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Friction is rarely studied at high sliding speeds between surfaces. However, simulations now suggest that gold clusters on atomically flat graphite can enter a new regime of ballistic friction, featuring a peculiar anticorrelation between translation and rotation.
The versatility and potential of conjugated organic materials continues to amaze, with their unique — and sometimes unexpected — properties being continuously discovered and harnessed by scientists in an attempt to use them in functional devices.
Imprinting molecular memory on the surface of polymer nanoparticles creates artificial antibodies that can recognize and neutralize a toxic peptide in vivo.
Heating and cooling of peptide amphiphile suspensions converts disorganized nanofibres into liquid-crystalline nanofibre bundles that gel on addition of salts. The noodle-shaped strings of gel can entrap and align cells.
A new route to layer-by-layer assembly of metal–organic framework thin films affords highly ordered and controllable surfaces with potential in chemical sensing and catalyst applications.
A cationic nanosized hydrogel (nanogel) shows controlled antigen delivery in vivo following intranasal administration and hence holds promise for a clinically effective adjuvant-free and needle-free vaccine system.
Nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond are very promising candidates for quantum information processing in the solid state. However, a search to find defects with even more potential has now been launched.
Radionuclides encapsulated within carbohydrate-functionalized carbon nanotubes set new records for in vivo radiodosage, while demonstrating zero leakage of isotopes to high-affinity organs, such as the thyroid.
Ternary intermetallic Heusler compounds, originally discovered by a German mining engineer and chemist in 1903, may show exotic topological insulator behaviour unknown to science just five years ago.
Patching carbon and boron nitride nanodomains emerges as an efficient way to engineer bandgaps in graphene, opening a new avenue for optoelectronic devices.
The prediction of interface structures is an uncertain and time-consuming task. A technique merging ab initio calculations with a genetic algorithm simplifies the process and provides suitable solutions of the atomic structures that would be hard to envisage a priori.
The use of a ferroelectric tunnel junction to control the spin polarization of adjacent magnetic electrodes promises a new approach to the use of interface effects for low-power-consumption spintronic devices.
So far, flow-induced transitions and structures formed by the assembly of surfactant micelles have been reversible. Now, a microporous extensional flow process forms a permanent gel, which remains intact even after flow has stopped.
Transformation optics describes the capability to design the path of light waves almost at will through the use of metamaterials that control effective materials properties on a subwavelength scale. In this review, the physics and applications of transformation optics are discussed.
