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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.
Developments in electron microscopy are generating more realistic views of catalysts, allowing optimization of their structure to improve their performance.
For a Ti alloy single crystal, the stress required for deformation twinning increases dramatically as the size of the crystal decreases, until at submicrometre sizes, deformation occurs solely by dislocation motion.
By using drug-encapsulating nanoparticles as the basis for electrostatic assembly, it is possible to generate highly functional films that do double duty. These adaptable thin films can be used both for releasing the drug in a controlled fashion and for biological imaging.
Opening a gap in graphene is still a considerable challenge on the path towards applications. A clever solution to this problem is to exploit the preferential adsorption of hydrogen in patterns that leave narrow stretches of pure graphene in between.
