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Measuring the binding force between red blood cells and fibrinogen — the protein that helps in the formation of blood clots — using an atomic force microscope can help identify patients at increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
High-spatial-resolution magnetometry at cryogenic temperature can be achieved with nitrogen–vacancy centres, allowing detailed imaging of Pearl vortices in the cuprate superconductor YBa2Cu3O7−δ.
The use of electric fields to control spin currents, which is one of the goals of modern spintronics, has now been extended to control the valley degree of freedom in a 2D semiconductor.
Single-nanowire photoelectrodes show that the photovoltage output of ensemble arrays can be limited by poorly performing individual wires and that the high surface area of nanowires lowers the overpotential of photoelectrochemical reactions.
Metal nanoparticles functionalized with charged organic ligands can be used to create electronic devices in which the metal nanoparticles sense, process and report chemical signals.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes in an aggregated form can inhibit the rewarding and psychomotor-stimulating effects of methamphetamine, and can control relapse to drug-seeking behaviour in mice.
Near field-based enhancements in radiative heat conductance that exceed far-field limits by orders of magnitude are demonstrated by manipulating the gap size between plane-parallel dielectric and metallic plates with nanometre precision.
A microelectromechanical system is used to bring two parallel beams to sub-100 nm separation and measure the radiative heat transfer between them under a high thermal gradient.
Plasmonic nanobubbles can guide the detection and precise removal of residual tumours known to cause lethal cancer recurrence and metastases, offering a surgical tool that can potentially improve cancer survival.
The enhanced extravasation of nanoparticles from tumour blood vessels into the tumour interstitial space has been found to be due to dynamic vents that form transient openings and closings at leaky blood vessels, offering new insights on drug permeability and distribution patterns in tumours.
The valley Hall effect in bilayer MoS2 transistors can be controlled using a gate voltage and the induced valley polarization imaged with Kerr microscopy.
A DNA-based channel that undergoes a nanomechanical change in response to the binding of a specific ligand can be used to selectively transport small-molecule cargo across a lipid bilayer.
Bolometers with high responsivity and low electrical noise can be fabricated exploiting the conductance gap induced in graphene quantum dots by quantum confinement and their interaction with the substrate.
The electron spins in a linear array of three quantum dots can be manipulated, shuttled and read out individually with high fidelity, resembling the functioning principle of a CCD (charge-coupled device).