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A nanoscopically thin gold coating at the optical percolation threshold was fabricated using scalable methods. Despite its extreme thinness, the film absorbs about 30% of the solar radiation while being transparent. The resulting photoinduced heating prevents or mitigates fogging on transparent surfaces.
Carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by increasing the phytoplankton population in the oceans using nutrients. Life cycle assessment, cost analyses and data from previous studies reveal that engineered nanoparticles could increase the efficiency of this process and that it can be made affordable, viable, and safe for marine ecosystems.
Treatment with polycations was shown to selectively target abdominal fat in mice owing to the negatively charged extracellular matrix in adipose tissue. The polycations can inhibit the storage of lipids in fat cells, causing them to shrink and leading to improved metabolic health in obese mice.
Quantum dots can convert terahertz photons into visible light. This mechanism is used to develop a semiconductor-based room-temperature terahertz camera that can simultaneously record the field strength and polarization states of a terahertz beam. The proposed detector has fast speeds and can be manufactured at the wafer-scale.
Introducing nanotextured interfaces simultaneously increases the light-harvesting ability, optoelectronic properties and fabrication yield of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. In this way, the efficiency limit of conventional silicon solar cells is surpassed, paving the way to higher-performance photovoltaics.
A strong and tough human muscle-like actuator fibre is developed by exploiting 2D graphene fillers within a liquid crystalline elastomer matrix. Reversible percolation of the graphene filler network endows the artificial muscle with a work capacity and power density beyond those of human or mammalian muscles.
A concept to mitigate temperature-related degradation in nanophotonic materials is implemented in photonic crystals of perovskite and rocksalt oxides. The developed structures can withstand temperatures of 1,100 °C in air and offer wavelength-selective control of thermal emission. Additionally, an algorithm is used to identify alternative material candidates for such structures.
Suspensions of 2D hexagonal boron nitride show an anomalously large specific Cotton–Mouton coefficient, enabling the fabrication of a magnetically tuneable and stable birefringent optical device. This device serves as a transmissive light modulator with wavelengths entering the ultraviolet (UV)-C region, representing a technological advance in deep-UV modulation.
