Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have demonstrated
that they can make sensitive chemical analyses of minute samples of
nanoparticles by, essentially, roasting them on top of a quartz crystal. The
NIST-developed technique, "microscale thermogravimetric analysis,"
holds promise for studying nanomaterials in biology and the environment, where
sample sizes often are quite small and larger-scale analysis won't work.*