Reviews & Analysis

A robust initialization protocol has been demonstrated for a four-qubit nuclear spin register in silicon. The protocol, driven electrically through electric-dipole spin resonance, enables high-fidelity qubit control and hence a route to a register-based quantum computer that exploits the exceptional coherence properties of atom qubits in silicon.

An intelligent meta-imager can perform multi-channel convolutions to accelerate machine vision for incoherent light.

This Review highlights the current understanding of mechanisms underlying the mechanical changes occurring in diseased and immune cells and discusses new approaches to leverage and target biomechanical cues for immune engineering at various length scales for therapeutic interventions.

Pre-adsorption of water molecules on a material surface, followed by assembly of a van der Waals (vdW) structure, provides a vdW water gap with a height that can be precisely tuned through variation of the amount of water adsorbed at the interface. This approach is applicable to different two-dimensional and even three-dimensional homo- and heterojunctions.

The Review discusses the state-of-the-art polymer nanocomposites from three key aspects: dipole activity, breakdown resistance and heat tolerance for capacitive energy storage applications.

Chitosan/glucose co-polymers encapsulating silver sulfide quantum dots can be used to improve oral delivery of insulin in different animal models without hypoglycaemic incidents.

Organic and inorganic nanoparticles have different clearance mechanisms from the brain resulting in different biological fates and retention times.

Electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction in acid with a nano-structured tandem catalyst achieves high single-pass conversion efficiency and selectivity to useful C–C coupled products, bringing the process closer to commercial viability.

Nanoparticles naturally accumulate in the liver; this can be a major limitation to any therapy needing delivery to other organs or tissues. Here the authors review the reason for predominant liver uptake and explore different strategies used to target non-viral gene delivery nanoparticles to other organs and tissues.

Conserved regions of the circular DNA sequence of the M13mp18 bacteriophage, which is used as a scaffold for DNA origami construction, are targeted with specific hybridization-chain-reaction probes. The probes enable sensitive detection of DNA origami nanostructures in cells, organoids and tissues to assess their biodistribution and stability.

Using fluorinated elastomers in the fabrication of soft neural probes is shown to enhance spatiotemporal recording capability at single-neuron resolution within the central nervous system of rodents. Other soft encapsulation materials could be similarly engineered for high-resolution, long-lasting bioelectronics.

A biohybrid, leaf-spring design of DNA origami functions as a pulsating nanoengine that exploits the DNA-templated RNA transcription mechanism while consuming nucleoside triphosphates as fuel. The nanoengine also drives a nanomechanical follower structure.

Directionality of nonlinear emission from a dielectric metasurface is controlled by fine-tuning the relative time delay and polarization of two pulsed pump beams.

Electric field tunable interlayer excitons in a van der Waals bilayer emit at an energy of twice the band gap.

This Perspective discusses the current understanding of extracellular vesicles within the context of their movement into and out of blood circulation, with an outlook on leveraging extracellular vesicle nanobiology for mechanistic insights as well as diagnostic and nanotherapeutic applications in both physiological and pathological contexts.

Graphene multistacks with four or five layers show the signature of correlated electronic states both in and out of a magnetic field.

This Review aims to spur developments in next-generation functional materials by highlighting design rules to interconnect length and timescales.

The Review discusses epitaxial quantum dot devices emitting in the telecom bands for quantum network devices.

To determine the physiologically relevant oligomeric form of membrane proteins is extremely challenging. Now an elegant method of counting the oligomers in membrane proteins in near-native states is presented, using photobleaching and nanodiscs formed directly from cellular membranes.