Volume 9 Issue 6, June 2014

We are launching a page dedicated to education.

Nanomaterial risks are often considered in terms of novel material behaviours. But, as Andrew D. Maynard explains, does this framing end up obscuring some risks, while overplaying others?

Bulky calixarene ligands can create nanoscale environments on iridium cluster catalysts that can control the bonding and activation of reactants.

Subnanometre metallic wires can be engineered from semiconducting sheets of transition-metal dichalcogenides by means of a focused electron beam.

The propagation direction of low-loss electromagnetic surface waves can be tuned over tens of degrees by small changes in the dielectric environment.

The surface temperature of a hot levitating nanoparticle in a rarified gas can be determined from its non-equilibrium Brownian motion.

When the thickness of a LaNiO₃ film is reduced to only two unit cells, the material undergoes an abrupt metal-to-insulator transition.

Dyakonov surface waves allow light to be guided in fully transparent dielectric nanosheets deposited on top of anisotropic optical materials with no losses and high directionality.

The non-equilibrium properties of a gas can be studied by analysing the Brownian motion of a levitated nanoparticle immersed in the gas.

Exchange coupling can be observed in a two-donor system in silicon, opening the way to operations involving two qubits

Metallic nanowires can be sculpted out of semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers using focused electron-beam irradiation and have self-adaptive contacts to the semiconducting monolayers they are made from.

An insulating phase abruptly emerges in LaNiO₃ when its thickness is reduced to only two unit cells.

An array of optical traps formed in a nanophotonic waveguide can trap and manipulate biomolecular nanoparticles in three dimensions.

An important role is played by thermal effects in the electrically driven insulator-to-metal transition in V₂O₃.

The bonding and activation of a molecule to a supported metal cluster catalyst can be controlled by using calixarene ligands to create a selective nanoscale environment at the metal surface.

Single amino acids and peptides can be identified by trapping the molecules between two electrodes that are coated with a layer of recognition molecules and measuring the electron tunnelling current across the junction.

Plasmonic nanoparticle dimers can be used to detect and quantify mRNA splice variants in living cells.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes are taken up by monocytes in the blood, demonstrating alternative and enhanced tumour delivery.

Teaching a diverse field such as nanotechnology is far from easy. Doug Natelson provides a few pointers.