Au Naturale Nanoparticle Sun Protection

By: Katie Schaefer, C&T magazine

Posted: September 1, 2010, from the September 2010 issue of Cosmetics & Toiletries.

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“It seems that when nanoparticles are added to a nanocomposite, they enhance a material’s bonding properties, due to crosslinking,” said Zhang, who noted that nanoparticles have been added to tires to enhance their strength. In yet another project, the team is working on applying the nanoparticles to drug delivery, due to their biocompatibility.

Zhang’s team is still refining ways to optimize the nanoparticles for specific applications, as well as an eco-friendly scale-up method. “We are working to biosynthesize [rather than] chemically synthesize the material, meaning that we are trying to get the English ivy plant to produce the nanoparticles,” explained Zhang.

Of all the projects, however, Zhang believes the simplest project is perhaps the hardest—to observe the secretion process. “Nobody knows how English ivy secretes the nanoparticles, so we have set up a high magnification camera with which we hope to catch the secretion process in real time.”