Reviews & Analysis

This Perspective reviews the molecular, cellular and organismal response pathways that nucleic acid nanodevices are likely to interact with when deployed in living systems, and outlines ways to design nanodevices that either evade or react to the host response.

High-transmission metasurfaces based on elliptical silicon rods provide a simple approach to engineering the phase and polarization of light.

The photocurrent generated at the boundary between structural phases of bismuth ferrite reveals information on the coupling between mechanical and electrical phenomena.

Nanomechanical sensors can now detect femtomolar concentrations of analytes within minutes without the need to passivate the underlying cantilever surface.

Bacterial cells can be sculpted into different shapes using nanofabricated chambers and then used to explore the spatial adaptation of protein oscillations that play an important role in cell division.

Synthetic muscles built from DNA nanotube scaffolds can be used to study how myosin motors work together to make real muscles function.

Low dimensionality in NbSe₂ layers enhances the critical temperature for the onset of charge density wave order, up to a temperature of 145 K in the monolayer limit.

On bending, nanowires display anelastic behaviour, recovering their initial shape over time and efficiently dissipating mechanical energy in the process.

Molecular dynamics simulations show that the flow of water through carbon nanotubes can be enhanced by exciting the phonon modes of the nanotube.

The propagation direction of surface plasmon wakes can be controlled by exciting a series of dipoles with different phases along a one-dimensional metamaterial.

The high sensitivity of magnetic skyrmions to mechanical deformation of the underlying crystal lattice provides a new tuning parameter for potential applications of these nanosized spin whirls.

Studies on a perovskite photovoltaic device suggest that improved stability, one of the hurdles to large-scale applicability of perovskites in solar cells, can be achieved.

A nucleic acid-based chloride sensor is used to image and quantify spatiotemporal chloride transport in the living cell.

This article reviews recent progress in the synthesis and characterization of well-defined subnanometre clusters, and the understanding and exploitation of their catalytic properties, highlighting the potential of such clusters to provide insight into important catalytic processes and to form the basis of novel catalytic systems.

Charged domain walls in ferroelectric thin films can be manipulated at the nanoscale and used to induce charges in the surrounding insulating material.

The delivery of flexible electronic scaffolds to precise locations in biological tissues or cavities is achieved by injecting them via a syringe needle with a diameter much smaller than the size of the scaffold.

Three different mechanical waveforms are generated at the nanoscale by Fourier synthesis of surface acoustic waves.

Single-molecule junctions with high rectification ratios can be realized by exposing different electrode surface areas to an ionic liquid.

An axle-shaped molecule pumps charged rings from solution into an alkyl collection unit, a mechanism that, in two repetitive cycles, takes the system increasingly further from equilibrium.

A single layer of MoS₂ can be used to fabricate a memristor by exploiting structural defects in the crystal.