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.
High-shear mixing is now shown to be an effective approach for the exfoliation of large quantities of graphene and other two-dimensional materials, providing a viable route for the industrial scaling of applications based on these layered crystals.
Chloroplasts with extended photosynthetic activity beyond the visible absorption spectrum, and living leaves that perform non-biological functions, are made possible by localizing nanoparticles within plant organelles.
Cracks and defects induced during the transfer of large-area graphene on insulating substrates impair its excellent electronic properties. A defect-free transfer can now be obtained thanks to capillary bridges that anchor the graphene film to the substrate while the underlying growth layer is etched away.
In spite of their promise, practical applications of high-temperature cuprate superconductors have been hard to come by. The development of a method to fabricate round wires of the cuprate system Bi-2212 may begin to change this.
The macroscopic alignment of dilute dispersions of graphene oxide can be controlled, with extremely large optical sensitivity, through the application of weak electric fields.
Microimaging techniques, such as interference and infrared microscopy, can be used as a tool to directly monitor guest profiles within nanoporous materials. Observation of the variation in these profiles leads to unprecedented insight into transport phenomena, including intracrystalline diffusion and surface permeation.
The spontaneous organization of semiconductor nanoparticles into uniform pairs of parallel nanorods bridged at their ends illustrates the potential of hierarchical self-assembly processes for the formation of inorganic superstructures with complexity comparable to that of small self-organized biological aggregates.
Synthetic polymer gels with certain surface chemistries can be glued together by a simple and inexpensive method that uses commercially available silica nanoparticles. Biological tissues can also be joined by this nanotechnological route, eliminating the need for sutures, additional adhesives or chemical reactions.
The experimental observation of polariton condensates at room temperature in soft organic materials makes the study of quantum condensed phases easily accessible and opens inroads to optoelectronic devices based on macroscopic quantum phenomena.
Solar cells based on colloidal quantum dots require specific charge-extraction strategies that take full advantage of the size-tunable absorption properties of the nanoparticles. This Progress Article reviews the recent engineering efforts aimed at maximizing the power-conversion efficiency of these devices by developing novel architectures as well as by optimizing the morphological and electronic properties of both the electrodes and quantum dot layers.
By following three empirical rules it is possible to design and fabricate magnetic heterostructures or even devices whose magnetization can be controlled by means of circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses, instead of applied magnetic fields.
Conjugated polymers with high electrical conductivity and high thermopower are now demonstrated. The electronic structure of these materials is that of a semi-metal, a previously unreported state for organic conductors.
Peaks of energy dissipation arising from distortions of a charge density wave have been observed by oscillating the tip of an atomic force microscope a few nanometres above a surface of a layered dichalchogenide.
Detection of a wide range of tumours remains a challenge in cancer diagnostics. By exploiting changes in the tumour microenvironment, a pH-responsive polymeric nanomaterial enables ultrasensitive tumour-specific imaging in many types of cancer.
DNA-capped nanoparticles crystallize into uniform microcrystals of Wulff polyhedra when cooled slowly through the melting temperature of the DNA linkers.
