Volume 10 Issue 7, July 2015

The use of silver nanoparticles to clean clothes and the use of magnetite nanoparticles to clean water provide contrasting illustrations of the potential environmental consequences of nanotechnology, as Chris Toumey explains.

A nucleic acid-based chloride sensor is used to image and quantify spatiotemporal chloride transport in the living cell.

The delivery of flexible electronic scaffolds to precise locations in biological tissues or cavities is achieved by injecting them via a syringe needle with a diameter much smaller than the size of the scaffold.

Charged domain walls in ferroelectric thin films can be manipulated at the nanoscale and used to induce charges in the surrounding insulating material.

The high sensitivity of magnetic skyrmions to mechanical deformation of the underlying crystal lattice provides a new tuning parameter for potential applications of these nanosized spin whirls.

Studies on a perovskite photovoltaic device suggest that improved stability, one of the hurdles to large-scale applicability of perovskites in solar cells, can be achieved.

This article reviews recent progress in the synthesis and characterization of well-defined subnanometre clusters, and the understanding and exploitation of their catalytic properties, highlighting the potential of such clusters to provide insight into important catalytic processes and to form the basis of novel catalytic systems.

Uniaxial strain as small as 0.3% in FeGe thin films can induce large anisotropic deformation of magnetic skyrmions and their crystal lattice hosted in the material.

Topological superconductivity, a state that can support the formation of Majorana zero modes, can be induced in the edge state of a InAs/GaSb nanowire.

High-quality superconducting tunnel junctions operating above liquid nitrogen temperatures can be fabricated with a focused beam of helium ions that directly writes tunnel barriers in a cuprate superconductor.

Circularly polarized emission with no applied magnetic field can be obeserved in a two-dimensional semiconductor due to the interaction of excitons with a two-dimensional electron gas.

The high material quality achieved in black phosphorus thin films combined with the choice of an appropriate substrate enables the electrostatic formation of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas that exhibits quantum oscillations in its magnetoresistance.

Charged domain walls can be created and manipulated at the nanoscale so that their polarization charge can be used to dope ferroelectric thin films at selected locations in a reversible way.

The polymeric shell surrounding gold nanoparticles may degrade when injected into rats, suggesting that even highly stable colloidal nanoparticles are susceptible to physicochemical changes in vivo.

A power conversion efficiency of 22% is achieved in black silicon back-contacted solar cells through passivation of the nanostructured surface by a conformal alumina layer.

Rolled-up ultraflexible mesh electronics can be injected through a syringe needle of diameter as small as 100 μm into man-made and biological cavities, gels and tissues, where they can unfold and perform sensing operations.

Octahedral DNA origami frames that have encoded vertices capable of attaching nanoparticles can be used to form precise three-dimensional nanoparticle clusters and one- and two-dimensional nanoparticle arrays.

Chloride concentrations inside subcellular organelles of living cells can now be measured in a pH-independent manner using a DNA nanodevice, offering a tool for studying chloride homeostasis and its associated diseases.

Your teachers and your colleagues have an essential role in helping you to determine your scientific interests and your way of doing research, says Giampaolo Pitruzzello.