qNano: High-Resolution Nanoparticle Size and Charge Characterization

纳米技术带来了重大的科学和技术进步，所有这些都是由材料的独特性质驱动的，因为它们的尺寸减小到纳米级，并且它们的表面占材料总质量的比例明显更高。 在这种情况下，获得在评估纳米颗粒的尺寸和表面化学（特别是表面电荷）方面提供最先进的准确性的方法对于将纳米材料的性能与其性质相关联并从而促进纳米技术的合理和加速设计至关重要。 用于这种测量的传统技术固有地受到限制，因为它们是基于来自大颗粒群的光散射，从而给出倾向于过度强调较大颗粒并且错过区分多个群体的高度平均的结果。最近，单个纳米颗粒跟踪技术已经克服了群体平均问题，但仍然依赖于光衍射和对3D体积内具有多种尺寸的颗粒的有效光学聚焦，这在没有偏差的情况下极具挑战性。 为了应对这一挑战，Izon Sciences开发了qNano，这是一种市场上独一无二的仪器，它通过一次测量来测量高分辨率、基于数量的尺寸和电荷分布以及纳米颗粒浓度。不同人群之间提供的更高分辨率将允许对纳米颗粒聚集进行更详细的分析，这是共同申请人在从癌症肿瘤靶向到矿物浮选等领域正在进行的项目的关键组成部分。此外，通过改变孔径和/或驱动颗粒流过仪器的压力，可以获得关于软纳米颗粒的弹性和悬浮液中不对称纳米颗粒（例如碳纳米管和纤维素纳米晶体）的尺寸的独特见解，这是使用任何其他可用仪器无法获得的。最终，共同申请人将从qNano获得的独特见解应用于治疗癌症以及眼科和神经系统疾病的药物递送载体的合理开发，可控的自组装功能生物医学设备

Nanotechnology has led to significant scientific and technological advancements, all driven by the unique properties of materials as their size is reduced to the nanoscale and their surface comprises a significantly higher fraction of the total mass of the material. In this context, having access to methods that provide state-of-the-art accuracy in assessing both the size and surface chemistry (in particular, surface charge) of nanoparticles is essential to correlate the performance of nanomaterials with their properties and thus facilitate the rational and accelerated design of nanoscale technologies. Traditional techniques for such measurements are inherently limited in that they are based on light scattering from large particle populations, giving highly averaged results that tend to over-emphasize larger particles and miss differentiating multiple populations. More recently, single nanoparticle tracking techniques have overcome the population averaging issues but remain dependent on light diffraction and effective optical focusing on particles with multiple sizes within a 3D volume, highly challenging to do without bias. To address this challenge, Izon Sciences has developed the qNano, a unique-to-the-market instrument that instead applies changes in electrical resistance across a pore (the Coulter principle) to measure high-resolution, number-based size and charge distributions as well as nanoparticle concentrations via a single measurement. The higher resolution provided between different populations will allow for significantly more detailed analysis of nanoparticle aggregation, a critical component of ongoing projects among the co-applicants in fields ranging from cancer tumour targeting to mineral flotation. Furthermore, by changing the pore size and/or the pressure driving flow of the particles through the instrument, unique insight can be acquired regarding the elasticity of soft nanoparticles and the dimensions of asymmetric nanoparticles (such as carbon nanotubes and cellulose nanocrystals) in suspension that is inaccessible using any other available instrument. Ultimately, the co-applicants will apply the unique insight to be gained from the qNano to the rational development of drug delivery vehicles for treating cancer as well as ophthalmic and neurological disorders, self-assembled functional biomedical devices that are controllable