Research articles

The nanospace confinement of a magnetic nanoparticle within a porous cage, coupled with an encodable DNA clutch interface, enables a remotely powered and controlled rotary nanomotor that is autoresponsive to its microenvironment.

Synchronized dynamics of quantum dot ensembles are essential for the generation of giant optical responses. To this end, coherent electronic coupling in quantum dot solids induces cooperative enhancement of nonlinear optoelectronic responses.

A novel scanning single-electron charging spectroscopy enables nanometre-scale imaging of quasiparticle excitations and thermodynamic gaps in generalized Wigner crystals.

Ptychography is a coherent diffractive imaging method that enables atomic resolution in four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy. Taking advantage of the nature of the investigated object, and therefore using atomic-orbital-like functions for the reconstruction of the object, the resolution can be further improved to an information limit of 14 pm.

Insects have been shown to have the ability to detect different chemical agents. Here, the authors present a nanomaterial-assisted neuromodulation strategy to augment the chemosensory abilities of insects via photothermal effect and on-demand neurotransmitter release from cargo-loaded nanovehicles to augment natural sensory function.

In vivo positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) remains a challenge due to the lack of single-particle tracers. Here a sub-micrometre silica particle has been radiolabelled and isolated with high specific activity, allowing the dynamic tracing of a single particle in vivo using PEPT in mice.

Resolving interactions of negligibly charged or neutral small molecules with their binding partners in a label-free manner is challenging. Here the authors present a single-molecule carbon-nanotube biosensor device for capturing aptamer–neurotransmitter kinetics at high temporal resolution, uncovering four-state structural transitions.

Proteins absorbed on nanomaterials often lose function due to denaturation. A poly(propylene sulfone) nanoparticle with site-specific dipole relaxation has been reported, which allows proteins to anchor to the nanoparticle without disrupting the hydrogen bonding or structure maintaining the protein functionality.

A hybrid valley-centre tandem optical structure that combines perovskites and organic light-emitting diodes is demonstrated to obtain an efficient emitting device, showing the commercial potential of perovskite displays.

Bladder cancer treatment suffers from low therapeutic efficacy. Here the authors present radioactive ¹³¹I-labelled urease-powered nanobots that exhibit enhanced accumulation at the tumour site, enabling effective radionuclide therapy at low doses as an alternative treatment option for bladder cancer.

A soft artificial retina with flexible phototransistors and three-dimensional liquid-metal microelectrodes is used to enhance proximity to retinal ganglion cells and minimize damage to soft tissue as well as improve charge injection for vision restoration in retinal degenerative in vivo models.

As singularities in non-Hermitian systems, exceptional points exhibit rich topological characteristics and have potential for sensing applications. Now, a nitrogen-vacancy spin in diamond exhibits a third-order exceptional line upon the introduction of multiple symmetries in the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian of the spin system.

Multidimensional optical information, including intensity, polarization and wavelength, can be simultaneously detected using double twisted black arsenic–phosphorus homojunctions.

A one-step spin-coating approach to fabricate scalable epitaxial heterodimensional tin perovskite thin films results in near-infrared tin perovskite LEDs with a peak external quantum efficiency of 11.6%.

Protein degradation is a powerful tool for a range of applications and therapies. Here, a selective autophagy receptor mimetic against mutant p53 protein is developed to substantially elevate autophagy levels and to recognize and transport mutant proteins for autophagy-mediated degradation and anticancer effect.

Bidirectional neural interface electronic devices offer therapeutic options. Here, the authors present wafer-scale fabrication of flexible nanoporous graphene-based implantable microelectrode arrays with low impedance and high charge injection for in vivo brain recording and nerve stimulation.

Cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12) has potential for tumour suppression yet off-target effects limit potential applications. Here the authors report on the delivery of IL-12 mRNA encapsulated in extracellular vesicles to lungs via inhalation and demonstrate the immunotherapeutic potential of targeted cytokine mRNA therapy.

High-density transparent microelectrode arrays with platinum-nanoparticle deposited and interlayer-doped double-layer graphene enable multimodal optical and electrical recordings with high spatiotemporal resolution to decode neural dynamics at different cortical layers from surface potentials.

A metasurface-based approach is used to implement computationally expensive digital convolution operations in high-speed, low-power optics for improving the latency and power consumption of machine vision systems.

By preadsorption of water molecules on a material surface, a controllable ångström-scale van der Waals (vdW) gap is created, which can be applied to other vdW material systems with controllable gaps.