Volume 6 Issue 9, September 2011

Paul Scherrer and Peter Debye developed powder X-ray diffraction together, but it was Scherrer who figured out how to determine the size of crystallites from the broadening of diffraction peaks.

The adhesion energies for atomically thin graphene membranes on silicon dioxide substrates have now been measured.

Fibrous proteins from bacteria can be used to make biofilms with electrical conductivities that are comparable to those measured in conducting polymers.

Inorganic nanoparticles can self-assemble into uniformly sized supraparticles in a process governed by competition between electrostatic and van der Waals forces.

Symmetric protein molecules can be fused together with genetic techniques to produce molecular building blocks that self-assemble into specific ordered structures.

Pressurized blister tests show that the adhesion energies of graphene samples on silicon oxide are much higher than those measured in typical micromechanical structures.

Vesicle-capped nanotubes made from amphiphilic molecules with photoswitchable cores undergo controlled disassembly when exposed to ultraviolet light, and this process can be followed in real time with fluorescence microscopy.

AFM-based experiments on single molecules reveal that a hydrogen-bonded rotaxane — a structure containing a molecular ring threaded onto a molecular axle — can generate directional forces comparable to those generated by natural molecular machines.

Regular arrays of protein lattices can now be achieved by a fusion strategy using proteins with matching symmetry.

Unzipping carbon nanotubes produces high-quality graphene nanoribbons with smooth edges for revealing the intrinsic quantum transport phenomena in these materials.

Nanowire-based solar cells offer open-circuit voltages and fill factors that are superior to those available from planar solar cells made of the same materials.

Networks of nanofilaments derived from natural amino acids can have metallic-like conductivity.

Inorganic nanoparticles with non-uniform size distributions can spontaneously assemble into uniformly sized supraparticles with core-shell morphologies.

A silicon-on-insulator photodetector substrate can be used to produce absolute and quantitative maps of nanoscale optical antenna resonances in the near field.

Magnetic nanoparticles encapsulated inside liposomes can deliver drug cargo, target tumours and their microenvironment, and simultaneously act as magnetic resonance contrast agents.