Nanometrology articles within Nature Communications

Featured

• Article
  13 March 2024 | Open Access

  Controlled formation of three-dimensional cavities during lateral epitaxial growth

  Substrate patterning offers additional degrees of freedom to engineer the structure and function of a semiconductor device. Here, fully-enclosed germanium cavities, with size and position tunable through the initial mask pattern, can be created through an unexpected self-assembly process.

  • Yiwen Zhang
  • , Baoming Wang
  •  & Rui-Tao Wen

• Article
  07 February 2024 | Open Access

  Ultracompact mirror device for forming 20-nm achromatic soft-X-ray focus toward multimodal and multicolor nanoanalyses

  Optics used for X-ray focusing suffer from wavelength dependent effects like chromatic aberration. Here the authors demonstrate fabrication of a ultracompact Kirkpatrick-Baez mirror and use it for achromatic focusing to 20 nm spot for the soft X-ray at 2-keV photon energy.

  • Takenori Shimamura
  • , Yoko Takeo
  •  & Hidekazu Mimura

• Article
  09 June 2022 | Open Access

  Diamagnetically levitated nanopositioners with large-range and multiple degrees of freedom

  Precision positioning stages are often central to science and technology at the micrometer and nanometer length scales. Here, the authors report compact, diamagnetically levitated positioning stages that achieve large-range, six degrees-of-freedom positioning with nanometer-scale precision.

  • K. S. Vikrant
  •  & G. R. Jayanth

• Article
  30 May 2019 | Open Access

  Measurements of the size and correlations between ions using an electrolytic point contact

  The size of an ion affects everything from the structure of water to life itself. Here, a sub-nanometer diameter pore sputtered through a thin silicon nitride membrane is used to systematically test ion permeability by measuring the electrolytic current and current noise and show that the ions move with a grossly distorted hydration shell in a correlated way.

  • Eveline Rigo
  • , Zhuxin Dong
  •  & Gregory Timp

• Article
  20 December 2017 | Open Access

  Integrated nano-opto-electro-mechanical sensor for spectrometry and nanometrology

  Fully integratable spectrometers have trade-offs between size and resolution. Here, the authors present a nano-opto-electro-mechanical system where the functionalities of transduction, actuation and detection are fully integrated, resulting in an ultra-compact high-resolution spectrometer with a micrometer-scale footprint.

  • Žarko Zobenica
  • , Rob W. van der Heijden
  •  & Andrea Fiore

• Article
  28 September 2017 | Open Access

  Shaping micro-clusters via inverse jamming and topographic close-packing of microbombs

  Self-assembled systems are normally composed of incompressible building blocks, which constrain their space filling efficiency. Yu et al. show programmable, densely packed clusters using thermally expandable soft microparticles, whereby the self-assembling process is realized via a jamming transition.

  • Seunggun Yu
  • , Hyesung Cho
  •  & Chong Min Koo

• Article
  15 February 2017 | Open Access

  Giant heat transfer in the crossover regime between conduction and radiation

  Kloppstechet al. report experimental observations of the heat transfer between a gold tip and an atomically flat gold sample in the 0.2–7 nm regime. The observed flux rates are four orders of magnitude larger than expected from theory, suggesting the possibility of additional heat transfer mechanisms.

  • Konstantin Kloppstech
  • , Nils Könne
  •  & Achim Kittel

• Article
  15 February 2017 | Open Access

  Study of radiative heat transfer in Ångström- and nanometre-sized gaps

  Here, Cuiet al. report radiative heat transfer in few Ångström to 5 nm gap sizes, between a gold-coated probe and a heated planar gold substrate subjected to various surface cleaning procedures. They found that insufficiently cleaned probes and substrates led to unexpectedly large radiative thermal conductances.

  • Longji Cui
  • , Wonho Jeong
  •  & Pramod Reddy

• Article
  20 October 2016 | Open Access

  Approaching the standard quantum limit of mechanical torque sensing

  Cavity optomechanics enables measurement of torque at levels unattainable by previous techniques, but the main obstacle to improved sensitivity is thermal noise. Here the authors present cryogenic measurement of a cavity-optomechanical torsional resonator with unprecedented torque sensitivity of 2.9 yNm/√Hz.

  • P. H. Kim
  • , B. D. Hauer
  •  & J. P. Davis

• Article
  06 December 2011 | Open Access

  Observation of an anomalous decoherence effect in a quantum bath at room temperature

  Quantum objects are subject to decoherence effects due to the surrounding environment. This study demonstrates experimentally a counterintuitive example of anomalous decoherence, in which electron spins residing at nitrogen vacancy centres in diamond display longer coherence times under stronger noises.

  • Pu Huang
  • , Xi Kong
  •  & Jiangfeng Du