Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Communications

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  • 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

  • Article |

    The high-speed, large-area printing of aligned semiconducting nanowires is vital for practical device applications. Here, the authors use a high-speed printing technique to print semiconducting nanowire arrays onto device substrates with precise nanowire control, and high field-effect mobilities are observed.

    • Sung-Yong Min
    • , Tae-Sik Kim
    •  & Tae-Woo Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The experimental investigation of relaxation times in graphene quantum dots has long been hindered by the limited tunability of these devices. Here Volk et. al.employ a device design to study this problem and report charge relaxation times of around 60–100 ns.

    • Christian Volk
    • , Christoph Neumann
    •  & Christoph Stampfer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling coupling between distant quantum objects is important for implementation of quantum technologies. Providing an important step towards using semiconductor structures for hosting optically controlled qubits, this work shows coherent coupling between three quantum dot excitons via a cavity.

    • F. Albert
    • , K. Sivalertporn
    •  & W. Langbein

  • Article |

    It is difficult to observe the edge-bulk correspondence in two-dimensional electron systems, which display the quantum Hall effect. Here Li et al. follow the spatial evolution of Landau levels towards an edge of graphene by scanning tunnelling studies, revealing that the edge-bulk correspondence can be preserved.

    • Guohong Li
    • , Adina Luican-Mayer
    •  & Eva Y. Andrei

  • Article |

    Nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond are a promising route for solid-state quantum information processing and magnetometry, but longer coherence times are needed to optimize protocols. Here, Bar-Gill et al. suppress decoherence to realize nitrogen-vacancy spin coherence times approaching one second.

    • N. Bar-Gill
    • , L.M. Pham
    •  & R.L. Walsworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoantennas provide improvements in detection and fluorescence of nanoscale objects, which are usually limited to electric dipole radiation. By exploiting coupling to nanowire antennas, Curto et al. show controlled multipolar emission of a quantum dot, offering a novel multipolar photon source.

    • Alberto G. Curto
    • , Tim H. Taminiau
    •  & Niek F. van Hulst

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low-dimensional materials containing defects such as twin boundaries are known to fail well below their theoretical strength due to surface imperfections. Here, Wang et al. observe strengths close to the ideal limit in gold nanowires with angstrom scale twins, where homogeneous dislocation nucleation controls deformation.

    • Jiangwei Wang
    • , Frederic Sansoz
    •  & Scott X. Mao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The original definition of a memristor envisions a two-terminal memory device with a pinched, zero-crossing hysteresis loop. As the authors show here, an electromotive force leads to non-zero-crossing characteristics in nanoionic-type memristors, implying that the memristor definition must be amended.

    • I. Valov
    • , E. Linn
    •  & R. Waser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conductive polymers are of great interest for electronic applications, but their disorder has made it difficult to realize their full electronic potential. Here transport measurements uncover the intrinsic transport properties of metal-organic polymer nanoribbons.

    • Cristina Hermosa
    • , Jose Vicente Álvarez
    •  & Félix Zamora

  • Article |

    The ideal nanomagnet in a spintronic device has a high coercive field and a low switching field—two competing goals that are hard to realize simultaneously. Here the authors achieve a major reduction of the switching field by applying a microwave magnetic field to a FePt/Ni81Fe19bilayer.

    • Takeshi Seki
    • , Kazutoshi Utsumiya
    •  & Koki Takanashi

  • Article |

    Quantum dots with a fine size dispersion offer attractive levels of functional control and manipulation. In this study, Yang et al. report an environmentally friendly top–down synthesis technique, based on laser irradiation of a polydisperse of lead sulphide nanocrystals.

    • Jing Yang
    • , Tao Ling
    •  & Xi-Wen Du

  • Article |

    Understanding heat flow in two-dimensional nanomaterials has wide-ranging implications. Here, the authors show that the thermal conductance of quarter-micron graphene samples is quasi-ballistic, but patterning the graphene into nanoribbons leads to diffusive heat flow strongly limited by edge scattering.

    • Myung-Ho Bae
    • , Zuanyi Li
    •  & Eric Pop

  • Article |

    The specific capacity of an important commercial cathode material, lithium iron phosphate, is much lower than its theoretical value. Hu et al. report that incorporation of electrochemically exfoliated graphene layers in a carbon coating improves capacity beyond that predicted by theory.

    • By Lung-Hao Hu
    • , Feng-Yu Wu
    •  & Lain-Jong Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ability to add and move individual atoms on a surface with a scanning tunnelling microscope enables precise control over the electronic quantum states of the surface. Schofield et al. show that removing hydrogen atoms from a passivated silicon surface can be used to generate and control such states.

    • S. R. Schofield
    • , P. Studer
    •  & D. R. Bowler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Effective collection of molecules on a small sensing area is not possible based on diffusion alone and the employment of a directed force is required. The authors report a localized electrodynamic precipitation concept to collect, spot and detect airborne species in an active-matrix array-like fashion.

    • En-Chiang Lin
    • , Jun Fang
    •  & Heiko O. Jacobs

  • Article |

    Piezoelectronic materials are attractive for force sensing and as energy harvesting components in electronics that interface directly with the human body. Here, the authors synthesize large area, flexible, electrospun materials capable of ultra-high sensitivity force measurements in the low-pressure regime.

    • Luana Persano
    • , Canan Dagdeviren
    •  & John A. Rogers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiplexed labelling of individual cells allows the direct observation of intracellular molecular composition, but is difficult to achieve with existing techniques. Here, self-assembled fluorescent nanoparticle probes and multicolour multicycle staining are used for the simultaneous evaluation of multiple biomolecules at subcellular resolution.

    • Pavel Zrazhevskiy
    •  & Xiaohu Gao

  • Article |

    Large spin-orbit coupling in solids has the potential to yield materials that can display unique properties such as non-trivial topological ordering. Steele et al.report an order of magnitude higher zero-field spin splitting in carbon than has been measured previously.

    • G.A. Steele
    • , F. Pei
    •  & L.P. Kouwenhoven

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transistors that operate by the passage of electrons through a single-dopant atom achieve the ultimate limit for the miniaturization of electronic devices, but only when multiple transistors are intimately connected can they become useful. Roche et al. demonstrate the equivalent of just this, connecting two such transistors to build a two-atom electron pump.

    • B. Roche
    • , R.-P. Riwar
    •  & X. Jehl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alkali vapours are increasingly useful in photonic research and metrology applications, and they provide a useful test bed for investigating light–matter interaction. Stern et al. integrate silicon nitride waveguides with alkali vapours to study light–matter interactions on a chip-scale platform.

    • Liron Stern
    • , Boris Desiatov
    •  & Uriel Levy

  • Article |

    The chemical reduction of graphene oxide can provide large quantities of reduced graphene oxide for potential application in electronics and composite materials. Feng et al. report a highly efficient low-temperature one-pot reduction of graphene oxide that uses sodium-ammonia solution as the reducing agent.

    • Hongbin Feng
    • , Rui Cheng
    •  & Jinghong Li

  • Article |

    The scattering of light by nanoparticles could be useful for photonic nanoantenna or other light manipulation schemes. Here Kuznetsov et al. demonstrate directional light scattering from silicon nanoparticles for visible light.

    • Yuan Hsing Fu
    • , Arseniy I. Kuznetsov
    •  & Boris Luk’yanchuk

  • Article |

    Manipulation of spins in the solid state is a promising avenue for quantum information and field sensing applications. Bennett et al. demonstrate voltage tunability of single-spin states in a quantum dot as a step towards universal control of a single spin with a single electrical gate.

    • Anthony J. Bennett
    • , Matthew A. Pooley
    •  & Andrew J. Shields

  • Article |

    The use of III-V semiconductor nanowires can overcome the need for lattice matching in multi-junction solar cells, which restricts the choice of materials and their bandgaps. This work demonstrates efficient solar cells with GaAsP single nanowires with tunable bandgap and grown on low-cost Si substrates.

    • Jeppe V. Holm
    • , Henrik I. Jørgensen
    •  & Martin Aagesen

  • Article |

    The recognition of viruses by synthetic materials is historically difficult. Here, a templating procedure using silica nanoparticles coated with organosilanes is used to form virus-imprinted particles, possessing both shape and chemical imprints, capable of virus recognition at picomolar concentrations.

    • Alessandro Cumbo
    • , Bernard Lorber
    •  & Patrick Shahgaldian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Arrays of III–V semiconductor nanopillars are promising photovoltaic materials due to their favourable optical properties, however, they show low power conversion efficiencies. Mariani et al. fabricate a GaAs nanopillar solar cell achieving an efficiency of 6.63% owing to surface passivation.

    • Giacomo Mariani
    • , Adam C. Scofield
    •  & Diana L. Huffaker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measuring acoustic phonons across the Brillouin zone reveals important information on electrical and thermal transport in materials. Temnov et al.generate giant acoustic strain pulses in gold/cobalt bilayers and monitor their nonlinear reshaping in the gold layer with plasmonic interferometry.

    • Vasily V. Temnov
    • , Christoph Klieber
    •  & Rudolf Bratschitsch

  • Article |

    For quantum technologies to become widespread and scalable, bright sources of indistinguishable single photons are essential. Through deterministic positioning of quantum dots in pillar cavities, Gazzano et al.present a solid-state single-photon source with brightness as large as 0.65 photons per pulse.

    • O. Gazzano
    • , S. Michaelis de Vasconcellos
    •  & P. Senellart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emission properties of quantum dots make them ideal for probing plasmonic nanostructures, but their small size makes them difficult to manipulate. Ropp et al.use a microfluidic system to accurately place single quantum dots around silver nanowires to probe the local density of optical states.

    • Chad Ropp
    • , Zachary Cummins
    •  & Edo Waks

  • Article |

    Controlling the interaction between distant quantum dots is important if they are to be used in quantum information devices. Delbecq et al. place two quantum dot circuits in a microwave cavity and show that they interact via cavity photons, even though they are separated by 200 times their own size.

    • M.R. Delbecq
    • , L.E. Bruhat
    •  & T. Kontos

  • Article |

    Quantum magnetometry in the solid state is usually affected by short coherence times and control errors that limit the sensitivity. This work demonstrates a continuous-driving scheme based on composite pulses that improves both these shortcomings and can be used in variable sensing environments.

    • Clarice D. Aiello
    • , Masashi Hirose
    •  & Paola Cappellaro

  • Article |

    Metallic particles are known to etch the surface layers of graphite by catalytic hydrogenation. Here, the authors report the sub-surface etching of graphite by Ni nanoparticles, revealing the formation of networks of tunnels, which are observed microscopically and could be modified for various applications.

    • Maya Lukas
    • , Velimir Meded
    •  & Ralph Krupke

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