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Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2012

Persistent phosphors are known from applications such as night-vision goggles where they produce a characteristic green afterglow. The discovery of persistent phosphors that instead operate at near-infrared wavelengths with much longer afterglows may now enable new applications in night-vision surveillance and in bio-imaging.

Article p58

IMAGE: ZHENGWEI PAN AND FENG LIU

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

Editorial

  • Technology-transfer activities have surged since the 1980s, but only few inventions are bound to become a commercial success. Academic patenting requires professional strategies and should be motivated by goals beyond licensing revenue.

    Editorial

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Commentary

  • Seven years after isolation of the first graphene sheets, an analysis of the densely populated patent landscape around the two-dimensional material reveals striking differences between universities' patenting activities and illustrates the challenges of a fast-moving technology space.

    • Quentin Tannock
    Commentary
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Interview

  • Tony Hickson, Managing Director of Technology Transfer at Imperial Innovations, talked to Nature Materials about their efforts in stimulating academics at Imperial College London to disclose their inventions, and about trends in the patent system and the challenges of patenting early-stage technology.

    • Christian Martin
    Interview
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Research Highlights

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News & Views

  • A new plasmonic sensing platform that not only allows the detection of ultrasmall quantities of biomolecules, but is also sensitive to their identity and conformational state, represents a significant advance in the study of biomolecular interactions.

    • Na Liu
    • Annemarie Pucci
    News & Views
  • DNA-complexated cationic polymers with reduced charge density, high molecular weight and increased hydrophobicity show a lack of detectable cytotoxicity and efficiently deliver the apoptosis-inducing TRAIL gene to transplanted tumours in mice.

    • Enrico Mastrobattista
    • Wim E. Hennink
    News & Views
  • Electric-field-induced toggle switching of nanoscale thin-film magnets signifies an important step towards energy-efficient magnetic data storage.

    • Evgeny Y. Tsymbal
    News & Views
  • No accepted description of luminescent blinking in quantum dots is currently available. Now, experiments probing the connection between charge and fluorescence intensity fluctuations unveil an unexpected source of blinking, significantly advancing our fundamental understanding of this baffling phenomenon.

    • Todd D. Krauss
    • Jeffrey J. Peterson
    News & Views
  • Coordinated osmotic shocks within ordered materials lead to nanoperforated multilayer structures that may find application in photonics, optoelectronics and ultrafiltration.

    • Patrick Theato
    • Goran Ungar
    News & Views
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Review Article

  • The amount of energy that can be stored in Li-ion batteries is insufficient for the long-term needs of society, for example, for use in extended-range electric vehicles. Here, the energy-storage capabilities of Li–O2 and Li–S batteries are compared with that of Li-ion, their performances are reviewed, and the challenges that need to be overcome if such batteries are to succeed are highlighted.

    • Peter G. Bruce
    • Stefan A. Freunberger
    • Jean-Marie Tarascon
    Review Article
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Letter

  • Metamaterials are widely studied for their optical properties offering applications such as perfect lenses or cloaking. As is now shown, the interaction between the individual elements of metamaterials can also be used to design magnetoelastic metamaterials, which are able to change their structure in response to light.

    • Mikhail Lapine
    • Ilya V. Shadrivov
    • Yuri S. Kivshar
    Letter
  • Artificial materials that show negative refraction can be used for devices such as perfect lenses. The demonstration of negative refraction in nanostructured metal films, using a nonlinear optical effect—four-wave mixing—therefore opens new possibilities for optical devices.

    • Stefano Palomba
    • Shuang Zhang
    • Xiang Zhang
    Letter
  • Polymer-based bulk-heterojunction solar cells have shown some of the highest photoconversion efficiencies in organic photovoltaics, but polymer polydispersity impacts their performance. A small-molecule donor is now reported that enables the fabrication of bulk-heterojunction devices with low acceptor content and photoconversion efficiencies of up to 6.7%.

    • Yanming Sun
    • Gregory C. Welch
    • Alan J. Heeger
    Letter
  • Different mechanistic processes explaining the catalytic activities of supported gold catalysts have been proposed. Au–Pd colloidal nanoclusters are now shown to exhibit high catalytic activity owing to an abundance of negatively charged Au atoms on the surface.

    • Haijun Zhang
    • Tatsuya Watanabe
    • Naoki Toshima
    Letter
  • Vesicles can rupture as a result of an imbalance in osmotic pressure between their inside and the exterior. Such an ‘osmotic shock’ has now been multiplexed in a coordinated fashion within an ordered material in which a minor component swells and ruptures, thus leading to a porous bicontinuous structure. Such perforated ordered materials may find applications in photonics, optoelectronics and nanofiltration.

    • Paul Zavala-Rivera
    • Kevin Channon
    • Hernan Miguez
    Letter
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Article

  • The possibility of controlling magnetization by spin-polarized current could lead to devices more energy-efficient than traditional ones using external magnetic fields. Now, an even more efficient method has been demonstrated by using electric-field pulses to switch the magnetization in a CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnelling junction.

    • Wei-Gang Wang
    • Mingen Li
    • C. L. Chien
    Article
  • Plasmonic nanostructures are known to be an attractive platform for highly sensitive molecular sensors, although they often lack specificity. A plasmonic device with a sharp optical resonance tuned to biomolecules selectively captured on the surface of the device now offers a versatile yet highly specific platform for molecular sensing.

    • Chihhui Wu
    • Alexander B. Khanikaev
    • Gennady Shvets
    Article
  • Metal oxides can exchange charges with a wide variety of adsorbed organic molecules, which renders them useful in electronics and catalysis. A study on oxides with a range of electronic properties now shows that energy alignment at metal oxide/organic interfaces is universally governed by electron-chemical-potential equilibration.

    • Mark T. Greiner
    • Michael G. Helander
    • Zheng-Hong Lu
    Article
  • Many synthetic polymer nanoparticles used for non-viral gene delivery contain excess cations on their surface, which makes the particles cytotoxic and the delivery of genes inefficient. Terpolymers with a low charge density, high molecular weight and increased hydrophobicity are now shown to have minimal toxicity, and to efficiently deliver the apoptosis-inducing TRAIL gene to transplanted tumours in mice.

    • Jiangbing Zhou
    • Jie Liu
    • W. Mark Saltzman
    Article
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Focus

  • Technology transfer activities are on the rise, but only few academic patents are bound to become a commercial success. This focus explores the challenges of protecting early-stage technology and highlights successful academic patenting strategies in the case of graphene-related inventions.

    Focus
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