Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2015

Metal losses affect the performance of every plasmonic or metamaterial structure; dealing with them will determine the degree to which these structures will find practical applications.

Plasmons' progeny are invading the territory currently commanded by semiconductors.

A recent conference on the environmental effects of nanoparticles leaves Chris Toumey reflecting on the difficulties of carrying out nanotoxicology research that can be used to develop informed environmental regulation.

Early-career researchers share their thoughts on how to make use of the ability to manipulate light at the nanoscale.

The increasing miniaturization and resolution of consumer electronics poses quandaries for generating colour in imaging devices, which plasmonic nanostructures may be able to overcome.

A macrocycle can transit unidirectionally along a molecular axle under light irradiation dissipating a constant amount of energy per cycle.

Strontium titanate can act as a transparent protection layer for silicon photocathodes, preventing corrosion without compromising photocatalytic redox activity.

The use of asymmetrically biased quantum point contacts in semiconductor heterostructures paves the way for the realization of an all-electric spin field-effect transistor.

An alternating charge current pumped by the precessing magnetization of a ferromagnet demonstrates the direct conversion of magnons into charge currents via relativistic spin–orbit coupling.

This Review discusses recent fundamental advances in hot electron and hot hole science and examines potential usefulness in chemistry and for practical optoelectronic devices.

Two quantum point contacts are used to respectively inject and detect spins by purely electrical means in an all-semiconductor spin transistor.

The spin dynamics of a nanomagnet assembled from three iron atoms can be tuned by atomic exchange coupling with the magnetic tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope.

The splitting of electron pairs, which is essential for electron-based quantum information processing, can now be obtained with electron pairs that have been generated on-demand.

Magnetic excitations in a ferromagnet known as magnons can be converted into charge currents through a relativistic interaction that couples the spin of an electron with its orbital angular momentum.

Ultracold atoms can be used to sympathetically cool a membrane with a mass ten billion times larger than that of the atoms.

Stiffness topography with sharp atomic force microscopy tips can be used to generate nanoscale cross-sections of nuclear pore complexes, and suggests that the selective barrier in the complexes consists of a crosslinked network of nuclear pore proteins.

A high-throughput nanosensor based on a gold nanoparticle and fluorescent proteins allows mechanisms of chemotherapeutic drugs to be screened in minutes, offering a tool for expediting research in drug discovery and toxicology.

Under continuous illumination, a non-symmetric axle-type molecule transits through a macrocycle only in one direction via a ratchet mechanism that rectifies Brownian motion.

The stepwise stochastic motion of an individual organoarsenic(III) molecule along a linear track of thiols can be monitored in real time within a protein nanopore.

A silicon-based photocathode with an epitaxial strontium titanate protection layer and a mesh-like nanostructured catalyst can provide an applied bias photon-to-current efficiency of 4.9% for water reduction.

A magnetic resonance imaging probe that binds specifically to neurotoxic amyloid-beta oligomers can potentially be used for early detection of Alzheimer's disease.

By participating in activities organized by professional societies, PhD students can enrich their skills and extend their professional network, beyond what they can achieve in the lab, Yi-Hsin Lin explains.

The field of plasmonics and metamaterials has attracted a great deal of interest over the past two decades, but despite the many fundamental breakthroughs and exciting science it has produced, it is yet to deliver on the applications that were initially targeted as most promising. This focus examines the primary fundamental hurdles in the physics of plasmons that have been hampering practical applications and highlights some of the promising areas in which the field of plasmonics and metamaterials can realistically deliver.