Materials Articles

News and Views: Colour-coded microcarriers: Made to move

A magnetically colour-tunable material is used to create colour-coded microparticles that can be manipulated using magnetic fields and are suitable for use in multiplex bioassays.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp697-698

News and Views: Alloys: Strength from modelling

A new multiscale computational method that is capable of predicting solute strengthening of alloys without adjustable parameters may lead to the development of new engineering materials.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp698-699

News and Views: Spintronics: Perpendicular all the way

A conventional material used in magnetic tunnel junctions with in-plane magnetization can also be magnetized perpendicularly, offering new possibilities for high-performance memory and logic circuits.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp699-700

News and Views: Nanocrystal superlattices: Assembly at liquid interfaces

A liquid/air interface provides an effective platform for organizing thin molecular layers that can be transferred to solid surfaces. It is now shown that liquid-interface assembly is effective for generating extensive membranes of binary nanocrystal superlattices.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp701-703

News and Views: Organic semiconductors: Carrier characteristics

Combining optical spectroscopy and transport measurements illuminates the conduction mechanism in high-quality, polycrystalline films.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp703-704

News and Views: Nanomaterials research: A big step for Ecuador

As the First International Nanotechnology Congress hosted in Quito clearly corroborated, Ecuador is betting on nanotechnology as one of its proposed key investment areas. It is now up to decision-makers to make it happen.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp704-705

Letter: From (?,0) magnetic order to superconductivity with (?,?) magnetic resonance in Fe1.02Te1?xSex

The simplest iron-based superconductor is the chalcogenide Fe1+yTe1?xSex. Previous work suggested a different magnetic origin of superconductivity owing to differences in its electronic states of this material and the iron pnictides, or at least in their parent compounds ?the undoped and non-superconducting versions. The differences are now reconciled by showing a modification of the Fe1+yTe1?xSex states when the Se content is increased.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp718-720

Letter: A perpendicular-anisotropy CoFeB?MgO magnetic tunnel junction

Materials with perpendicular anisotropy receive considerable attention owing to their potential in being employed in efficient memory devices. It is now shown that a type of magnetic tunnel junction widely studied for in-plane magnetic anisotropy has all the properties necessary to realize stable and efficient devices based on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp721-724

Letter: The initialization and manipulation of quantum information stored in silicon by bismuth dopants

Single phosphorus dopants in silicon are one of the physical systems that could be used for quantum information technology. It is now shown that bismuth dopants have similar properties to their phosphorus counterparts, and could offer even more possibilities for quantum information applications.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp725-729

Letter: Designer spoof surface plasmon structures collimate terahertz laser beams

Terahertz emitters, such as quantum cascade lasers (QCLs), are of interest for applications in imaging and sensing. Nevertheless, performance problems such as power out-coupling efficiency have limited their technological potential. However, a study now shows that subwavelength surface patterning of terahertz QCLs leads to significantly enhanced beam collimation and power collection efficiency.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp730-735

Letter: Band-like temperature dependence of mobility in asolution-processed organic semiconductor

Measuring charge transport on the surface of an organic semiconductor crystal in field-effect transistors is difficult. Now solution-processed thin films have been used in a field-effect transistor allowing spectroscopic characterization of the carrier over a large temperature range. The measurements provide information on the nonlinear transport properties observed at low temperatures.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp736-740

Letter: Accurate surface and adsorption energies from many-body perturbation theory

Although density functional theory is widely used in surface science, it has a tendency to predict surfaces to be more stable than they actually are experimentally. Using a many-electron approach such as the random-phase approximation enables accurate surface and adsorption energies for carbon monoxide and benzene on metal surfaces to be determined.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp741-744

Letter: Colour-barcoded magnetic microparticles for multiplexed bioassays

Biochemical assays that use magnetic beads are at present in frequent use. Colour-barcoded magnetic microparticles have now been created without using multiple pigmentations. The coding capacity far exceeds that of alternative spectral encoding systems and is demonstrated in a practical bioassay for DNA detection and identification.

Nature Materials, vol. 9 #9, pp745-749



Extra navigation

ADVERTISEMENT