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Metamaterials are artificial materials with optical properties that are not found in naturally occurring materials, such as negative indices of refraction, and they are made by introducing nanoscale structure into conventional materials. John Rogers and co-workers now report that large areas of flexible high-quality negative-index metamaterials can be produced by 'printing' a multilayer stack consisting of alternate layers of silver and magnesium fluoride onto a substrate. The metamaterial shown in this colourized scanning electron micrograph is 430 nm thick; the image is 4.8 âμm wide.
The prefix nano, which is based on the Greek word for dwarf, became part of scientific nomenclature in 1960. Chris Toumey explores the role of language and languages in science.
Transfer printing of negative-index metamaterials with areas of tens of square centimetres onto flexible substrates paves the way for practical, low-cost, large-area exotic optics.
Attaching certain protein fragments that are found in the nuclear pore complex onto a solid-state nanopore mimics important aspects of the selective transport of molecules and proteins that occurs in real cells.
Electrostatic doping of the transparent insulator potassium tantalate with an electric double-layer transistor has allowed superconductivity to be observed in this material for the first time.
Patterned metal and dielectric layers can be printed onto rigid or flexible substrates with high throughput to produce large-area metamaterials with negative index of refraction.
Electrostatic doping of KTaO3 with an electric double-layer transistor has allowed superconductivity to be observed in this material for the first time.
Ferromagnetic resonance is used to characterize nanoscale magnets with uniform magnetization profiles, by generating the driving field in the probed magnet itself.
The properties of core–shell nanoparticles can be tuned so that they efficiently convert radiation into heat, leading to therapeutic results that are competitive with commercial drug treatments.
Narrow subradiant plasmons supported by scalable, two-dimensional arrays of strongly coupled gold nanoparticles can be tuned by adjusting the nanoparticle height.
It is possible to detect single viruses and single nanoparticles in air and in water by measuring how they change the output of a whispering-gallery-mode microlaser.
Covalently attaching nuclear pore proteins to solid-state nanopores forms a complex that can selectively transport certain proteins, similar to the nuclear pore complex.
Large-area, high-mobility graphene with controlled stacking can be synthesized with a solution-phase approach that allows control over the number of layers.
Nanoparticles with a gold core and a gold shell separated by a hollow and uniform one-nanometre gap and nanobridges generate a highly stable and reproducible SERS signal.