Volume 14 Issue 4, April 2019

Fragments of plastic smaller than 1 μm have raised concerns about the potential risks they pose to the environment. Research will have to answer a number of questions to establish what the realistic risks are.

To assess potential risks posed by plastic nanoparticles, we must study the way in which they transfer and transform in the environment. Using ¹³C-labelled nanoplastics could provide a safe and effective way to establish whether the plastic is mineralized or whether it persists in the environment.

Chris Toumey reflects on the inhomogeneity of the concept of ethics applied to nanoscience and nanotechnology.

The ability to synthesize metal-doped nanoplastic opens windows to accurately assess the potential environmental hazards that nanoplastic poses.

Far-field photons can be coupled to acoustic graphene plasmons with near 100% efficiency and used to acquire infrared spectra of thin, subnanometre-layer samples.

Fluid instabilities in chalcogenide glasses can be exploited to self-assemble optical metasurfaces on various template substrates over a large area.

A nanoelectromechanical system made from a nanobeam embedded in a phononic crystal and coupled to a pair of superconducting microwave oscillators can couple hypersonic sound quanta at 0.425 GHz and light quanta with high coherence.

The momentum mismatch between far-field light and acoustic graphene plasmons can be largely overcome by a two-stage coupling scheme for sensitive protein detection in sub-10-nm films.

Optical glasses can form high-quality dielectric metasurfaces by controlled dewetting and fluid instabilities.

Sub-micrometre spin waves are excited in anisotropic spin textures and they can propagate as 2D plane waves over several micrometres and as 1D waves along curved domain walls.

An electromechanical transducer that integrates a high-frequency phononic crystal with a superconducting microwave circuit enables transduction of hypersonic mechanical motion at the quantum level.

Dense nanostructuring of hBN-encapsulated graphene enables band structure engineering with distinct magnetotransport signatures and a tunable bandgap.

A combination of light-emitting semiconductors and photochromic molecules enables the fabrication of optically switchable organic light-emitting transistors with tunable current and luminance.

Atomically dispersed Pt on an α-MoC support exhibits high CO tolerance during selective hydrogenation of nitrobenzene and its derivatives.

Analytical challenges in detecting nanoplastics have hindered the understanding of their behaviour in environmental systems, but these difficulties can be circumvented by synthesizing metal-doped nanoplastics (where the metal can be measured as a proxy for the plastic) to undertake mechanistic investigations of particle fate, transport and biological interactions in lab and pilot-scale studies.

Semipermeable proteinosome membranes allow complex DNA message communication through compartmentalization and protect the DNA circuits from degradation in a biological environment.

Atomically dispersed gold supported by carbon dots amplifies mitochondrial oxidative stress, and leads to irreversible cell damage, inhibiting hepatocellular carcinoma in animal models.

Inhibiting POLR2A expression upon siRNA delivery represents a promising therapeutic strategy for triple negative breast cancers characterized by p53 inactivation.