Maybe such a thing exists. But IIRC in general centrifugation is too crude of a separation technique for nano materials. For instance they aren't able to separate viruses from a cell culture using centrifugation, at least so I was taught.
I'm looking at the paper, it says they are seeing structures forming which range from from 1 to 100 µm which can be seen under microscope. Their best bet would be to first look at their shape and size distribution to figure out a way to separate one from another mechanically. If all the sizes are all over the place then that's not great.
They don't know the chemical properties of these materials which could be used for a chemical separation method. Binding the material out somehow. Though a nano tech specialist could be brought in to guess about the composition of material based on known forms.
I think the play would be to allow one of those structures to grow large enough to physically isolate / drag it around using some super fine instrumentation for small materials. Perhaps the electrostatic attraction of a STM needle could drag it away from other materials or pin it down while everything else is washed away. Then send the material through a very sensitive instrument for elemental analysis.
Once you know it's constituent elements that's a good starting point. It could indicate if it is a more metallic structure, graphene based, protein, synthetic polymer, etc. Then you could perform a more specific analysis from there on a new sample with the same type of structure (or just grow the original molecule so large that you can cut it into pieces).
Maybe such a thing exists. But IIRC in general centrifugation is too crude of a separation technique for nano materials. For instance they aren't able to separate viruses from a cell culture using centrifugation, at least so I was taught.
I'm looking at the paper, it says they are seeing structures forming which range from from 1 to 100 µm which can be seen under microscope. Their best bet would be to first look at their shape and size distribution to figure out a way to separate one from another mechanically. If all the sizes are all over the place then that's not great.
They don't know the chemical properties of these materials which could be used for a chemical separation method. Binding the material out somehow. Though a nano tech specialist could be brought in to guess about the composition of material based on known forms.
I think the play would be to allow one of those structures to grow large enough to physically isolate / drag it around using some super fine instrumentation for small materials. Perhaps the electrostatic attraction of a STM needle could drag it away from other materials or pin it down while everything else is washed away. Then send the material through a very sensitive instrument for elemental analysis.
Once you know it's constituent elements that's a good starting point. It could indicate if it is a more metallic structure, graphene based, protein, synthetic polymer, etc. Then you could perform a more specific analysis from there on a new sample with the same type of structure (or just grow the original molecule so large that you can cut it into pieces).