Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The clever exploitation of dark modes in plasmonic nanostructures leads to devices with sharp resonances and low losses that promise applications in biochemical sensing and optical communications.
Delivering biomolecules to living cells in a spatially defined way in vitro could help us to understand more in vivo processes. Using an aqueous two-phase system enables the formation of patterns at the nanolitre scale that can serve as a confined reagent-delivery system for mammalian cells.
The biocatalytic activity of enzyme-loaded responsive layer-by-layer films can be switched on and off by simple mechanical stretching. Soft materials could thus be used to trigger biochemical reactions under mechanical action, with potential therapeutic applications.
Investigation of the phase diagram of the structurally simple compound FeSe may prove instrumental in raising the transition temperature in Fe-based superconductors and in understanding magnetic-mediated superconductivity.
With liquid-crystal displays now ubiquitous in everyday life, liquid-crystal research is moving beyond these applications and evolving in entirely new and unexpected directions.
Metamaterials have seen many exciting applications. A design that is able to circumvent singularities in refractive index now allows a broad range of new applications, including an omnidirectional retroreflector.
Solid liquid crystals couple orientational order and mechanical strain, enabling fundamentally new mechanisms of actuation. Depositing the materials using inkjet printing allows precise control of their shapes and composition, producing devices with new microfluidic applications.
A renormalization group study of electric transport in nanocontacts reveals the importance of quantum correlations for achieving a startling ferromagnetic Kondo effect.
DNA provides more than lock-and-key control of assembly. Careful engineering of hairpins and loops provides the means to control the kinetics of particle assembly, allowing structures to be 'glued' together by heating.
Ever since invisibility cloaking has left the realm of fiction and been demonstrated for microwave radiation, cloaking in the visible has been the aim. Having reached the near-infrared, we might be there soon.
Nanoparticles containing a silver iodine core and a polymer shell have superionic conductance even near room temperature, showing promise for a new generation of electrochemical devices.
