Assistant Professor Steve Lenhert of the Department of Biological Science is the lead author on a paper in Nature Nanotechnology.

“We ended up with a fundamentally new class of material—in effect a biometalmaterial, which is a biomaterial that doesn’t exist in nature,” Lenhert said.

The paper, published in April 2010 and titled “Lipid multilayer gratings,” describes a technique based on Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN), which is a way of depositing incredibly small amounts of materials onto a surface with a pen-like instrument.

“The closest real-world application for this material is in medical diagnostics,” Lenhert said. Lenhert is a member of Florida State’s Integrative NanoScience Institute. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2010/04/19/new.face/