Reviews & Analysis

The structure of glass is not as untidy as one would think. It has some degree of order intermediate between a liquid and a crystal. A new method allows control of this intermediate range order and improves our understanding of glass structures.

A century-old puzzle on the apparent contradiction that some materials disorder as they are cooled gains universality following new observations of closed-loop phase behaviour in a block-copolymer system.

A transmission electron microscope capable of identifying individual atoms or defects in a crystal lattice has much to offer materials scientists. It has now been used to study the early stages of nanocluster nucleation and growth in semiconductors.

The discovery that the electronic conductivity of LiFePO₄ can be increased by eight orders of magnitude may have a profound impact on the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.

Kagomé lattices are the most geometrically frustrated magnetic systems. But their magnetic properties remain poorly characterized because they are difficult to synthesize. A new versatile synthetic route to Kagomé lattices yields a spin-frustrated material from paramagnetic building blocks.

Looking through a window on a rainy day may generate feelings other than melancholy. Curiosity, for example: isn't it remarkable that water droplets stick to the pane rather than sliding down?

Lenses used in electron microscopy have aberrations that limit their resolution. Successful correction of spherical aberration is now possible, opening the door to three-dimensional, sub-ångström imaging of atomic arrangements.

For nanotechnology to fulfil its promises, devices have to control events at the nanoscale as well as link to the macroscopic world. An organized network of nanoparticles that behaves as a sensor is one example of such a system.

As Benjamin Braddock was told in the film The Graduate “plastics” are big business. But with a limited palette of polymers to choose from, the industry has long sought to combine desirable properties from several polymers into new blends.

How does plastic deformation of polycrystalline materials with grain sizes less than 100 nm look at the atomic scale? A large-scale molecular dynamics simulation of nanocrystalline aluminium reveals some surprising behaviour.

Atomic-scale engineering turns silicon into a material in which electronics and photonics can be merged, thus leading to microphotonic integrated circuits.

For a quarter of a century, barcodes have been used in the macroscopic world to tag goods in supermarkets. Can the same idea be used to track molecules in microbiology?

Conventional superconductors, such as niobium, may soon have competition from a recent upstart. A new technique for growing thin films of MgB₂ removes one serious hurdle in the path to commercialization.