News & Views

The mechanical properties of nanotube bundles are limited by the sliding of individual nanotubes across each other. Introducing crosslinks between the nanotubes by electron irradiation prevents sliding, and leads to dramatic improvements in strength.

A new polymer for delivering DNA in synchrony with the life cycle of white blood cells stimulates a cell-killing immune response and makes DNA vaccines much more potent.

Although the advent of organic electronics promises the development of such futuristic applications as electronic paper, the limited resolution with which these materials can be patterned is hampering the progress. But the way forward may now have been found by investigating how these materials dewet from submicrometre hydrophobic lines patterned on a surface.

A new generation of liquid-crystal gels provides ideal models to study the unique phenomena arising from the combination of molecular orientation and elastic strain.

Whatever you are trying to make, the choice of materials is often bewildering. Novel combinatorial approaches allow you to reduce the time and costs necessary to optimize results, while stimulating the quest for deeper fundamental knowledge.

The properties of nanoparticles usually differ significantly from those of the material from which they are formed. New evidence for the existence of ultrastable, size-selected CdSe nanoclusters opens new opportunities for taking advantage of these properties in the synthesis of 'cluster-assembled materials'.

Optical fibres: great for long-haul telecommunications, but can the same concept be used to 'conduct' light on the microscopic scale? Recent research would indicate not only that we can, but that it is a superior solution.

Ferroelectric materials promise computer memories with the speed of random access memories and the permanence of hard discs. But how will the microstructure of these materials influence the ultimate performance of ferroelectric memories?

A non-contact atomic force microscopy technique and a new model offer the solution to an old question. Why are microdroplets more wetting than macrodroplets? The answer lies on the surface.

Microfluidic systems have great potential to perform complex chemical and biological processing and analysis on a single disposable chip. That goal is now a step closer with the demonstration of an efficient all-optical particle sorter.

Damaged bones can be repaired with a clinical cement made of calcium phosphate. But this material is currently too weak to support the body. Reducing the number of pores during the cement setting may be the key to solving this problem.

Proteins are like fish in that they need water to survive — without it they lose vitality and become unable to carry out their functions. A new hydrogel material for protein microarray chips keeps the proteins wet and lively.

The strength of polycrystalline materials is well known to increase with decreasing grain size. Below a certain 'strongest size' however, this behaviour is reversed. Mapping the deformation mechanisms in nanoscale materials by molecular dynamics simulation clarifies why.

Nanoporous glasses are widely used as low-k dielectrics in microelectronic devices, but are susceptible to fracture, leading to failure of the device. New work shows how reactive fracture in these materials can be controlled by appropriate choice of solution chemistry during device processing.

Many atomic diffusion processes occur at rates that are too fast to observe experimentally. Using video scanning tunnelling microscopy, researchers are now able to observe the individual steps involved in correlated transport of atomic strings on metal surfaces.