Volume 11 Issue 7, July 2016

A comprehensive nanotechnology-specific database has been launched as part of the Nature Research portfolio.

Nanotechnology-induced risks to the environment are of greater concern than envisaged, although different groups of people are concerned for different reasons, as Chris Toumey explains.

Diodes, logic gates and sensors can be built from metal nanoparticles coated with charged organic ligands.

Aggregated form of single-walled carbon nanotubes can inhibit the neurochemical and behavioural effects induced by methamphetamine, offering a potential treatment for drug addiction and abuse.

An autonomous chemically driven artificial molecular machine uses information acquired by allosteric interactions combined with an exergonic reaction to know which way to go.

Living matter should inspire the design of future nanosystems.

Improvement in sample quality has resulted in the first observation of the quantum Hall effect in a black phosphorus two-dimensional electron system.

The use of electric fields to control spin currents, which is one of the goals of modern spintronics, has now been extended to control the valley degree of freedom in a 2D semiconductor.

Metal nanoparticles functionalized with charged organic ligands can be used to create electronic devices in which the metal nanoparticles sense, process and report chemical signals.

Single-nanowire photoelectrodes show that the photovoltage output of ensemble arrays can be limited by poorly performing individual wires and that the high surface area of nanowires lowers the overpotential of photoelectrochemical reactions.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes in an aggregated form can inhibit the rewarding and psychomotor-stimulating effects of methamphetamine, and can control relapse to drug-seeking behaviour in mice.

Although spin–orbit torque switching demonstrations have so far been based on the magnetic easy axis orthogonal to the current, it is possible to produce schemes with the easy axis parallel to the current.

Volumetric changes during cycling in lithium metal anodes can be largely suppressed by using a lithophilic carbonaceous host.

Large films of aligned and closely packed single-walled carbon nanotubes can be prepared through slow vacuum filtration, and used to create terahertz polarizers, thin-film transistors, polarized light emission devices, and polarization-sensitive detectors.

Carbon nanotube porins with diameters of 0.8 nm can confine water to a one-dimensional chain and support proton transport rates that exceed those of bulk water by an order of magnitude.

Multiplexed sensing of single molecules can be achieved with solid-state nanopores by using digitally encoded DNA nanostructures, allowing four different antibodies to be simultaneously detected at nanomolar concentrations.

Looking at your research with a business mentality can be surprisingly satisfying, says Ying Lia Li.