Volume 9 Issue 9, September 2014

Fumed silica has been used as an anti-caking agent in foods for several decades. Does new research suggest that the use of this engineered nanomaterial needs to be re-examined, asks Andrew D. Maynard.

The speed and direction of myosin and kinesin motors can be optically controlled by adding a protein domain that changes conformation in response to blue light.

Interference effects in semiconductor quantum structures provide an elegant way to electrically map the strength and direction of spin–orbit fields.

Van der Waals heterostructures consisting of a single MoS₂ monolayer and a single WSe₂ monolayer can be used to form p–n junctions.

The electron spin in a silicon-based quantum dot can be controlled electrically for as long as several tens of microseconds, which improves the prospects for quantum information processing based on this type of quantum dot.

Nuclear magnetic resonance experiments on 100,000 nuclear spins in a quantum dot allows for the reversal of these spins back and forth as if they were a single unit.

In heterostructures of the transition metal dichalcogenides MoS₂ and WSe₂, atomically thin p–n junctions are created that show gate-tunable rectifying and photovoltaic behaviour mediated by tunnelling-assisted interlayer recombination.

The charge transfer between two layers of different two-dimensional materials occurs at a much faster speed than expected, holding promise for efficient optoelectronic devices.

Electroluminescence with relatively high radiance is observed from solution-processed diodes of organometal halide perovskites.

Engineered myosin and kinesin proteins can speed up, slow down and switch direction in response to blue light.

A virus-like particle self-assembled from single DNA molecules and a simple coat protein can efficiently transfect cells.

The values of the coefficients of the spin–orbit interactions acting in III–V semiconductors can be estimated by a simple fitting procedure.

Geometric frustration in a superconductor-based artificial ice system can be switched on and off by temperature.

Particle-based structures can be used to implement a functionally complete set of Boolean logic gates (YES, NOT, AND and OR), and can be made to bind to a target as a result of a computation.

Museums have become an important venue for scientists and the public to have conversations about nanotechnology, reports Ai Lin Chun.