Soft-tissue injuries and organ transplantation are common in modern combat scenarios. Organs and tissues harvested for transplantation need to be preserved during transport, which can be very difficult. Micro and nanobubbles (MNBs) offer a new technology that could supply oxygenation to such tissues prior to transplantation, thus affording better recovery and survival of patients. Described here is a novel device capable of producing MNB solutions that can be used to preserve viability and function of such organs/tissue. Additionally, these solutions may be used with negative pressure wound therapy to heal soft-tissue wounds.

Nanostructured materials are a category of materials comprised of nanometer-scale crystals which exhibit order of magnitude higher strength when compared to their traditional counterparts with larger crystal sizes. The application of nanostructured materials has been limited due to seemingly inherent low ductility and high-temperature instability. The inventors at UCI have developed a nanostructured material that simultaneously exhibits increased ductility, strength, and thermal stability by the incorporation of amorphous intergranular films.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have developed a novel process of synthesizing ultrafine jagged Pt nanowires with a record high utilization efficiency for fuel cell catalyst applications.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have developed a novel metal chalcogenides for pseudocapacitive applications. 

The invention is novel way of preparing electrodes for nanowire-based batteries and capacitors with extremely long cycle lifetimes. The proposed assemblies last much longer than any comparable state of the art nanowire energy storage device, without loss of performance, and are comparable to liquid electrolyte-based technologies in terms of their figures of merit.

The invention is a simple and inexpensive synthetic approach to a diverse library of new polymeric materials with a host of useful and unique properties. Most notably, these materials can serve as precursors to rationally designed and bottom-up synthesized graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), including N-doped GNRs and GNRs with precisely defined and functionalized edges.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical Engineering have developed a novel gate-induced source tunneling field-effect transistor (GISTFET).

UCLA researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have developed a method of synthesizing micrometer tin particles with nanosporous architecture and have successfully demonstrated the use of these particles as a high energy density anode for Na-ion and Li-ion batteries. 

Background: In 2014, the orthopedic soft tissue repair market was $10.3B, and is expected to grow due to an increasing number of soft tissue injuries with very few alternatives to surgery. Current procedures are very invasive, and require drilling holes followed by bone marrow extraction to repair the damaged tissue. Not only is the procedure costly, but the patient is held in recovery for a very long period of time.  Brief Description: UCR researchers have developed 3D magnetic nanocomposite scaffolds that can be injected into the target site for improved tissue regeneration and healing. The material can fill any shape or size of the defective site in just 2 injections. The first injection targets subchondral bone followed by a second injection that promotes cartilage regeneration. This novel invention will allow the patient to save costs incurred on surgical procedures, and regain full functionality under a shorter recovery time.

Semiconductor materials are fundamental materials in all modern electronic devices. Continuous demand for faster and more energy-efficient electronics is pushing miniaturization and scaling to unprecedented levels. Controlled and uniform doping of semiconductor materials with atomic accuracy is critical to materials and device performance. In particular, junction depth and dopant concentration need to be tightly controlled to minimize contact resistance, as well as variability effects due to random dopant fluctuations in the channel. Conventional doping methods such as ion implantation is imprecise and can have large variability effect. Moreover, energetic introduction of dopant species will often cause crystal damage, leading to incompatibility with nanostructured-materials and further performance degradation. To address these problems, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have experimented with an alternative approach to a wafer-scale surface doping technique first developed at the UC Berkeley in 2007. The team has demonstrated a controlled approach for monolayer doping (MLD) in which gas phase dopant-containing molecules form low-variability, self-assembled monolayers (SAM) on target semiconductor surfaces.

Heart failure following a myocardial infarction (MI) continues to be one of the leading causes of death. Immediately after MI, there is an initial inflammatory response with cardiomyocyte death and degradation of the extracellular matrix. This results in negative left ventricular (LV) remodeling leading to wall thinning, LV dilation, and depressed cardiac function. Several experimental approaches have been examined to inhibit this negative remodeling process. One promising direction is the use of injectable biomaterials, which can be used as stand-alone scaffolds to encourage endogenous repair or for delivering therapeutics such as cells, growth factors, or small molecules. Early intervention of MI has the potential to slow or inhibit the progression of negative LV remodeling. To date, most therapeutic delivery strategies have involved intramyocardial biomaterial injections, although translation to acute MI patients is unlikely given the increased risk of ventricular rupture immediately post-MI. One promising, minimally invasive strategy is the systemic injection of nanoparticles. However, many of the investigated systems lack long-term retention within the MI. 

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have discovered a novel protocol to enable 3D printing with nanometer precision in all three dimensions using polyelectrolyte (PE) inks and atomic force microscopy.

Polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) has many characteristics that make it the most popular candidate for producing organ-on-a-chip devices or mirco-physiological systems (MPS) devices. After crosslinking, PDMS has shown to be biologically compatible and amenable to many standard cell culture techniques due to it’s transparency, oxygen permeability, and low auto-fluorescence. However, due to PDMS’s hydrophobicity, molecules that are also hydrophobic partition into the PDMS to produce unpredictable concentrations in cell and media channels making it impossible to predict the actual dosing concentrations for drug investigations. This unpredictability is an obstacle for using organ-on-a-chip devices as screens for drug candidates in discovery stages.   Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a simple coating procedure that allows the formation of substrate independent (universal) coatings. The researchers identified a novel compound able to form stable coatings that outperformed existing dip-coating precursor molecules in their ability to prevent absorbance of small molecules into a variety of organic and inorganic polymers, such as PDMS. 

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have identified a means by which large quantities of inactive drugs (particularly chemotherapeutics) can be delivered by nanoscale drug carriers to a target location where they can be rendered active by X-rays.

The researchers at University of California, Davis have developed a new process for manufacturing tungsten scandate nano-composite powder that produces high current density and long-life cathodes for high-power terahertz vacuum electron devices. Scandate tungsten nano-composite cathodes enable advancement of microwave sources that bridge the "Terahertz gap."

Researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA have developed a novel form of nanoporous aluminum hydride for storing hydrogen at room temperature and pressure.

Researchers at UC Irvine have developed a minimally invasive technology that uses electrical potentials to perform a variety of to modify and reshape soft tissues such as cartilage

UCLA researchers in the departments of Chemistry and Materials Science have recently developed a novel material for use in flexible, printed electronics.

Background: Solar resources are at a premium and the solar energy industry is a $130B market with growth projects of 30%. High demands for attaining renewable energy efficiently and cost-effectively, along with government incentives, are all good indicators for finding innovative ways to optimize solar energy systems.  Brief Description: Traditional semiconducting materials, i.e. silicon and cadmium telluride are unable to absorb all wavelengths of light and become usable energy. UCR researchers were able to functionalize semiconducting nanocrystals that are very efficient in upconverting near infrared photons into higher energy photons. They have optimized upconversion through carefully formulated combinations of semiconductor nanocrystals and organic ligands to enhance upconversion emission by up to 3 orders of magnitude relative to nanocrystals alone. This provides a way to enhance the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and reduce solar electricity costs.

Brief description not available

Brief description not available

Wearable electronics for health monitoring have gained increased interest after conformal tattoo-like electronic sensors were co-integrated on elastomeric sheets.  One of the design requirements in such wearable electronics was to carefully adjust the effective Young’s modulus and bending stiffness of the resulting layered electronics, and this has restrained the compact integration of the electronic components because the single transistor elements had dimensions that were in millimeter scale. The promise of tattoo-like epidermal electronics has inspired a significant research effort to optimize the mechanics of these structures.

Mechanically flexible piezoelectric materials are highly sought after when building advanced sensors, actuators, and energy scavenger devices. The most common piezoelectric materials used in applications are focused on electroceramic thin films made from lead zirconate titanate or barium titanate. Although these materials can have large piezoelectric moduli, as thin films they are extremely brittle and difficult to shape into highly mechanically compliant structures. Improving mechanical flexibility of piezoelectrics, and creating higher order structures, is critical for driving new applications such as biological energy harvesting, compact acoustic transducers, and in vivo biodiagnostics.  There is a need to develop alternative materials that offer high piezoelectric coefficients while maintaining elasticity and isotropic mechanical integrity—that are also cheap to produce.

The technology is a process for making arrays of nanostructures on polymer films.It features a two step process for creating thin polymer films with unique optical and wetting properties that can be used for coating both planar and curved surfaces.It is possible to implement this process in a mass fabrication process over large areas.

The technology is a tessellated composite structure that is resistant to tearing and fatigue.It features improved resistance to tearing and fatigue damage and is biased towards compression stress, as opposed to tensile stress.