Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    The atomic structure of graphene edges is critical in determining their physical and chemical properties, but they are typically far from ideal. Here, the authors fabricate atomically perfect graphene edges via electron beam mechanical rupture or tearing in high vacuum conditions.

    • Kwanpyo Kim
    • , Sinisa Coh
    •  & A. Zettl

  • Article |

    Molecularly interconnected networks are the building blocks for molecular circuits in nanoelectronic devices, but a mass production with tunable properties is difficult. Escárcega–Bobadilla et al.develop an approach to form interconnected self-assembled nano-rings, which resemble a network of neurons.

    • Martha V. Escárcega-Bobadilla
    • , Gustavo A. Zelada-Guillén
    •  & Arjan W. Kleij

  • Article |

    The interaction of nanoparticles with target tissues is important in the design of nanoparticle-based therapies. Here, the authors develop a microfluidic chip to assess the interaction of nanoparticles with tumour tissues and demonstrate its capacity to predict in vivonanoparticle behaviour.

    • Alexandre Albanese
    • , Alan K. Lam
    •  & Warren C.W. Chan

  • Article |

    Microcantilevers made from flexible materials exhibit nonlinear dynamic behaviour such as bistability. Venstra et al.describe how noise induces transitions between the states in a strongly nonlinear vibrating cantilever and exploit the noisy environment to improve the signal transduction.

    • Warner J. Venstra
    • , Hidde J. R. Westra
    •  & Herre S. J. van der Zant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Droplets of water on very hot surfaces form levitating droplets, according to the Leidenfrost effect. Here, the authors show that green chemistry can be performed in these charged droplets, demonstrated by the synthesis of a range of nanoparticles, nanoscale coatings and porous metallic materials.

    • Ramzy Abdelaziz
    • , Duygu Disci-Zayed
    •  & Mady Elbahri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoscale plasmonic assemblies are known to display exceptionally strong chiral optical activity. Here, the authors assemble gold nanorods into DNA-bridged chiral systems, and demonstrate their high efficiency for DNA detection at very low concentrations.

    • Wei Ma
    • , Hua Kuang
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • Article |

    The control of propagating light is a crucial aspect in photonics. Here Martins et al.demonstrate that by a careful design of their Fourier spectra, quasi-random nanostructures can achieve such control very efficiently.

    • Emiliano R. Martins
    • , Juntao Li
    •  & Thomas F. Krauss

  • Article |

    Current-driven domain wall propagation in ferromagnetic layers adjacent to normal metals can be very fast, which could recently be explained by their chirality. Here, the authors show means of controlling the magnetic chirality, which opens the possibility to tune the dynamics of domain walls.

    • Gong Chen
    • , Tianping Ma
    •  & Andreas K. Schmid

  • Article |

    Molecular actuators hold potential in a number of sensing applications but require careful design to ensure specific functionality. Shepherdet al.report a new platform for molecular actuators based on spin crossover materials, whose response can be controlled by various stimuli or chemical modification.

    • Helena J. Shepherd
    • , Il’ya A. Gural’skiy
    •  & Azzedine Bousseksou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mesoporous polymeric materials are good candidates for advanced separation materials, though their low-cost production remains challenging. Here, the authors report a microphase separation technique for the fabrication of nanoporous networks from frozen solutions of common polymers.

    • Sadaki Samitsu
    • , Rui Zhang
    •  & Izumi Ichinose

  • Article |

    To reach terabit density in random access memory devices, the select switching and storage components need to be improved. Here, the authors fabricate a fully stackable switching device based on chalcogenides, which reaches an exceptional performance following reactive nitrogen and nitrogen plasma treatments.

    • Myoung-Jae Lee
    • , Dongsoo Lee
    •  & In-Kyeong Yoo

  • Article |

    Graphene nanopores hold great potential for single-molecule DNA screening; however, pore clogging due to hydrophobic interactions is a severe problem. Schneider et al. show that this can be prevented by non-covalently coating graphene with an ultrathin hydrophilic self-assembled monolayer.

    • Grégory F. Schneider
    • , Qiang Xu
    •  & Cees Dekker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sensitivity and selectivity of graphene-based biosensors depends on attaching various functional groups to graphene. Hirtz et al. use dip-pen nanolithography to directly write phospholipid membranes on graphene, which enables multiplexed and heterogeneous non-covalent functionalization.

    • Michael Hirtz
    • , Antonios Oikonomou
    •  & Aravind Vijayaraghavan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon nanotubes can be considered as rolled-up small sheets of graphene. Here Lim and colleagues demonstrate this process, by fabricating carbon nanotubes through a thermally induced process of self-intertwining of graphene nanoribbons.

    • Hong En Lim
    • , Yasumitsu Miyata
    •  & Hisanori Shinohara

  • Article |

    Determining the nanostructure within complex composites may lead to greater understanding of their properties. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of X-ray atomic pair distribution function computed tomography to resolve the physicochemical properties of palladium nanoparticles on an alumina catalyst.

    • Simon D. M. Jacques
    • , Marco Di Michiel
    •  & Simon J. L. Billinge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Casimir force between two objects in close distance to each other can be an important yet undesirable force for nanoscale devices. Here, Intravaia et al. observe that nanostructured metal surfaces show a Casimir force that is reduced even further than suggested by existing theoretical models.

    • Francesco Intravaia
    • , Stephan Koev
    •  & Daniel López

  • Article |

    Josephson junctions composed of graphene are limited by incomplete gate control of the supercurrent, impeding their development for superconducting quantum devices. Here, the authors fabricate bipolar Josephson junctions of graphene, allowing supercurrent on/off switching through electrostatic gating.

    • Jae-Hyun Choi
    • , Gil-Ho Lee
    •  & Hu-Jong Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Micro-supercapacitors offer the advantage of high power density over lithium batteries and high energy density over electric capacitors, but integration of these advantages is yet to be achieved. Wu et al. develop a graphene-based in-plane micro-supercapacitor with ultrahigh power and energy densities.

    • Zhong–Shuai Wu
    • , Khaled Parvez
    •  & Klaus Müllen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of spider silk in electronic devices is dependent on its compatibility with electrically conductive materials. Here the authors modify spider silk with carbon nanotubes to produce a strong, flexible and electrically conductive thread.

    • Eden Steven
    • , Wasan R. Saleh
    •  & James S. Brooks

  • Article |

    The development of a series of orthogonal binding interactions to direct the controlled self-assembly of mesoscale objects is desirable. Here, the authors use DNA as a sequence-specific glue to assemble hydrogel cuboids into a diverse series of structures in the micro- to millimeter length scale.

    • Hao Qi
    • , Majid Ghodousi
    •  & Ali Khademhosseini

  • Article |

    Noble metal nanoparticles are used for applications in optics, catalysis, sensing and others. Here the authors study the crystal structures of silver and gold-silver intermetallic nanoparticles stabilized by thiol ligand layers, helping to understand the relationship between their structure and properties.

    • Huayan Yang
    • , Yu Wang
    •  & Nanfeng Zheng

  • Article |

    Superconducting qubits are promising for quantum information processing, yet maintaining their coherence for long periods is hard. Bernon et al.characterize the coherence of cold atom superposition states trapped on superconducting atom chips and show that such long-lived ensembles are a viable alternative.

    • Simon Bernon
    • , Helge Hattermann
    •  & József Fortágh

  • Article |

    Nanowires show unique physical properties owing to their one-dimensional nature. Here Mocking and colleagues demonstrate that the length of nanowires is electronically stabilized such that the length distribution shows a preference for integer multiples of half of the electron Fermi wavelength.

    • Tijs F. Mocking
    • , Pantelis Bampoulis
    •  & Harold J. W. Zandvliet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A prerequisite for using domain walls in logic or sensing devices is a thorough knowledge of the properties and precise control. Here the authors monitor the domain wall motion in curved nanowires by stroboscopic imaging and find a regime of oscillating velocity and spin structure below the Walker breakdown.

    • André Bisig
    • , Martin Stärk
    •  & Mathias Kläui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carrier multiplication effects are of promise for enhancement of solar cells, but have been difficult to exploit in such devices. Here, the authors demonstrate how carrier multiplication in quantum-dot films can be considerably enhanced by appropriate tuning of the charge-carrier mobility.

    • C. S. Suchand Sandeep
    • , Sybren ten Cate
    •  & Laurens D. A. Siebbeles

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Semiconductor nanocrystals are of interest for microlasers that, for example, can be used for integrated photonics applications. Here, Grivas et al.demonstrate single-mode lasing in the single-exciton regime from core/shell CdSe/CdS quantum rods deposited on a single silica microsphere.

    • Christos Grivas
    • , Chunyong Li
    •  & Pavlos Lagoudakis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Van der Waals interactions have a large influence on phenomena that occur at short-length scales. Gobre et al.demonstrate that van der Waals interactions in low-dimensional materials act at very large distances, and can significantly influence the self-assembly of nanostructured systems.

    • Vivekanand V. Gobre
    •  & Alexandre Tkatchenko

  • Article |

    An understanding of excess protons in nanoconfined water is highly relevant to technological applications such as fuel cell membranes. Here, ab initiosimulation reveals almost barrier-free proton transfer even in the limit of molecularly thin water films confined by mineral sheets.

    • Daniel Muñoz-Santiburcio
    • , Carsten Wittekindt
    •  & Dominik Marx

  • Article |

    Exploiting the optics-like dynamics of low-energy electronic excitations in graphene requires the challenging combination of ballistic transport and complex gating. Here the fabrication and characterization of suspended graphene p–njunctions is reported, paving the way for future electron optics experiments.

    • Peter Rickhaus
    • , Romain Maurand
    •  & Christian Schönenberger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most new device concepts for random-access memory are based on inorganic spin filters, which need a permanent magnet to operate. Here, the authors exploit the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect in an organic spin filter to construct a novel type of memory device, which works without a permanent magnet.

    • Oren Ben Dor
    • , Shira Yochelis
    •  & Yossi Paltiel

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