Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Silicon nanospheres could be of interest for applications in electronics and optoelectronics. Here, Gumenniket al. demonstrate a nanosphere fabrication process based on an optical fibre drawing technique that is able to produce p and n-type spheres paired into rectifying bispherical junctions.

    • Alexander Gumennik
    • , Lei Wei
    •  & Yoel Fink

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Smart hydrogels are 3D networks composed of cross-linked polymer chains that can alter their shape and properties in response to environmental stimuli. Xiaet al.demonstrate a smart hydrogel with rapid response and high elasticity, due to its nano-scale structure.

    • Lie-Wen Xia
    • , Rui Xie
    •  & Liang-Yin Chu

  • Article |

    Ionic polymer actuators are becoming popular for biomimetic applications because of their mechanical robustness and easy fabrication at low cost. Kim et al.push them one step closer to practice by achieving a subsecond actuation response at an operation voltage less than 1 V.

    • Onnuri Kim
    • , Tae Joo Shin
    •  & Moon Jeong Park

  • Article |

    The sophisticated structure of protein fibrils suggests that they may be useful nanomaterials. Here the authors design a series of self-polymerizing protein monomers, the reactions of which are controlled by redox chemistry, and show that functional units may also be incorporated into the extended structures.

    • Ryo Matsunaga
    • , Saeko Yanaka
    •  & Kouhei Tsumoto

  • Article |

    The short-wavelength infrared spectral region is of interest for bio-imaging applications as biological tissue is transparent to such light. Here Naczynski et al. fabricate rare-earth-based nanomaterials and demonstrate multispectral, real-time short-wavelength infrared in-vivoimaging.

    • D. J. Naczynski
    • , M. C. Tan
    •  & P. V. Moghe

  • Article |

    The development of a desktop nanofabrication tool allowing high-resolution patterning and high-throughput synthesis is a long-standing goal in many nanoscience fields. Here, the authors report a system that can write arbitrary patterns composed of diffraction-unlimited features over square centimetre areas.

    • Xing Liao
    • , Keith A. Brown
    •  & Chad A. Mirkin

  • Article |

    Assembly of functional colloidal nanoparticles has many technological applications, but its three-dimensional realization remains challenging. Kim et al.report a spontaneous self-orientation of gold nanorods at an oil/water interface and use it to amplify signal in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

    • Kihoon Kim
    • , Hye Soo Han
    •  & Taewook Kang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical reactions on femtolitre scales are necessary to study confined biological processes. Here, the authors use a microfluidic pen lithography technique to perform a series of discrete femtoscale acid-base and synthetic reactions, and crystallizations on a surface with high registration accuracy.

    • Carlos Carbonell
    • , Kyriakos C. Stylianou
    •  & Daniel Maspoch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magneto-optical effects, where magnetic fields affect light propagating through a material, are of interest for photonic devices such as switches. The magneto-optical effect discovered here in metal-dielectric nanostructures shows a strong light modulation that is suitable for nanophotonic applications.

    • V. I. Belotelov
    • , L. E. Kreilkamp
    •  & M. Bayer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The comprehensive bioanalysis of proteins usually requires multi-step surface and mobile phase measurements. Here, the authors use chips functionalized with dynamically actuated nanolevers—DNA strands that can be switched in an electric field—to obtain motional dynamic measurements of proteins on a chip.

    • Andreas Langer
    • , Paul A. Hampel
    •  & Ulrich Rant

  • Article |

    The control of regulatory enzymes is essential for the modulation of biochemical cellular pathways. Here, the authors fabricate a tweezer-like DNA nanodevice to actuate the activity of an enzyme/cofactor pair, and are able to control enzyme inhibition and activation over multiple cycles.

    • Minghui Liu
    • , Jinglin Fu
    •  & Hao Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fabrication of three-dimensional nanoscale structures is important to nanophotonic applications where light is guided and controlled. The optical beam lithography scheme developed by Gan and colleagues enables the fabrication of three-dimensional structures with feature sizes down to 9 nm.

    • Zongsong Gan
    • , Yaoyu Cao
    •  & Min Gu

  • Article |

    The spin of an electron bound to a single phosphorus atom in silicon is of interest for spin-based electronics such as quantum computing. Here, Büch et al. show these spin properties are retained even for clusters of a few phosphorus atoms, providing an additional means for quantum bit addressability.

    • H. Büch
    • , S. Mahapatra
    •  & M. Y. Simmons

  • Article |

    Controlling magnetic domain wall motion in nanowires requires a thorough knowledge of the depinning mechanisms. Here, the authors show that current-induced intrinsic depinning has a different energy barrier than magnetic field-induced extrinsic depinning, and succeed in quantifying the respective barriers.

    • Kab-Jin Kim
    • , Ryo Hiramatsu
    •  & Teruo Ono

  • Article |

    Since the isolation of graphene, there has been extensive interest in other two-dimensional structures including metallic nanosheets. Here, the authors report the use of ladder polysilane ligands for the synthesis of palladium clusters containing eleven metal ions, made up of two heptametallic nanosheets.

    • Yusuke Sunada
    • , Ryohei Haige
    •  & Hideo Nagashima

  • Article |

    Metallic nanoparticles are commonly used to facilitate light trapping in organic solar cells, but they can also reduce cell performance. Wu et al.demonstrate that a trap-assisted recombination of charge carriers leads to degradation, irrespective of an initially enhanced absorption and excitation.

    • Bo Wu
    • , Xiangyang Wu
    •  & Tze Chien Sum

  • Article |

    Local magnetic properties that can be controlled by an applied electric field are desirable for spintronics applications. Nair et al.show that tuning carrier concentration by molecular doping or electric field can be used to control adatoms magnetism on graphene, enabling magnetic moments to be switched on and off.

    • R.R. Nair
    • , I.-L. Tsai
    •  & I.V. Grigorieva

  • Article
    | Open Access

    DNA tile self-assembly and DNA strand displacement circuits are well-developed frameworks in DNA nanotechnology. Here, the two approaches are combined to give programmable kinetic control of DNA nanotube self-assembly.

    • David Yu Zhang
    • , Rizal F. Hariadi
    •  & Erik Winfree

  • Article |

    Rapid, highly multiplexed molecular detection platforms may enable more specific and effective disease diagnosis. Here, a solution-based circuit is reported that enables the analysis of samples for panels of pathogens and antibiotic-resistance profiles at clinically relevant levels in less than 2 min.

    • Brian Lam
    • , Jagotamoy Das
    •  & Shana O. Kelley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The vapour–liquid–solid method is used to produce semiconducting nanowires but the fundamental processes involved are poorly understood. Wang et al.use atomic-scale simulations to elucidate the mechanisms involved in the growth and stability of gold-catalysed silicon nanowires.

    • Hailong Wang
    • , Luis A. Zepeda-Ruiz
    •  & Moneesh Upmanyu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exploiting photon–phonon coupling in nanoscale silicon waveguides could enable a host of powerful features in photonic devices. Using a hybrid photonic–phononic waveguide structure, Shin et al. show stimulated Brillouin scattering nonlinearities and gain, which offers new on-chip signal-processing abilities.

    • Heedeuk Shin
    • , Wenjun Qiu
    •  & Peter T. Rakich

  • Article |

    By patterning graphene with sub-wavelength features to introduce plasmonic modes, its optical properties can be tailored. Freitag et al. show how tunable plasmons in graphene nanoribbons can be exploited to form polarization-sensitive graphene photodetectors in the mid-infrared spectral region.

    • Marcus Freitag
    • , Tony Low
    •  & Phaedon Avouris

  • Article |

    Vertically assembled graphene devices have received less attention than the typical two dimensional arrangements. Chen et al. show that an Au/graphene/Au assembly exhibits a large magnetoresistance ratio of up to 400%, while a Co/graphene/Co device displays a spin valve effect at room temperature.

    • Jing-Jing Chen
    • , Jie Meng
    •  & Da-Peng Yu

  • Article |

    Nanoparticles released from living cells can be used as drug delivery vehicles, but scaling up their production is challenging. Here, Wang and colleagues create nanoparticles from natural lipids contained in grapefruit juice that can encapsulate various types of therapeutics and deliver them to cells in vitro and in vivo.

    • Qilong Wang
    • , Xiaoying Zhuang
    •  & Huang-Ge Zhang

  • Article |

    Graphene exhibits interesting optical and electronic properties, resulting from a Dirac dispersion of electrons. Shimano et al.observe quantum magneto-optical Faraday and Kerr effects in the terahertz regime, where plateaus are observed at the quantum-Hall steps.

    • R. Shimano
    • , G. Yumoto
    •  & H. Aoki

  • Article |

    Graphene holds great potential for use in photodetectors, owing to its ability to absorb light over a wide range of wavelengths. Here Zhang et al. report a large photoresponsivity of 8.6 AW-1 over a broad wavelength range in pure monolayer graphene.

    • By Yongzhe Zhang
    • , Tao Liu
    •  & Qi Jie Wang

  • Article |

    A versatile strategy is needed to engineer fluid streams in channels for different purposes. Amini et al.develop an approach to decompose complicated fluid motion into an ensemble of fluid transformations around individual cylindrical pillars, which allows control without simulations.

    • Hamed Amini
    • , Elodie Sollier
    •  & Dino Di Carlo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multilayer stacks of graphene and related two-dimensional crystals can be tailored to create new classes of functional materials. Britnell et al. report resonant tunnelling of Dirac fermions and tunable negative differential conductance in a graphene-boron nitride-graphene transistor.

    • L. Britnell
    • , R. V. Gorbachev
    •  & L. Eaves

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