News & Views

A sacrificial overcoat layer directs self-assembly of block copolymers into lamellae with features smaller than 10 nm.

An organogel is made of molecular motors and modulators that act cooperatively to perform a full mechanical cycle of contraction and expansion at the macroscale.

A combination of standard fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry offers a practical new approach to study encounter rates and preferences during various live cell membrane signalling events.

Length- and chirality-matching between polycarbamate templates and polyamide hosts provide a means of translating structural information from one molecule to another.

Triangulene, an elusive open-shell magnetic molecule, is synthesized and characterized by electron microscopy.

A new technology enables high-resolution force mapping between a single virus and its target cell while simultaneously imaging live cell fluorescence.

The Wiedemann–Franz law linking electrical and thermal conductance has now been verified experimentally in atomic junctions.

Autocatalytic nanoparticles activated and deactivated by DNA 'programs' can trigger through-space molecular communication and give rise to collective particle behaviours.

Broadband nitrogen–vacancy centre magnetometry demonstrates how commercial hard-disk write heads may become useful experimental tools for nanoscale applications involving magnetism and magnetic resonance.

Electron motion in a type-II InSe/GaAs semiconductor heterostructure has been recorded in a movie immediately after photoexcitation with high spatial and temporal resolution

Black phosphorous, a van der Waals layered semiconductor, is reported to reveal a plasmonic response that can be initiated by photoexcitation with femtosecond pulses.

The programmable disorder often seen in biological networks has now been demonstrated with DNA origami tiles using a stochastic algorithm.

A microfluidic chip with progressively stronger magnetic field gradients along its length can sort and classify circulating tumour cells based on the expression of cell surface markers.

Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can be used to characterize the relationship between the topography and the chemical activity of individual surface sites.