Techniques and instrumentation articles from across Nature Portfolio

Permanent deformation in solids results from atoms not aligning with the external stress causing the deformation. Detecting such non-affine atomic rearrangements and connecting them to measurable mechanical effects is now shown to be feasible by means of high-energy X-ray diffraction.

By contacting a solid oxide fuel cell to a microelectromechanical system inside an environmental electron microscope, the authors establish links between environmental conditions (gas atmosphere, temperature), cell voltage and atomic-scale structure.

Achieving efficient carbon chain propagation remains a grand challenge for ethanol upgrading. Here, the authors report sulfur doped Ni@C-Sx catalysts with controllably exposed nickel sites that can dramatically improve direct-growth probability towards long-chain alcohols production.

Permanent deformation in solids results from atoms not aligning with the external stress causing the deformation. Detecting such non-affine atomic rearrangements and connecting them to measurable mechanical effects is now shown to be feasible by means of high-energy X-ray diffraction.

Two-photon lithography has advantages for precise additive manufacturing at the nanoscale, but its printing speed is currently too slow for large-scale practical applications. A sensitive photoresist based on zirconium oxide hybrid nanoparticles is shown to increase the linear printing speed of two-­photon lithography up to the order of metres per second.

An article from Nature Biomedical Engineering reports the development of an infrared light-emitting cancer nanovaccine and two other nanoprobes for tracking the vaccine and the associated immune response.

Quantum dots couple to form artificial molecules that allow for variable colour emission in response to an electric field.

Emily Draper explains how to design and build electrochemical equipment for neutron scattering experiments with simple, at-hand components and techniques.

Subcellular quantitative analysis has been a long-standing goal of mass spectrometry imaging, but was originally thought to be unattainable. However, recent advances have made organelle-level absolute quantification through mass spectrometry imaging a reality, thanks to the development of nano secondary ion mass spectrometry.