An amphibious artificial vision system with a panoramic field of view can be created by mimicking the functional and anatomical structure of the compound eyes of fiddler crabs. The photograph on the cover shows the artificial visual system, which integrates a microlens array with a flexible comb-shaped silicon photodiode array on a spherical structure.

See Lee et al.

Stackable chips that use optoelectronic device arrays for chip-to-chip communication and neuromorphic cores based on memristor crossbar arrays for parallel data processing could be used to create energy-efficient sensor-computing systems for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The optical microscopy image on the cover shows an AI processor chip, which can be combined with a range of different sensor and computing chips depending on the requirements of the application.

See Choi et al. and News & Views by Miao

High-quality van der Waals contacts between two-dimensional materials and three-dimensional metal electrodes can be formed on the wafer scale using a metal transfer printing technique in which electrodes are deposited on a graphene substrate, delaminated and then transferred onto two-dimensional semiconductors. The computer-generated image on the cover highlights the delamination of an array of metal electrodes from a graphene layer.

See Liu et al. and News & Views by Kwon

With the help of a metal deposition process that uses a selenium buffer layer, van der Waals contacts that are interaction- and defect-free can be formed between metals and two-dimensional semiconductors. The computer-generated image on the cover highlights the probing of p-type tungsten diselenide (WSe2) field-effect transistors with gold van der Waals contacts, which can be created with the technique.

See Kwon et al.

Silicon quantum dots and spin qubits can be fabricated in a 300-mm semiconductor manufacturing facility using all-optical lithography and fully industrial processing. The photograph on the cover shows a section of a 300-mm wafer that contains 82 unit cells (die) and more than 10,000 quantum dot arrays of various lengths.

See Zwerver et al.

The suppression of superconductivity in gated titanium nitride nanowires on silicon substrates can be linked to the relaxation of high-energy electrons and the emission of phonons. The cover shows a false-colour scanning electron microscopy image of a titanium nitride superconducting nanowire (blue) and side gates (yellow) on a silicon substrate. The generated phonons (red) travel through the substrate and efficiently switch the nanowire from a superconducting to a resistive state.

See Ritter et al.

The theme of our 2022 technology of the year is the future of transport, and we explore, in particular, key challenges in road transport.

See Editorial