Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Communications

Efficient enrichment of molecules from liquids, solid objects, or the gas phase is critical for their detection at trace concentrations. Here, the authors report on the lossless enrichment of analytes in droplets using acoustic levitation for multiphase and multiplex SERS detection.

While renewable H₂O₂ is promising industrially relevant regent, it remains a challenge to modulate materials’ photocatalytic and electronic properties for effect light-harvesting. Here, authors examine core-shell Ag/Pd co-catalysts on BiVO₄ for photocatalytic H₂O₂ synthesis.

The development of robust catalysts that could work under industrial-scale current densities is a challenge for hydrogen production. Here, the authors report an in-situ activation method to produce ferromagnetic Ru clusters that can catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction at high current densities.

One particularly useful feature of van der Waals materials is the ability to combine layers of different materials into a single heterostructure, which can have superior properties than any of the constituent materials alone. Here, Cheng et al. combine two interlayer-antiferromagnetic chromium trihalides, CrI₃ and CrCl₃ in close proximity, and demonstrate ferromagnetic coupling between them.

While the reduction of CO₂ to specific products offers a valuable approach mitigating gas emissions, it is challenging to control the formation of crucial intermediates. Here, authors report a strategy to promote the formation of oxygen-bound intermediates and boost the methanol production.

Doxorubicin is commonly used in cancer chemotherapy, but its cardiotoxicity from iron overload is one of the severe side effects. Here, the authors prepare magnesium hexacyanoferrate nanocatalysts to capture excess ferrous species and eliminate cytotoxic radical species in vitro and in vivo.

Quantum-dot spin qubits in Si/SiGe quantum wells require a large and uniform valley splitting for robust operation and scalability. Here the authors introduce and characterize a new heterostructure with periodic oscillations of Ge atoms in the quantum well, which could enhance the valley splitting.

Single-atom catalysts emerge as nanocatalytic medicine in chemodynamic therapy but suffer from inefficient kinetics for the production of reactive oxygen species because of the cell’s antioxidative mechanisms. Here, the authors employ a galvanic replacement approach to create atomically dispersed Au on degradable zero-valent Cu nanocubes for tumor treatment.

Valleytronic devices employ the electronic valley degree of freedom to realize potential low-power electronic applications. Here, the authors utilize a topological semiconductor to engineer valley polarization transistors with long lifetimes and demonstrate low-power neuromorphic functionality at room temperature.

While photoelectrochemical water splitting offers a promising means to obtain renewable H₂, it is challenging to balance light absorption and carrier transport in semiconductor thin films. Here, authors combine surface doping and bulk gradient doping to decouple these factors to boost performances.

Artificial organelles can potentially be used support cellular functions, but there is a trade-off between cellular uptake and cellular retention. Here, the authors report the dynamic assembly of DNA-ceria-based artificial peroxisomes in cells, and show they can be used to reduce intracellular ROS.

Designing active, stable and cost-effective catalysts for the acidic oxygen evolution reaction remains a challenge. Here, the authors report iridium single atoms incorporated cobalt oxides, showing distinctly enhanced performance in the acid.

One of the possible events signaling a neutrinoless double beta decay is a Xe atom decaying into a Ba ion and two electrons. Aiming at the realisation of a detector for such a process, the authors show that Ba ions can be efficiently trapped (chelated) in vacuum by an organic molecule layer on a surface.

Applications of ultra-low-loss photonic circuitry in quantum photonics, in particular including triggered single photon sources, are rare. Here, the authors show how InAs quantum dot single photon sources can be integrated onto wafer-scale, CMOS compatible ultra-low loss silicon nitride photonic circuits.

Ultrahigh-resolution patterning with high-throughput and high-fidelity is highly in demand for expanding the potential of OLEDs. Here, the authors report that silicone-incorporated organic light-emitting semiconductors can achieve anisotropic lithography via reactive ion etching-coupled photolithography, for ultrahigh-density RGB OLED arrays.

Mechanical strain is a powerful tuning knob for excitons in two-dimensional semiconductors. Here, the authors find that under the application of strain, dark and localized excitons in monolayer WSe₂ are brought into energetic resonance, forming a new hybrid state that inherits the properties of the constituent species.

2D and 3D conductive MOFs have performed well in the fields of energy and catalysis. Here, authors synthesise a 1D conductive MOF in which DDA ligands are connected by double Cu ions, forming nanoribbon layers with π-d conjugated nanoribbon planes and out-of-plane π-π stacking, which facilitates charge transport along two dimensions.

Three decades of research in molecular nanomagnets have enabled the preparation of compounds displaying magnetic memory at liquid nitrogen temperature. Here, the authors provide an innovative framework for the design of molecular magnets based on data mining, and develop an interactive dashboard to visualize the dataset.

In moiré materials, structural relaxation phenomena can lead to unexpected and novel material properties. Here, the authors characterize an unconventional non-local relaxation process in twisted double trilayer graphene, in which an energy gain in one domain of the moiré lattice is paid for by a relaxation that occurs in the other.

The realization of Jones matrix with full eight free parameters is particularly challenging. Here, the authors construct spatially varying Jones matrix with eight free parameters by cascading two-layer metasurfaces and use it for new optical functionalities.

Retrieving the pupil phase of a optical beam path is a central problem for imaging systems across scales. The authors use Diffractive Neural Networks to directly extract pupil phase information with a single, compact optoelectronic device.

Defect centers in two-dimensional materials has shown promise for applications in quantum information and sensing. Lee et al. computationally discover a class of substitutional defect centers in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides with promising qubit characteristics operating at telecom wavelengths.

Engineering quantum states requires precise manipulations at the atomic level. Here, the authors use deep reinforcement learning to manipulate Ag adatoms on Ag surfaces, which combined with path planning algorithms enables autonomous atomic assembly.

Bacteriophage are natural antibiotic agents and provide natural building blocks for living biomaterials. Here, the authors crosslink self-organised bacteriophages to make sprayable microgels which preserves the natural antibacterial action, have tuneable auto-fluorescence and demonstrate application in food decontamination.

Neuromorphic computing memristors are attractive to construct low-power- consumption electronic textiles. Here, authors report an ultralow-power textile memristor network of Ag/MoS2/HfAlOx/carbon nanotube with reconfigurable characteristics and firing energy consumption of 1.9 fJ/spike.

Regular patterns can form spontaneously in chemical reaction-diffusion systems under non-equilibrium conditions as proposed by Alan Turing. Here, the authors generate regular patterns in uphill-diffusion solution systems without a chemical reaction process through in-situ and ex-situ observations.

One of the mechanisms underlying platinum (Pt) resistance is the spontaneous nucleotide-excision repair of cancer cells. Here, nuclease-mimetic Pt nanozymes are targeted to the cancer cell nucleus and induce concurrent DNA platination and oxidative cleavage to overcome Pt resistance.

Nanoplastic contamination is a serious environmental concern and could have implications on plant life depending upon interactions. Here, the authors study the effect of size and charge on the accumulation and uptake of model polymer nanoparticles by plant roots which has implications for environmental exposure and nanoparticle delivery to plants.

Fivefold and icosahedral symmetries in multiply twinned crystals can be used to influence the shape of synthetic nanoparticles. Simulations now show the entropy-driven formation of fivefold and icosahedral twinned clusters of truncated tetrahedra that self-assemble into colloidal crystals.

Traditional carbon nitride membranes are generally presented with random stacking behavior leading to undesired separation performance. Here, authors create lamellar membranes via polycation pillaring to afford adaptive subnanochannels, overcoming the selectivity-permeability trade-off in forward osmosis.

The orientation of proteins on nanoparticle surfaces is important to the nanoparticle’s fate in vivo. Here, the authors use competitive binding between protein variants to develop a residue-based affinity scale to develop a model for the binding and orientation of proteins on gold nanoparticles

Chirality transfer from molecules to nanomaterials enables advanced optical functionalities. Here, the authors use exfoliated MoS₂ nanosheets to seed the growth of chiral Au nanoparticles to form Au/MoS₂ heterostructures for enantioselective drug release.

It is challenging to directly characterize mechanical properties of soft 3D cardiac organoids with current sensors. Here the authors report an electronic skin-based all-soft organoid-sensing system which can wirelessly monitor minute force profiles of cardiac organoids in real-time in-situ.

Sensitive methods for antibody detection tend to be expensive and slow. Here, the authors report a magnetic particle spectroscopy method named COMPASS, as a rapid and low-cost technique which is comparable to ELISA in terms of sensitivity but with a measurement times of seconds.

Probing the direct effect of grain boundaries as active catalytic sites is very challenging. Here, the authors reveal that the d_z² orbital energy level of Mo atoms in grain boundaries exhibits an intrinsic relationship with the hydrogen evolution activity.

While homodimeric prodrug assemblies can improve drug loading and limit toxicity in cancer therapy, bioactivation within the target site is limited. Here, the authors introduce a hybrid chalcogen bond linker to a docetaxel dimeric prodrug nanoassembly and demonstrate its improved selfassembly, redox-responsivity and antitumor efficacy.

Diatomic actinide molecules are ideal models for studying rare multiple-bond motifs. Here, the authors report host-guest structures of metastable charged U≡N diatoms confined in fullerene cages and stabilized by coordinative electron transfer.

Future optical devices, e.g., for AR and VR, will require sophisticated flat metaoptics with unique optical functionalities. The authors demonstrate a metaobjective based on electrically switchable metallic polymer metalenses, whose optical states and focal length is adjustable via CMOS compatible voltages.

Fast-charging is highly desired for lithium-ion batteries but is hindered by potential hazardous lithium plating and the associated parasitic reactions. Here, the authors report a nondestructive differential pressure sensing method for early detection and mitigation of lithium plating in fast-charging batteries.

Electron transfer between mitochondrial cytochrome c and subunit of cytochrome bc₁ can proceed at long distance. Here the authors investigate further the mechanism and show phosphorylation regulation of the interactions between the protein partners in the electron transport chain.

Designing efficient reconfigurable field effect transistors remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop a transistor with three distinct operation modes, realized directly on an industrial 22nm FDSOI platform, demonstrating a reconfigurable analog circuit element with signal follower, phase shifter, and frequency doubler operation.

Liposomes are widely used in pharmaceuticals yet trade-offs between uniform size and mass production, limit production and application. Here, the authors report on the design of a microfluidic vortex focusing microfluidic technique which can mass produce liposomes with controlled size and low variability.

The Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model is a prototypical model of topological states, initially proposed to describe spinless electrons on a one-dimensional (1D) dimerized lattice. Here, the authors realize a 2D SSH model in a rectangular lattice of silicon atoms on a silver substrate, observing gapped Dirac cones by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

Covalent modification is an essential chemical method for altering the physicochemical properties of material interfaces. Here, the authors show that the no-slip conditions in microfluidic devices grant spatiotemporal control over molecular grafting.

Magnetic skyrmions, due to their strongly nonlinearity and multiscale dynamics, are promising for implementing reservoir computing. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate skyrmion-based spatially multiplexed reservoir computing able to perform Boolean Logic operations, using thermal and current driven dynamics of spin structures.

A nonmetallic plasmonic heterostructure of W₁₈O₄₉ nanowires on reduced-graphene oxide is reported for the efficient dehydration of isopropanol to 100% propylene. The energy barrier is found to be reduced under full-spectrum irradiation.

Focused-ion beam (FIB) lithography enables high-resolution nanopatterning of 2D materials, but usually introduces significant damage. Here, the authors report a FIB-based fabrication technique to obtain high quality graphene superlattices with 18-nm pitch, which exhibit electronic transport properties similar to those of natural moiré systems.

Achieving the delivery of drugs into the centre of solid tumours is a challenge due to the tumour micro-environment. Here, the authors propose a system for using the rapid release of large quantities of drug inside tumour microcapillaries for the gradient-driven diffusion of drugs into solid tumours.

The 2019 redefinition of the International System of Units requires a 100 Ω quantum resistance standard for the ideal electrical realization of the kilogram via the Kibble Balance. Here, the authors report the realization of an array of 236 graphene quantum Hall bars, demonstrating a quantized resistance of 109 Ω with an accuracy of 0.2 nΩ/Ω over an extended range of bias currents.