Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The functional heterogeneity of autophagy in endothelial cells during angiogenesis remains incompletely understood. Here, the authors apply a 3D angiogenesis-on-a-chip coupled with single-cell RNA sequencing to find distinct autophagy functions in two different endothelial cell populations during angiogenic sprouting.

    • Somin Lee
    • , Hyunkyung Kim
    •  & Noo Li Jeon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    No preventive treatment addresses the underlying condition that leads to cardiac arrest. Here, researchers developed an injectable hydrogel electrode that achieves pacing that mimics physiological conduction with the potential to eliminate lethal arrhythmias and provide painless defibrillation.

    • Gabriel J. Rodriguez-Rivera
    • , Allison Post
    •  & Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The simultaneous scaling down of the channel length and gate length of 2D transistors remains challenging. Here, the authors report a self-alignment process to fabricate vertical MoS2 transistors with sub-1 nm gate length and sub−50 nm channel length, exhibiting on-off ratios over 105 and on-state currents of 250 μA/μm at 4 V bias.

    • Liting Liu
    • , Yang Chen
    •  & Yuan Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    M. Valentini et al. study superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) where the weak link of the Josephson junctions is a germanium 2D hole gas. They report signatures of the tunneling of pairs of Cooper pairs. For a particular microwave drive power, they observe a 100% efficient superconducting diode effect.

    • Marco Valentini
    • , Oliver Sagi
    •  & Georgios Katsaros

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Trimetallic carbido clusterfullerenes (CCFs) represent the simplest metal carbido complexes with the ligands being only carbon atoms, but the formation prerequisite is unclear. Herein, the authors report the syntheses of three novel vanadium(V)-based CCFs featuring high vanadium valence state and propose a supplemental Octet Rule

    • Runnan Guan
    • , Jing Huang
    •  & Su-Yuan Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalability of mechanoporation strategies for intracellular delivery remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate a microfluidic approach for delivering mRNA and CRISPR-Cas systems to over 250 million cells per minute.

    • Derin Sevenler
    •  & Mehmet Toner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly is an interesting strategy to build chiral hierarchies with premade properties and functionalities. Here, the authors present assembled chiral hydrogen-bonded organic-inorganic frameworks with dynamical chiroptical activities and employ them as powerful and recoverable platforms for enantioselective recognition of chiral aliphatic substrates.

    • Jun Guo
    • , Yulong Duan
    •  & Yi Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing memristor-integrated passive crossbar arrays to accelerate artificial neural networks with high reliability remains a challenge. Here, the authors propose a self-rectifying resistive switching device incorporated into a crossbar array with a density of 1 kb whose operational performance is assessed in terms of defected-cell proportion, reading margin, and selection functionality.

    • Kanghyeok Jeon
    • , Jin Joo Ryu
    •  & Gun Hwan Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Van der Waals antiferromagnets offer a unique platform for studying magnetism in reduced dimensions, however, the low dimensionality, combined with lack of net magnetization, renders investigation challenging with conventional experimental probes. Here, Houmes et al show how van der Waals antiferromagnets can be investigated via the resonances of a vibrating rectangular membranes of this material.

    • Maurits J. A. Houmes
    • , Gabriele Baglioni
    •  & Herre S. J. van der Zant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    With redox-linked synthetic biology and electrobiofabrication, electronic information can be transmitted in a bidirectional manner between biology and electronics. Here the authors design an electrogenetic platform that allows real time electronic control of biological functions from proteins and gene circuits to cell consortia.

    • Sally Wang
    • , Chen-Yu Chen
    •  & William E. Bentley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wavefront manipulation with metasurfaces is typically limited to low quality factors. Here, the authors show how higher-order Mie modes can be leveraged to design high quality factor optical metasurfaces for wavefront manipulation in two dimensions.

    • Claudio U. Hail
    • , Morgan Foley
    •  & Harry A. Atwater

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Shortening the inter-spin distance is an effective way to enhance magnetic coupling. However, it is typically challenging to change the inter-ion distance in most magnetic systems. Here, Huang et al present a strategy for enhancing magnetic interactions, by confining a molecular magnetic system inside a carbon fullerene cage, leading to enhanced magnetic properties.

    • Chenli Huang
    • , Rong Sun
    •  & Song Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient nanoscale and adaptable bioinspired memristors remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop a bioinspired hydrophobically gated memristive nanopore capable of learning, forgetting, and retaining memory through an electrowetting mechanism.

    • Gonçalo Paulo
    • , Ke Sun
    •  & Alberto Giacomello

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mineralization is common in biological materials for selective strengthening, but similar toughening in polymer composites is challenging. Here, the authors report a mechanically-mediated reaction for formation of mineralized microrods within a synthetic material.

    • Jorge Ayarza
    • , Jun Wang
    •  & Aaron P. Esser-Kahn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drug nanoaggregates could be used to improve drug pharmacokinetics when developed for drug delivery, however, the structural features of molecules that drive nanoaggregate formation remain elusive. Here, the authors investigate nanoaggregate self-assembly mechanisms using small molecule fragments to identify the critical molecular forces that contribute to self-assembly, namely aromatic groups and hydrogen bond acceptors/donors.

    • Chen Chen
    • , You Wu
    •  & Daniel A. Heller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical identification of the building blocks of biopolymers often considerably relies on the presence of markers, extensive simulations, or is not possible at all. Here, the authors report a molecular probe-sensitisation approach addressing the identification of a specific amino acid within different peptides.

    • Xu Wu
    • , Bogdana Borca
    •  & Uta Schlickum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing solutions based Advanced Encryption Standard to address the security issues of nonvolatile memories incurs significant performance and power overhead. Here, the authors propose a lightweight XOR-gate based encryption/decryption technique by exploiting in-situ array operations, which achieves significant area/latency/power reduction compared to conventional designs.

    • Yixin Xu
    • , Yi Xiao
    •  & Kai Ni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    S. Matsuo et al. report tunneling spectroscopy measurements on a device consisting of two Josephson junctions (JJ) sharing a single superconducting electrode. In isolation, each JJ would host an Andreev bound state (ABS). In their coherently-coupled JJs, the authors report the formation of an Andreev molecule due to hybridization of the two ABSs.

    • Sadashige Matsuo
    • , Takaya Imoto
    •  & Seigo Tarucha

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The enhanced Coulomb interaction in two dimensions leads to not only tightly bound excitons but also many-particle excitonic complexes: excitons interacting with other quasiparticles, which results in improved and even new exciton properties with better controls. Here, we summarize studies of excitonic complexes in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides and their moiré heterojunctions, envisioning how to utilize them for exploring quantum many-body physics.

    • Xiaotong Chen
    • , Zhen Lian
    •  & Su-Fei Shi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ferroelectric transistors are promising building blocks for developing energy-efficient memory and logic applications. Here, the authors report a record high 300 K resistance on-off ratio achieved in ferroelectric-gated Mott transistors by exploiting a charge transfer layer to tailor the channel carrier density and mitigate the ferroelectric depolarization effect.

    • Yifei Hao
    • , Xuegang Chen
    •  & Xia Hong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heat conduction in solids is known to be contributed by phonons and electrons. Here, authors observe enhanced and non-diffusive thermal conductance mediated by surface phonon polaritons in polar dielectric nanoribbon waveguides.

    • Yu Pei
    • , Li Chen
    •  & Renkun Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A fundamental challenge for molecular electronics is the change in photophysical properties of molecules upon direct electrical contact. Here, the authors observe hot luminescence emitted by single-molecule chromophores that are electrically and mechanically self-decoupled by a tripodal scaffold.

    • Vibhuti Rai
    • , Nico Balzer
    •  & Michal Valášek

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resistive switching of 1T-TaS2 is promising for next-generation electronics. Here, using in operando electron microscopy, the authors determine that Joule heating drives the switching process, which will aid the engineering of future devices.

    • James L. Hart
    • , Saif Siddique
    •  & Judy J. Cha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Contact electrification triggers gas breakdown. Using Coulomb force to estimate voltage, this work provides experimental evidence for the Paschen curves that govern such discharge.

    • Hongcheng Tao
    •  & James Gibert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A trade-off exists between improving crystallinity and minimizing particle size in the synthesis of perovskite-type transition-metal oxynitrides. The authors break this limitation to fabricate sub-50 nm ATaO2N (A = Sr, Ca, Ba) single nanocrystals exhibiting improved photocatalytic water-splitting performance

    • Jiadong Xiao
    • , Mamiko Nakabayashi
    •  & Kazunari Domen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors uncover a coherent, long-range transport of excitons in organic semiconductors that are strongly coupled to spatially structured plasmon fields by tracing ultrafast Rabi oscillations using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy.

    • Daniel Timmer
    • , Moritz Gittinger
    •  & Christoph Lienau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Grain boundary atomic structures of crystalline materials have long been believed to be commensurate with the crystal periodicity of the adjacent crystals. Here, the authors discover an incommensurate grain boundary structure based on direct observations and theoretical calculations.

    • Takehito Seki
    • , Toshihiro Futazuka
    •  & Naoya Shibata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Layered thio- and seleno-phosphate ferroelectrics show promise for next-generation memory but have thermal stability issues. Using the electric field-driven phase transition in antiferroelectric CuCrP2S6, the authors introduce a robust memristor, emphasizing the potential of van der Waals antiferroelectrics in advanced neuromorphic computing.

    • Yinchang Ma
    • , Yuan Yan
    •  & Xixiang Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Graphene quantum dots promise applications for spin and valley qubits; however a demonstration of phase coherent oscillations has been lacking. Here the authors report coherent charge oscillations and measurements of coherence times in highly tuneable double quantum dots in bilayer graphene.

    • K. Hecker
    • , L. Banszerus
    •  & C. Stampfer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transmission electron microscopy is essential for three-dimensional atomic structure determination, but solving complex heterogeneous structures containing light elements remains challenging. Here, authors solve a complex nanostructure using atomic resolution ptychographic electron tomography.

    • Philipp M. Pelz
    • , Sinéad M. Griffin
    •  & Colin Ophus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Combining in situ nanoprobe techniques paves the way for gaining insights into structure-selectivity relations for electrocatalysts. Herein, the dynamic evolution of lattice strain in individual nanoparticles is directly visualized with nanoscale resolution in Cu-Ag tandem catalysts during the electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals.

    • Marvin L. Frisch
    • , Longfei Wu
    •  & Peter Strasser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    sp3 amorphous carbon exhibits exceptional mechanical, thermal, and optical properties, but cannot be synthesized using traditional processes. Here authors report a nearly pure sp3−hybridized amorphous carbon synthesized from C70 which shows more short/medium-range order and enhanced thermal conductivity compared to C60.

    • Yuchen Shang
    • , Mingguang Yao
    •  & Bingbing Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate a large ensemble of quantum dots which is characterized using a cryogenic multiplexer-demultiplexer circuit based on selective area growth nanowires, establishing the feasibility of scaling future quantum circuits.

    • Dāgs Olšteins
    • , Gunjan Nagda
    •  & Thomas S. Jespersen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving unit-by-unit isomerization within a molecular array poses a significant challenge in chemistry. Here, the authors demonstrate tip-induced stereoisomerization of dehydroazulene and diradical units in three-dimensional organometallic compounds on Ag(111).

    • Shigeki Kawai
    • , Orlando J. Silveira
    •  & Adam S. Foster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Geometrical complexities of blood vessels alter biophysical behaviors of circulating tumor cells, influencing cancer metastasis. Here, the authors develop a 3D bioprinted in vitro brain blood vessel-on-a-chip to investigate continuities between vascular geometry and metastatic cancer development.

    • Wonbin Park
    • , Jae-Seong Lee
    •  & Dong-Woo Cho

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