News & Views

Creating π-conjugated nanowires and controlling their self-organization on surfaces are key issues in the fields of molecular, supramolecular and organic electronics. A new electrochemical method provides a promising route for creating polymer nanowire arrays.

The use of direct laser photolithography for creating complex three-dimensional structures in photocurable polymer resist has great potential for the construction of micromechanical and photonic devices. A new study pushes this technique towards its limits to explore just how far its potential might reach.

Nanocrystal quantum dots are excellent emitters of light, but energizing that emission electrically has proved difficult. A newly discovered non-radiative energy-transfer process that allows electron–hole pairs to be generated in quantum wells, and then transferred into quantum dots, could lead to a new generation of ultra-high-efficiency light sources for use at scales ranging from nano-optics to a city block.

The interaction of twin walls with defects influences many of the properties of ferroelectric and superconducting materials. A breakthrough in experimental methods allows the direct determination of twin-wall widths for the first time.

High-temperature superconductors could revolutionize the electrical power industry. New work shows how the introduction of BaZrO₃ nanoparticles during growth leads to a dramatic increase of the critical current in the 'second generation' superconductor YBa₂Cu₃O₇.

Semiconductors that exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism are central to the development of semiconductor spintronics. Manganese-doped chalcopyrites are a promising class of such materials, but their success will depend on our ability to understand and optimize their behaviour. First-principles materials design could provide a way to achieve these goals.

Structural applications of nanostructured metals often require both high strength and good ductility. But although these metals usually have high strength, their ductility is often too low. New experimental work suggests that it is possible to retain the ductility of metals after nanostructuring by activating certain deformation mechanisms.

Passing a DNA strand many times back-and-forth through a protein nanopore would enable the interaction between them to be studied more closely. This may now be possible, using a dumbbell-shaped DNA–polymer complex, which may lead to a more reliable analysis of DNA sequences using nanopores.

Many techniques for growing metallic and semiconducting nanowires have been developed, but most are slow, complicated or material specific. A new approach based on creating and then filling nanosized cracks in a thin film could enable horizontal nanowires to be made more quickly and easily, and from a wider range of materials.

Two-phase mixtures can have both complex morphologies and behaviour that is far from that predicted by the classical mathematical models developed for dispersions of spherical particles. Coupling experimental structural data with phase-field calculations provides a useful tool to predict the morphological evolution of these complicated systems.

A composite membrane in which the nanoscopic pores of a material are aligned within the larger pores of a matrix brings us a step closer to the realization of molecular filters.

To some researchers, the goal of molecular electronics is to develop cheaper and higher-performance alternatives to conventional silicon-based technology. To others, it is the exploration of entirely new possibilities opened up by the different properties and phenomena exhibited by devices constructed at the molecular level. Steady progress is being made on understanding how and if these goals can be achieved.

Nanoparticles are commonly thought to be the fundamental building blocks for new devices. Spontaneous assembly of ordered chemically distinct subnanometre domains on the surface of gold nanoparticles may reduce the size of the fundamental building block even further.

Clever microfluidic plumbers show us how biological processing at the nanolitre scale really only requires micromachining technology. The pico era may not be so far off.

The emergence of nanoscale features — such as magnetic and electronic patterns — in materials that are otherwise homogeneous provides a potential alternative to conventional top-down and bottom-up fabrication techniques. The way these features arise in manganite crystals is contentious, but could be explained using elasticity theory.

A face-centred-cubic lattice is a common structure, but one in which the constituent elements are spheres made of concentric layers of aluminium, strontium, bismuth and oxygen atoms is an unexpected discovery with unique potential.