Research

Mass production of nanoparticles of CdSe has been successfully performed by inverse micell method and the structure of them is determined by ab initio simulation by supercomputer by the research group of Professors Kawazoe, Kumar and Kasuya. These nanoparticles of (CdSe)33 and (CdSe)34 are extraordinarilly stable and shoud be called the new magic number clusters. 　The prices of fullerenes and nanotubes are still expensive because of the method of production is arcdischarge. On the contrary, the present nanoparticles could be made abundantly in cheap price because of the simple production method, and to be expected for immediate industrial applications. 　The present discovery introduces a new paradigm of stable nanoparticles and since they are made as binary systems, there are plenty of varieties of new materials related. This news was reported in Nature Materials Vol. 3 (2004) (on Feb. 1) and newspapers of Nikkan-Kogyo (on Jan. 27), Nikkei (on Feb. 13) and online journals Nikkei NanoTechnology (on Jan. 29).