Techniques and instrumentation articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fabrication of three-dimensional nanoscale structures is important to nanophotonic applications where light is guided and controlled. The optical beam lithography scheme developed by Gan and colleagues enables the fabrication of three-dimensional structures with feature sizes down to 9 nm.

    • Zongsong Gan
    • , Yaoyu Cao
    •  & Min Gu

  • Article |

    Vertically assembled graphene devices have received less attention than the typical two dimensional arrangements. Chen et al. show that an Au/graphene/Au assembly exhibits a large magnetoresistance ratio of up to 400%, while a Co/graphene/Co device displays a spin valve effect at room temperature.

    • Jing-Jing Chen
    • , Jie Meng
    •  & Da-Peng Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The experimental investigation of relaxation times in graphene quantum dots has long been hindered by the limited tunability of these devices. Here Volk et. al.employ a device design to study this problem and report charge relaxation times of around 60–100 ns.

    • Christian Volk
    • , Christoph Neumann
    •  & Christoph Stampfer

  • Article |

    Creating new materials requires novel approaches to design and synthesize small building particles. Sacanna et al. develop a versatile synthetic strategy to design and mass-produce colloidal building blocks starting from two different colloids that leads to selectively functionalized surface areas.

    • Stefano Sacanna
    • , Mark Korpics
    •  & Gi-Ra Yi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Extreme pressure can induce significant changes in a material’s mechanical response, but characterizing the evolution of these changes as they take place is challenging. Yang et al. demonstrate the use of coherent X-ray diffraction imaging to follow changes in the three-dimensional shape and strain fields within gold particles under pressure.

    • Wenge Yang
    • , Xiaojing Huang
    •  & Ho-kwang Mao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polymers are good potential processable materials for electronic components; however, their charge mobilities are quite low. Here, the authors show that wrapping polymers with macrocycles and localization of π-orbitals realizes an ideal orbital alignment for charge hopping with subsequently increased mobility.

    • Jun Terao
    • , Akihisa Wadahama
    •  & Yasushi Tsuji

  • Article |

    A promising route towards molecular devices is the self-assembly of atoms or molecules on a surface. Here, Gruznev et al. show that the synthesis of unique geometries of C60molecules on gold–indium-covered crystalline silicon is governed by moiré interference.

    • D.V. Gruznev
    • , A.V. Matetskiy
    •  & Y.L. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ability to add and move individual atoms on a surface with a scanning tunnelling microscope enables precise control over the electronic quantum states of the surface. Schofield et al. show that removing hydrogen atoms from a passivated silicon surface can be used to generate and control such states.

    • S. R. Schofield
    • , P. Studer
    •  & D. R. Bowler

  • Article |

    Detecting the magnetic spins of a small number of atoms is important for applications such as magnetic resonance imaging. Here, Steinert et al.demonstrate that nitrogen-vacancy defect centres in diamond allow spin detection at room temperature at length scales smaller than human cells.

    • S. Steinert
    • , F. Ziem
    •  & J. Wrachtrup

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiplexed labelling of individual cells allows the direct observation of intracellular molecular composition, but is difficult to achieve with existing techniques. Here, self-assembled fluorescent nanoparticle probes and multicolour multicycle staining are used for the simultaneous evaluation of multiple biomolecules at subcellular resolution.

    • Pavel Zrazhevskiy
    •  & Xiaohu Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexible organic electronic devices have the potential to serve as biosensors in living animals. Khodagholy et al. show that organic transistors can be used to record brain activity in rats and demonstrate that they have a superior signal-to-noise ratio compared with electrodes due to local signal amplification.

    • Dion Khodagholy
    • , Thomas Doublet
    •  & George G. Malliaras

  • Article |

    The chemical reduction of graphene oxide can provide large quantities of reduced graphene oxide for potential application in electronics and composite materials. Feng et al. report a highly efficient low-temperature one-pot reduction of graphene oxide that uses sodium-ammonia solution as the reducing agent.

    • Hongbin Feng
    • , Rui Cheng
    •  & Jinghong Li

  • Article |

    The use of III-V semiconductor nanowires can overcome the need for lattice matching in multi-junction solar cells, which restricts the choice of materials and their bandgaps. This work demonstrates efficient solar cells with GaAsP single nanowires with tunable bandgap and grown on low-cost Si substrates.

    • Jeppe V. Holm
    • , Henrik I. Jørgensen
    •  & Martin Aagesen

  • Article |

    The recognition of viruses by synthetic materials is historically difficult. Here, a templating procedure using silica nanoparticles coated with organosilanes is used to form virus-imprinted particles, possessing both shape and chemical imprints, capable of virus recognition at picomolar concentrations.

    • Alessandro Cumbo
    • , Bernard Lorber
    •  & Patrick Shahgaldian

  • Article |

    Engineering heterogeneous metallic nanocrystals could produce diverse materials with tunable properties. Here the authors develop a strategy for the rational and independent programming of each architecture-determining element, such as the shape, size and spatial relationship of the component nanocrystals.

    • Yue Yu
    • , Qingbo Zhang
    •  & Jim Yang Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emission properties of quantum dots make them ideal for probing plasmonic nanostructures, but their small size makes them difficult to manipulate. Ropp et al.use a microfluidic system to accurately place single quantum dots around silver nanowires to probe the local density of optical states.

    • Chad Ropp
    • , Zachary Cummins
    •  & Edo Waks

  • Article |

    Quantum magnetometry in the solid state is usually affected by short coherence times and control errors that limit the sensitivity. This work demonstrates a continuous-driving scheme based on composite pulses that improves both these shortcomings and can be used in variable sensing environments.

    • Clarice D. Aiello
    • , Masashi Hirose
    •  & Paola Cappellaro

  • Article |

    Sub-wavelength structures can be used to convert between light and plasmon polaritons. Genevetet al. design holographic plasmonic interfaces that couple vortex light beams to surface plasmons, allowing them to detect the orbital angular momentum of the beam with a simple silicon photodiode.

    • Patrice Genevet
    • , Jiao Lin
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Review Article |

    Hydrogels are water-containing polymer networks that have been applied in various biological settings. Burdick and Murphy review recent advances in the development of dynamic hydrogels whose properties and mechanics change in response to biological signals.

    • Jason A. Burdick
    •  & William L. Murphy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-resolution characterisation techniques enable us to better understand the properties of nanoscale materials and devices. By combining electron microscopy and infrared nanoscopy, Stiegleret al.demonstrate a general approach to simultaneously probe the structural, chemical and electronic properties of a nanostructure.

    • J.M. Stiegler
    • , R. Tena-Zaera
    •  & R. Hillenbrand

  • Article |

    The degree of polydispersity of colloidal suspensions is known to have consequences for their physical properties. Kuritaet al. present a general method for determining the sizes of individual particles, and thus the polydispersity, using only the coordinates of the centre positions of spherical particles.

    • Rei Kurita
    • , David B. Ruffner
    •  & Eric R. Weeks

  • Article |

    Ultrathin inorganic materials hold promise for a variety of applications, including flexible electronics. This work presents a fabrication method that permits the synthesis of large and flexible freestanding layers of zinc selenide that display a high-photocurrent density.

    • Yongfu Sun
    • , Zhihu Sun
    •  & Yi Xie

  • Article |

    The torque contributions exerted by spin-polarized currents on magnetic structures are not fully understood due to the difficulty in discerning their relative weight. Pollardet al. propose a novel method to directly determine the value of the competing spin transfer torques by in-situLorentz microscopy.

    • S.D. Pollard
    • , L. Huang
    •  & Y. Zhu

  • Article |

    Ink-jet printing methods are an attractive approach to nanofabrication, where electrohydrodynamic control allows for flexible and cheap fabrication. Here, a new approach is presented using electrostatic nanodroplet autofocussing to produce high aspect ratio nanoscale structures like plasmonic nanoantennas.

    • P. Galliker
    • , J. Schneider
    •  & D. Poulikakos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenide molybdenum disulphide has recently attracted attention owing to its distinctive electronic properties. Cao and co-workers present numerical evidence suggesting that circularly polarized light can preferentially excite a single valley in the band structure of this system.

    • Ting Cao
    • , Gang Wang
    •  & Ji Feng

  • Article |

    Organic electronic devices are promising for many applications, particularly in biomedical research, but are hindered by thermal instability and low melting points. Now, organic thin-film transistors are shown with excellent thermal properties that can withstand medical sterilization processes.

    • Kazunori Kuribara
    • , He Wang
    •  & Takao Someya

  • Article |

    Strategies to tune the surface properties of topological insulators are essential, if they are to find use in applications. Using a combination of theoretical and experimental techniques, this study examines how the properties of ordered ternary topological insulators vary with the content of group IV elements.

    • Sergey V. Eremeev
    • , Gabriel Landolt
    •  & Evgueni V. Chulkov

  • Article |

    Ferroelectric materials are characterized by a spontaneous polarization, which in practical applications is manipulated by an electric field. This study examines how defects affect the switching with atomic resolution, by usingin situaberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy.

    • Peng Gao
    • , Christopher T. Nelson
    •  & Xiaoqing Pan

  • Article |

    X-ray ptychography has been used to extend the field of view in high-resolution quantitative imaging. Godardet al. develop Bragg-mode ptychography to reconstruct, in three dimensions, a crystalline specimen that is too large to be studied as a single object with a coherence-limited X-ray beam.

    • P. Godard
    • , G. Carbone
    •  & V. Chamard

  • Article |

    The controllable modification of graphene by chemical functionalization can modulate its optical and electronic properties. Sunet al. devise a functionalisation-based method to pattern graphane/graphene superlattices within a single sheet of graphene.

    • Zhengzong Sun
    • , Cary L. Pint
    •  & James M. Tour

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tunnelling transitions triggered by microwave irradiation between coupled quantum dots have generally been assumed to be spin-conserving. This study shows that this condition is violated in the presence of spin–orbit coupling, thus opening new possibilities for manipulating a two–spin qubit system by microwave irradiation.

    • L.R. Schreiber
    • , F.R. Braakman
    •  & L.M.K. Vandersypen

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