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The practical use of electronic ratchets has long been hampered by low output powers and cryogenic operating temperatures. A pentacene-based organic ratchet can now drive electronic circuitry at room temperature.
Empty liquids and equilibrium gels have so far been only theoretical possibilities, predicted for colloids with patchy interactions. But evidence of both has now been found in Laponite, a widely studied clay.
A suitably chosen thin layer inserted between a ferromagnetic electrode and an organic semiconductor allows control over the polarization of the injected spins.
The first diffraction patterns from the individual atomic packing clusters in a metallic glass finally enable the direct study of local order in amorphous alloys.
The friction and wear of materials is part of our everyday experience, and yet these processes are not well understood. The example of diamond highlights wear processes that result from bumping atoms, showing that the devil is indeed in the details.
High annealing temperatures have limited the technological potential of solution-processed metal oxide semiconductors. It is now shown that high-quality films can be formed below 250 °C using precursors that are hydrolysed on-chip.
In chemistry, some dynamic bonds can be selectively and reversibly broken and reformed in response to an environmental stimulus. This Review article discusses the incorporation of dynamic bonds, or interactions, in polymeric materials and the structural changes and macroscopic responses observed in the presence of different stimuli.
The latest advances in our understanding of correlated electron systems have implications that range from fundamental physics such as string theory to novel applications including the manipulation and retrieval of electron spin.
The mechanisms of biomineralization remain hotly debated. Now high-resolution microscopy yields unsurpassed insight into mechanisms relevant both to the biomineralization of bone and teeth and to pathological mineralization.
The first realization of an acoustic diode that passes sound in one direction but not the other signals a new approach to acoustic devices with complex functionality.
In 2000, a seminal study predicted ferromagnetism above room temperature in diluted magnetic semiconductors and oxides, fuelling tremendous research activity that has lasted for a decade. Tomasz Dietl reviews the progress in understanding these materials over the past ten years, with a view to the future of semiconductor spintronics.
Biocompatible light-emitting structures based on high-performance inorganic compound semiconductors on flexible substrates open the path to futuristic therapeutic devices, instrumented surgical gloves and many other applications.
Excitons in a highly ordered organic semiconductor are found to diffuse over distances of a few micrometres. This may pave the way towards designing efficient excitonic solar cells.
Propelled by the recent renaissance of oxides, a material has emerged with sufficient purity and perfection to join those select materials that show the fractional quantum Hall effect: ZnO.
The DNA-mediated assembly of anisotropic gold nanoparticles shows the importance of particle shape in the controlled formation of DNA–nanoparticle superlattices.
