News & Views in 2016

Gold-doped graphene combined with a bilayer gold mesh and polymeric microneedles forms a wearable sweat-based patch for real-time monitoring of glucose levels and controlled drug delivery.

Diodes, logic gates and sensors can be built from metal nanoparticles coated with charged organic ligands.

Aggregated form of single-walled carbon nanotubes can inhibit the neurochemical and behavioural effects induced by methamphetamine, offering a potential treatment for drug addiction and abuse.

Experiments show that the radiative heat transfer between two closely spaced parallel surfaces can be two to three orders of magnitude higher than Planck's law for the far field would predict.

An entangled state of two spin qubits in silicon has been prepared and measured, yielding a violation of Bell's inequality that is the largest achieved in the solid state so far.

Meta-analysis of the literature on quantum dot toxicity using a machine-learning tool helps reveal hidden relationships between material properties and toxicity.

Spontaneous formation of defects in the walls of leaky tumour blood vessels may explain the increased accumulation of large nanoparticles in certain tumours.

Poly(ethylene glycol) helps nanomaterials evade the immune system by modifying the composition of proteins that are adsorbed on the surface of the materials.

Scanning near-field optical microscopy combined with pump–probe spectroscopy can resolve ultrafast dynamics at the nanoscale.

Charge carriers in strongly correlated electron systems can be manipulated electrically in a device made of atomically thin materials.

Two complementary strategies show how to control the spatial propagation of spin waves, thus promising complex and reconfigurable wiring in spin-wave-based circuits.

Metal coordination and π–π stacking interactions drive the assembly of dipeptides into nanostructures with superior optical properties.