Volume 14 Issue 10, October 2019

Graphene is being used commercially in large quantities in ways that are grounded in market realities, far from the much hyped ‘killer applications’.

Fifteen years since the ground-breaking experiments on graphene, its commercial exploitation is progressing at the expected pace for a new material.

Visiting a research centre specialized in nanoscience and nanotechnology can be an inspiration for students in other disciplines, as Chris Toumey explains.

Looking back at some of the key discoveries that shaped the field.

An EU-funded open call aims at building a consortium to bridge basic and applied research on graphene and related atomically thin crystals for the development of integrated circuit technologies.

Raman intensity fluctuations in single-molecule measurements can now be followed with megahertz temporal sensitivity.

Energy-efficient magnetization manipulation is a prerequisite for competitive spintronic devices. The Weyl semimetal WTe₂ can act as a spin current source that enables magnetization switching of an adjacent ferromagnet at low power consumption and additionally induces chiral magnetism.

Single-molecule devices with low variability can be made by decoupling electronic transport and chemical attachment to the electrode.

This Review reflects on the 15 years of advances in the field of 2D materials towards commercialization of graphene and its future perspectives.

All-electrical switching of magnetization holds promise for applications in information technologies with low power consumption. Here, current-induced spin–orbit torque switches the magnetization in SrIrO₃/SrRuO₃ bilayer structures at 70 K in the absence of an external magnetic field.

The Weyl semimetal WTe₂ possesses strong spin–orbit coupling and time-reversal-protected spin polarization in surface and bulk states. In a WTe₂/permalloy heterostructure, WTe₂ can act as a spin current source that enables magnetization switching at low current densities.

In situ investigation of a single nanowire/quantum dot heterojunction solar cell using a custom-designed photoelectric transmission electron microscope set-up reveals the possibility of achieving improved photovoltaic performance.

Mechanically and electronically stable graphene/molecule/graphene devices can be fabricated by combining a covalent binding of the molecules to the substrate with an optimized intermolecular π–π interaction.

Few-layer micas show proton permeation across the sheet, exceeding that of graphene and hBN by one to two orders of magnitude.

Controlled delivery of neuromodulators in the brain might improve the understanding of the molecular basis of behaviour. In this letter, magnetic liposomes injected in deep brain regions release small molecules under remote magnetic stimulation, activating specific neuronal circuits in freely moving mice.

Polymer nanocapsules, assembled around a ribonucleoprotein complex of Cas9 nuclease and a single-guide RNA, enable safe and efficient gene editing in vitro and in vivo.

An imaging technique can acquire surface-enhanced Raman scattering intensity fluctuations at 800,000 frames per second, revealing the dynamics of plasmonic hotspots at the single-particle level.

A double-strand DNA scaffold enables real-time observations of protein–protein interactions at the single-molecule level.