanomechanical damping have primarily focused on devices where only one- or two-dimensions are nanoscale, such as long nanowires. Our measurements and calculations provide insight into how energy is dissipated in devices that are truly nanoscale in all three-dimensions,” UM Department of Mathematics and Statistics Professor John Sader, the leader of the new research effort, explains. Details of the work appear in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Scientists from the US-based Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials, in Illinois, and the University of Chicago have also contributed to the new finds. The experts synthesized gold nanorods, which had about a 5,000th of a human hair in diameter. With these constructs, they were able to have a glimpse at how energy was lost (damping) at the nanoscale, and inferred that the frequency at which the rods oscillated was closely related to the amount of mass that was added onto them by the atoms being measured.

The new effort was able to come to these conclusions before other research groups, because it manged to create uniformity particles. Until now, other studies have been plagued with particles of various shapes and sizes, therefore accurate damping readings could not be collected. Now, the rate at which vibrations in bipyramid-shaped gold nanoparticles are dampened is known with precision, which enables research to continue towards creating accurate weighing tools.