News & Views in 2018

An immunotherapeutic nanoparticle spray may improve post-surgery tumour control.

An artificial nanostructure inspired by the sea anemone can be used for efficient removal of a wide range of water contaminants.

In a magnetic tunnel junction, Joule heat increases the voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy effect in the free layer and thereby pushes the amplification gain for microwaves beyond one.

A nanofabricated twisted topological waveguide on silicon platform enables robust guiding of light at telecommunication wavelength.

Applying a radiofrequency voltage to the junction of a scanning tunnelling microscope allows the nuclear spins of single copper atoms to be detected and different copper isotopes to be distinguished.

Single-molecule break-junctions can detect RNA strands without requiring amplification or conversion to DNA with a limit of detection in the attomolar regime.

Engineered nanomaterials are often highly reactive and readily transform to new species. New modelling capabilities incorporate these transformations into estimates of environmental exposure concentrations and associated risks more accurately.

Particle nanofeatures activate the inflammasome and influence immunity.

Chemical oscillations emerge during the chemically fuelled self-assembly of a perylene diimide derivative as a result of simple feedback mechanisms.

A simple approach to spontaneously assemble malaria antigens into liposomes generates long-lasting, functional immune responses in mice and rabbits.

Intracellular gold nanoclusters act as photosensitizers, enabling non-photosynthetic bacteria to produce acetic acid from carbon dioxide in a more efficient and durable fashion.

Magneto-photoluminescence experiments reveal the role of dark excitons in the formation of biexcitons and charged biexcitons in tungsten diselenide monolayers.

The self-driven formation of a surface passivation layer from inorganic ligands explains unique electrical properties of nanocrystalline solids.

Semisynthetic vesicles coated with neutrophil membranes act as novel weapons to control arthritis.

Meta-electrodes, lasing and optoacoustic poration achieve network-wide intracellular recording.

Quantitative near-infrared bioimaging gets a boost from time-domain multiplexing.

Permeation experiments and simulations show that the ion diffusion rate in confinement can be reversibly modulated and significantly enhanced with a potential of less than 0.5 V.

A new material selection tool offers a proactive perspective on nanotechnology research and development.

A phase-separated state is observed with single-stranded DNA composed of ‘polymeric’ blocks and exploited to programme the assembly of micrometre-sized all-DNA colloidal particles.

Nanotechnology could make agriculture more efficient and more sustainable, but more systematic understanding of the mechanisms involved is necessary to prove the potential of nano-enabled agrochemicals.