Volume 16 Issue 9, September 2021

This perspective presents a framework with a tiered approach for human health risk assessment of nanopesticides that will facilitate informed decisions by regulators and industry.

Among the candidates for large-scale quantum computing devices, silicon-based spin qubits offer an outstanding nanofabrication capability for scaling-up. In an array of three spin qubits in silicon, high-fidelity state preparation and control enable the creation of a three-qubit Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state with 88% state fidelity.

Optomechanical effects enable the realization of optical metavehicles that can be manoeuvred across a surface in plane-wave illumination and steered by incident polarization.

The application of stimulated-emission depletion (STED) microscopy for deep-tissue imaging in the near-infrared optical window is challenged by high cellular autofluorescence. Here the authors present a lanthanide nanoprobe whose electronic configuration enables long-term STED imaging with reduced background noise.

Voltage control of magnetic order is one of the keys to energy-efficient spintronic applications. Voltage gating using a solid-state hydrogen pump now allows for reversible control of ferrimagnetic order, external-field-free 180° magnetic switching and ferrimagnetic spin texture writing.

A study of molecular transport in various organic liquids under subnanometre confinement shows that the nature of the solvent can modulate solute diffusion across graphene nanopores, and that breakdown of continuum flow occurs when pore size approaches the solvent’s smallest molecular cross-section.

Bacterial motility may be used as an important predictor of whether a particular bacteria strain can develop AgNP resistance and could inform design of nanoenabled antimicrobials that mechanistically target specific types of bacteria.

A single or multilayer graphene veil grown by chemical vapour deposition can be used to protect artworks against colour fading, with a protection factor of up to 70%.

Persistent luminescence is a promising bioimaging technique that is not affected by background autofluorescence, but its in vivo application is challenged by the fact that the materials currently available are activated by high-energy light, with emission in the ultraviolet and visible spectral windows. In this paper the authors engineer X-ray activated, lanthanide-based nanoparticles with a tunable emission in the biologically relevant NIR-II spectral region, which allows high-contrast, multimodal in vivo deep-tissue organ imaging.

Bioelectronic interfacing with living tissues should match the biomechanical properties of biological materials to reduce damage to the tissues. Here, the authors present a fully viscoelastic microelectrode array composed of an alginate matrix and carbon-based nanomaterials encapsulated in a viscoelastic hydrogel for electrical stimulation and signal recording of heart and brain activities in vivo.

While targeted lipid nanoparticles might allow partial delivery of genetic materials to non-hepatic cells, the selectivity of this approach is still unsatisfying. Here the authors functionalize their lipid nanoparticles with a targeting moiety that recognizes a protein conformation specific to gut-homing leukocytes, inducing gene silencing exclusively in this cellular subset and providing a potential therapeutic strategy for inflammatory bowel disease.

Measuring the levels of circulating SARS-CoV-2 RNA in plasma might represent a more accurate way to detect lower respiratory tract and extrapulmonary infections, which classical COVID-19 detection assays based on nasopharyngeal swabs might miss. Here, the authors accurately detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in plasma-circulating extracellular vesicles using a CRISPR–Cas-based strategy that shows promising characteristics for potential clinical application.