Volume 16 Issue 8, August 2021

Sharing the step-by-step procedures necessary to fabricate nanostructures could optimize efforts to achieve reproducible devices.

Van der Waals heterostructures serve as a platform for memory devices with ultra-fast writing speeds and non-volatile retention times, motivating their use in integrated circuits and systems.

Thanks to a stable fluorinated interphase formed on top of a Zn metal anode, a Zn metal battery shows 99.9% Coulombic efficiency and record-high Zn utilization.

The preparation of a diverse set of 2D materials and their co-integration in van der Waals heterostructures enable innovative material design and device engineering. This Review summarizes recent advances in 2D spintronics and opto-spintronics, the underlying physical concepts and future perspectives of the field.

Nonlinear responses in transport measurements can unveil specific material properties not accessible with linear measurements. In thick T_d-MoTe₂ samples, a third-order nonlinear Hall effect dominates over lower-order contributions and is linked to the Berry-connection polarizability tensor.

MoS₂/hBN/graphene van der Waals heterostructures with a clean interface and optimized barrier height and gate coupling ratio enable the realization of ultrafast non-volatile flash memory.

Atomically sharp interfaces in van der Waals heterostructures enable the realization of ultrafast non-volatile memory devices.

The existence of interlayer excitons with strong oscillator strength in bilayer MoS₂ enables their electrical manipulation up to room temperature.

A strain-gradient approach induced by the phase-change transition enables the observation of the flexo-photovoltaic effect in MoS₂.

A solid–electrolyte interphase that is permeable to Zn(ii) ions but waterproof is formed using an aqueous electrolyte composition. Cycling performances in an anode-free aqueous pouch cell show promise for intrinsically safe energy storage applications.

A class of biomimetic, helically folded pore-forming polymeric foldamers can serve as long-sought-after highly selective ultrafast water-conducting channels exceeding those of aquaporins with high water-over-monovalent-ion transport selectivity conferred by the modularly tunable hydrophobicity of the interior pore surface.

A sustainable and biodegradable antiviral filtration membrane composed of amyloid nanofibrils made from food-grade milk proteins and iron oxyhydroxide nanoparticles can be used to trap a number of enveloped and non-enveloped viruses in water.

The combination of three techniques to study the cellular binding and uptake, and intracellular transformation of silver nanoparticles shows that despite considerable transformation, these silver nanoparticles can still be found in nanoparticulate form after a substantial amount of time.

The toxicity and complicated administration procedures of transition metal catalysts have hampered the applications of bioorthogonal catalysis in vivo. Here the authors fill the needles of a microneedle array patch with palladium nanoparticles deposited on titanium nanosheets and show that the device, applied locally on the skin of mouse models bearing melanoma, promotes intratumoural conversion of systemically injected caged doxorubicin into the active drug, reducing its toxicity and side effects.

In this paper the authors show that nanovesicles coated with lung spheroid cell membranes expressing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 can bind the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, neutralizing the virus and preventing lung cell infections in murine and non-human primate models. The nanodecoys could represent a potential therapeutic agent to treat COVID-19.