Volume 6 Issue 8, August 2011

Semiconductor quantum dots coated with strands of DNA can self-assemble into a variety of structures.

The best applications of graphene will be those that exploit its basic characteristics, rather than try to change them.

Complex molecular circuits with reliable digital behaviour can be created using DNA strands.

Nanoindentation experiments and atomistic modelling show that the nanoscale plasticity of silicon changes when the material is no longer connected to the bulk.

Amyloid materials are a class of fibrillar nanostructures that have been associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. This article reviews the functional and pathological roles of amyloid structures and discusses how insights to the assembly of these proteinaceous filaments can shed light on the design of multiscale biomaterials.

The plasticity of bulk silicon is dominated by phase transformations, whereas silicon nanoparticles display dislocation-driven plasticity.

Semiconductor nanocrystals capped with DNA can be used to make a variety of rationally designed assemblies with switchable optical properties.

BaTiO₃ can remain ferroelectric at temperatures up to at least 330 °C when it is strained by self-assembled nanoscale columns of SmO.

All-carbon microscale supercapacitors can be simply and scalably fabricated by the laser patterning and reduction of graphene oxide.

Limiting the movement of Ge atoms to one dimension improves the performance of data-storage devices based on the Ge–Sb–Te material system.

A ZnO-based laser diode can be electrically pumped to produce Fabry–Perot-type waveguide lasing.

The strength of the interaction between the spin state and orbital motion of electrons in a semiconducting quantum dot can be controlled by electrical gates.

A combination of calculations and electrical measurements on oligo-porphyrin wires in single-molecule junctions strongly suggest that the mechanism of long-range charge transport is phase-coherent electron tunnelling.

Fluorescent aptamers covalently bound to the membrane of mesenchymal stem cells can detect signalling molecules in the cell environment, offering a new tool to study cell functions in tumours and inflammatory environments.