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Nanoscale optical antennas can concentrate light into volumes with subwavelength dimension, which is useful for applications such as solar cells, photodetectors and cancer therapy. Previously, however, it has not been possible to make absolute measurements of these enhanced electromagnetic fields in the near field. Now Edward Barnard, Ragip Pala and Mark Brongersma have developed a photodetector platform that can spectrally and spatially map the absolute values of the field near any type of nanoantenna by transducing the local electric fields into photocurrent. The image shows the theoretical enhancement of photocurrent by a metallic strip antenna (increasing from blue through white to red) as a function of wavelength (x axis) and the width of the strip (y axis).
Paul Scherrer and Peter Debye developed powder X-ray diffraction together, but it was Scherrer who figured out how to determine the size of crystallites from the broadening of diffraction peaks.
Fibrous proteins from bacteria can be used to make biofilms with electrical conductivities that are comparable to those measured in conducting polymers.
Inorganic nanoparticles can self-assemble into uniformly sized supraparticles in a process governed by competition between electrostatic and van der Waals forces.
Symmetric protein molecules can be fused together with genetic techniques to produce molecular building blocks that self-assemble into specific ordered structures.
Pressurized blister tests show that the adhesion energies of graphene samples on silicon oxide are much higher than those measured in typical micromechanical structures.
Vesicle-capped nanotubes made from amphiphilic molecules with photoswitchable cores undergo controlled disassembly when exposed to ultraviolet light, and this process can be followed in real time with fluorescence microscopy.
AFM-based experiments on single molecules reveal that a hydrogen-bonded rotaxane — a structure containing a molecular ring threaded onto a molecular axle — can generate directional forces comparable to those generated by natural molecular machines.
Unzipping carbon nanotubes produces high-quality graphene nanoribbons with smooth edges for revealing the intrinsic quantum transport phenomena in these materials.
Nanowire-based solar cells offer open-circuit voltages and fill factors that are superior to those available from planar solar cells made of the same materials.
Inorganic nanoparticles with non-uniform size distributions can spontaneously assemble into uniformly sized supraparticles with core-shell morphologies.
A silicon-on-insulator photodetector substrate can be used to produce absolute and quantitative maps of nanoscale optical antenna resonances in the near field.
Magnetic nanoparticles encapsulated inside liposomes can deliver drug cargo, target tumours and their microenvironment, and simultaneously act as magnetic resonance contrast agents.