Optics and photonics articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Q&A |

    In 2017 Professor Frances S. Ligler was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her inventions in portable optical biosensors. Professor Ligler now talks to Nature Chemistry about the challenge of developing new sensor designs into reliable products, and some of the pitfalls to avoid in the development process.

    • Russell Johnson

  • News & Views |

    The in situ, nanoscale positioning of a single molecule below the diffraction limit remains a challenge for chemists. Now, two approaches show how this can be accomplished through a combination of super-resolution microscopy and photo-inducible crosslinking chemistry.

    • Limin Xiang
    •  & Ke Xu

  • News & Views |

    There is a long history of gas-phase studies of bimolecular reactions, but the presence of surrounding molecules complicates analogous studies in solution. Now, advances in ultrafast laser technology have enabled the detailed study of vibrational energy release in a reaction in solution.

    • F. Fleming Crim

  • News & Views |

    A photo-reversible metal–semiconductor phase transition can be induced in a nanocrystalline transition-metal oxide at room temperature by short-wavelength light irradiation, holding promise for the development of new optical storage media.

    • Kosmas Prassides

  • Article |

    Usable electronic devices exploiting the attractive properties of graphene will require narrow ‘nanoribbons’ of the atom-thin carbon sheets. Ribbons narrower than 5 nm are desirable for effective devices, but conventional lithography is limited to 20 nm. Now, a gas-phase chemical approach for etching graphene from the edges has produced graphene nanoribbons below 5 nm.

    • Xinran Wang
    •  & Hongjie Dai

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