Obtain reference data for nanoparticle standards that are commonly used yet incompletely characterized and poorly understood, improving the quality and reliability of measurement methods for…

Active Cooperative Agreement Awarded Last action

Award ID
70NANB24H233
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$313,000

Award facts

Completion date 72% complete
Place of performance
La Jolla, CA 92037, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

As the agency reported it.

Purpose
The purpose of this project is to obtain reference data for nanoparticle standards that are commonly used yet incompletely characterized and poorly understood, improving the quality and reliability of measurement methods for developing nanomedicines and studying nanoplastics, among many other applications.
Activities
The researchers will fabricate microscopy standards to improve correlative measurements of single nanoparticles with low uncertainty and high throughput. The researchers will measure polystyrene nanoparticles by fluorescence microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy, correlating the different measurement results. The researchers will evaluate unavoidable uncertainty of the independent variable?nanoparticle size?to inform a measurement error model. The researchers will apply the measurement error model to obtain unbiased estimates of power-law exponents that model intensity?size trends across a range of nanoparticle sizes.
Expected outcomes
Fluorescence intensity is a broadly relevant optical property that is particularly significant for polymeric nanoparticles. Polystyrene spheres often serve as size standards to test particle sizing methods, probe optical microscope responses, and calibrate flow cytometry systems. Upon sorbing fluorophores, such nanoparticles might also serve as intensity standards to support ongoing efforts to use expected power-law exponents to interpret and even validate measurement results, or to infer particle size from fluorescence intensity by fitting and inverting a power-law model. The applicability and interpretability of power-law models make them useful for property?size correlations, but critical evaluations of the dependence of apparent exponents on unavoidable sizing errors are rare, even as caution is necessary. In the presence of sizing errors, observation of an expected exponent, which would ordinarily build confidence, could instead result from a biased measurement of an unexpected exponent. Seemingly small sizing errors can cause surprisingly large biases, yielding misleading insights. Reference data are necessary to prevent this problematic outcome, which is a pressing issue in at the state of the art of the scientific literature, and to enable future measurements of high quality and reliability.
Intended beneficiaries
Fluorescent nanoparticles are commonly used as size standards, and are increasingly used as intensity standards, to benchmark measurement methods used in industrial, academic, and governmental research and development. These measurement methods have numerous applications, ranging from supporting the development of new and newly affordable nanoparticle medicines, to evaluating the potential toxicity of nanoplastic pollution. Reference data from NIST are fundamental to support the use of nanoparticle standards in such measurement methods.

Transactions

Action Obligated Date
Amendment $200,000
Original award $113,000

Quick answers

Who received award 70NANB24H233?

70NANB24H233 was awarded to Theiss Research by National Institute of Standards and Technology (Department of Commerce) on September 1, 2024.

How much is award 70NANB24H233 worth?

$313,000 has been obligated on 70NANB24H233.

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