Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and the University of Tokyo have developed a technique for the reversible conversion of 3-D lipid vesicles into 2-D ultra-thin nanosheets. Both the stable nanosheets and the reversible 2-D-3-D conversion process can find various applications in the pharmaceutical, bioengineering, food, and cosmetic sciences.
An astonishing number of recent technological advances and novel engineering applications go hand in hand with progress in the field of materials science. The design and manipulation of materials at the nanoscale (that is, on the order of billionths of a meter) has become a hot topic. In particular, nanosheets, which are ultra-thin 2-D planar structures with a surface ranging from several micrometers to millimeters, have recently attracted much attention because of their outstanding mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. For example, organic nanosheets have great potential as biomedical or biotechnological tools, while inorganic nanosheets could be useful for energy storage and harvesting.
But what about going from a 2-D nanosheet vesicle form by modifying specific conditions, such as pH, or using an enzyme (Fig. 1), and found that the reaction was reversible.
More information: Naohiko Shimada et al, Cationic Copolymer‐Chaperoned 2D–3D Reversible Conversion of Lipid Membranes, Advanced Materials (2019). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201904032
