Volume 11 Issue 5, May 2016

Discussions about nanotechnology and development focus on applications that directly address the needs of the world's poor. Nanotechnology can certainly make an impact in the fight against global poverty, but we need to broaden our imagination.

Nature Nanotechnology talked to Michael A. Meador, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office in the US, about the way in which the US National Nanotechnology Initiative operates and how this has changed since its launch in 2001.

Scanning near-field optical microscopy combined with pump–probe spectroscopy can resolve ultrafast dynamics at the nanoscale.

Meta-analysis of the literature on quantum dot toxicity using a machine-learning tool helps reveal hidden relationships between material properties and toxicity.

Two complementary strategies show how to control the spatial propagation of spin waves, thus promising complex and reconfigurable wiring in spin-wave-based circuits.

This Review discusses the fundamental challenges for making enzymatic reactions occur in surface- or volume-confined environments that may be suitable for technological applications in vitro and in vivo.

The valley Hall effect in bilayer MoS₂ transistors can be controlled using a gate voltage and the induced valley polarization imaged with Kerr microscopy.

Large, bilayer graphene single crystals can be grown by oxygen-activated chemical vapour deposition.

Magnetic domain walls in a permalloy sample can be arranged to define waveguides for the transmission of information via magnons.

Nanomagnets can be used to realize waveguides for the transmission of spin waves in a straight line and along a curve.

Magnetic skyrmions can be stabilized at room temperature in cobalt layers sandwiched between heavy metal layers due to engineering of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction.

Stable, single magnetic skyrmions are demonstrated at room temperature in ultrathin cobalt nanostructures.

The spin–orbit interaction can be used to optically generate and control terahertz electric photocurrents in metallic ferromagnetic heterostructures.

Focusing plasmon polaritons at the apex of a nanometre tip leads to the generation of an intense third-order nonlinear response used as a local probe for ultrafast nanoimaging.

Metal cations can form coordination complexes with the lone pair electrons of 2D metal chalcogenides, offering a potentially general strategy to surface functionalization.

A composite fibrous material made of carbon nanotubes and graphene responds to small pressure but not to bending deformation.

Literature data mining and knowledge extraction (known as meta-analysis) can be used to derive the relationships between toxicological outcome and the physicochemical properties of cadmium-containing quantum dots.

Nanotechnology and superheroes can inspire high school students to explore science, as Lisa E. Friedersdorf and Quinn A. Spadola explain.