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The tobacco mosaic virus can be combined with metallic nanoparticles to make novel electronic memory elements. Are virus-based memory sticks just around the corner?

Controlling the friction between two moving surfaces — and possibly even reducing it to zero — is one of the outstanding challenges in modern tribology. Two recent discoveries may make this dream come true.

Governments invest billions in it and tens of thousands of papers are published on the subject every year, but what exactly is nanotechnology?

The proteins used as fluorescent markers in cellular imaging are only a few nanometres in size, yet the image resolution is typically diffraction-limited to one hundred times this scale. Now, a new strategy exists for imaging intracellular structure and dynamics with 10 nm resolution.

The invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope 25 years ago, followed by the arrival of the atomic force microscope five years later, were crucial events in the history of nanoscience and nanotechnology. As the recent International Conference on Nanoscience and Technology in Basel made clear, scanning probe microscopes based on these discoveries are still having a tremendous impact on many areas of research.

A new and scalable method for separating metallic from semiconducting carbon nanotubes will make for easier wiring of nanocircuits and lead to more reliable nanoelectronic devices.

A superconducting quantum interference device made with carbon nanotubes may be able to measure changes in the magnetic moment of a single molecule.

Researchers have combined photolithography and self-assembly to pattern a silicon wafer

Single photoconducting nanowires made from an organic polymer may lead to smaller solar cells and photo-detectors

Nanosized objects can be easily manipulated on a low-friction workbench made of multiwalled carbon nanotubes

Disk-like molecules can be self-assembled into nanowires and crosslinked to form robust structures

The charge on a quantum dot controls the magnetic properties of a single manganese atom embedded in it

RNA molecules can be used as scaffolds for the synthesis of CdS nanocrystals of the same size

Quantum ‘back-action’ has been used to lower the temperature of a vibrating nanobeam

The 'molecular fingerprinting' technique known as SERS has now been applied to living samples for the first time

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes can stimulate the growth of a single-celled organism when cultured in yeast medium