Volume 7 Issue 9, September 2012

More coherence and structure in the way research is conducted should be introduced in nanotoxicology, and all stakeholders must do their part.

Silver disk-over-hole nanostructures create bright colours and fine tonal variations with the best possible resolution for visible light.

Singling out the role of nanotwins in materials' failure can guide the design of metallic nanostructures with both high strength and high ductility.

Graphene promises water desalination at throughputs much higher than state-of-the-art membranes.

Local proton irradiation causes a chemical reaction that leads to nanopatterned magnetic media. The technique has strong potential for improving high-density data storage and other types of applications involving nanostructuring of materials.

A molecular spin transistor can be used to electronically measure the nuclear spin of a single atom.

Controlling the plasmon resonance of nanodisk structures enables colour images to be printed at the ultimate resolution of 100,000 dots per inch, as viewed by bright-field microscopy.

A mechanically fragile aerogel made of single-walled carbon nanotubes can be transformed into a superelastic material by coating it with graphene.

Complex magnetic nanostructures can be fabricated by using low-energy protons to convert paramagnetic oxide materials into metallic ferromagnets.

A monolithic array of three-dimensional microtraps is etched from a silica-on-silicon wafer and is characterized by confining and probing individual ions and strings of ions.

Improved performance in a photovoltaic device made of colloidal quantum dots is achieved through a combination of passivation by halide anions and organic crosslinking.

Dual-wavelength tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can be used to monitor photocatalytic reactions at the nanoscale.

Piezoelectric nanoribbons are used to monitor the mechanical responses of neuronal cells to electrical excitation.

Nanotwinned copper nanopillars without any grain boundaries or other microstructural features are fabricated and used to explore the influence of twin boundaries on the mechanical properties of these structures.

The potential of single-protein NEMS-based mass spectrometry is demonstrated by analysing IgM antibody complexes in real time.