Volume 7 Issue 1, January 2012

A four-level conductance switch can be created by using a scanning tunnelling microscope to remove a hydrogen atom from the central cavity of a porphyrin molecule.

Bioinspired nanoreactor arrays can be used to controllably mix subattolitre volumes of liquids.

Laser-based imaging can distinguish between semiconducting and metallic nanotubes in vitro and in vivo, offering a way to study the interactions of carbon nanostructures in biological systems without the use of labels.

The cycle of cell birth, growth and division can affect the uptake and dilution of nanoparticles in cells, suggesting that the evolution of nanoparticle dose within a cell population is linked to the life cycle of cells.

Nanodiamonds have excellent mechanical and optical properties, high surface areas and tunable surface structures. This article reviews the synthesis of nanodiamonds and their use in a variety of applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering and nanocomposites.

Hollow DNA-based spacer particles are used in the synthesis of nanoparticle superlattices with well-defined geometries, one of which has never been observed before.

The domain structure of macroscopic graphene samples can be simply observed by covering them with liquid-crystal molecules.

The conductance of a single molecule of 1,4'-benzenedithiol bridged between two gold electrodes increases as it is stretched because the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital is shifted towards the Fermi energy of the electrodes, leading to a resonant enhancement of the conductance.

A porphyrin molecule anchored to a silver surface can function as a four-level conductance switch in which a single hydrogen atom in the inner cavity of the molecule is manipulated by electrons from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope.

Spin doublets of holes in nanowires with a germanium core and a silicon shell can be manipulated in fast-gated double quantum dots to create quantum bits with long spin lifetimes.

Small lipid vesicles can be used to mix subattolitre volumes in a reproducible and highly parallel manner.

A new contrast technique allows semiconducting and metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes to be imaged separately, offering a way to study their interactions in biological environments.

Cells in different phases of the cell-division cycle accumulate different amounts of nanoparticles, suggesting that biological and toxicological studies of nanoparticles should take into account the cell cycle.

Optical microcavities have been fabricated in single-crystal diamond and tuned into resonance with the zero phonon line of an ensemble of silicon-vacancy colour centres, which results in an enhancement of spontaneous emission.