News & Views in 2015

Cowpea mosaic virus nanoparticles can induce the immune system to clear metastatic cancers.

The light-powered assembly and disassembly of functionalized nanoparticles creates dynamic nanocavities with built-in selective uptake, reactivity and release.

A theoretical framework that interprets Raman scattering as an optomechanical process can be used to understand, and guide, experiments in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

With fast, adaptive control over the spin of a single electron, magnetic fields can now be measured at the very limits allowed by quantum physics.

The basic building block of a Hund's metal can be constructed from an iron atom adsorbed on a platinum surface and can be probed with a scanning tunnelling microscope.

By taking advantage of the thermal gradient that is generated in plasmonic systems and by using an a.c. field, plasmonic tweezers can have a large radius of action and can trap and manipulate single nano-objects.

The observation of single-photon emission at room temperature from defects in hexagonal boron nitride sheets opens new opportunities for quantum optics.

Synthetic DNA-labelled polymers can be made to self-assemble on two- and three-dimensional DNA scaffolds in custom routings.

Quantum mechanical wave interference of massive molecules at an atomically thin grating sheds new light on an old question.

An electrical read-out mechanism for magnetic skyrmions that does not require spin-polarized currents could facilitate the use of these small magnetic states in memory devices.

An optical rectenna made of a forest of multiwalled carbon nanotubes shows potential for direct conversion of light into d.c. electricity.

Randomly assembled nanoparticle networks can compute two-input Boolean functions by exploiting evolution-based computing algorithms.

Characterization of a microdisk resonator suggests that it could be used for ultrasensitive mass detection in biological environments.

Arrays of CMOS nanocapacitors, which can operate at high frequencies, can be used to sense beyond the Debye screening length.

DNA origami nanostructures of unprecedented complexity can be created by finding a DNA strand path through wireframe shapes using an approach based on graph theory.

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.