Technology Update

Atom-thick layers of iron have been made in the tiny holes of a perforated piece of free-standing graphene.

Ultrasound is a popular choice for imaging inside the body because it can reveal the deep tissue regions that light-based fluorescence techniques cannot reach.

Placing just one atomic plane of graphene on the surface of a copper film can substantially increase the thermal conductivity of the film

A device that detects ultra-weak radio waves by converting them into light signals has been created

A new type of strong and flexible yarn made from graphene oxide that could be ideal in “smart” wearable textiles has been developed by researchers in Australia and Ireland

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne National Labs in the US say they have discovered a new class of 3D bimetal nanocatalysts that are much more efficient

Being able to control magnetism in materials using only an applied voltage will be important for low-power spintronics applications in the future.

An unusually simple approach to artificial muscles – based on high-strength polymer fibres – has been developed

A new 2D material called rhenium disulphide, which belongs to the family of semiconducting layered transition metal dichalcogenides but which behaves as though it is a pure monolayer, has been discovered

Physicists in the Netherlands say they have succeeded in manipulating the state of a quantum bit (or qubit) by simply adjusting the strength of the technique they used to measure it.

Semiconducting polymer nanoparticles could make excellent photoacoustic contrast agents for molecular imaging in vivo, according to new work by researchers at Stanford University in the US.

Membranes made from the carbon-based material graphene oxide could act as perfect molecular sieves when immersed in water, blocking all molecules or ions with a hydrated size larger than 9 angstroms.

Researchers at the Integrated Nanotechnology Lab at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia say they have come up with a simple and cost-effective way to transform traditional rigid electronics wafers made from silicon into mechanically flexible and transparent ones.

Physicists have succeeded in measuring the sign of the so-called Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in weak ferromagnets for the first time thanks to a new synchrotron-based experimental technique.

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg are working on a heat engine that consists of just a single ion

Miniaturized bioelectronic probes stand to transform biology and medicine by allowing measurement of intracellular components in vivo

A new study has found a new method for growing human embryonic stem cells, that doesn’t rely on supporting human or animal cells

A team of researchers has developed a smartphone attachment and application to test water for the presence of mercury, a toxic heavy metal.

Semiconducting π-conjugated polymers are promising materials for applications such as light-emitting diodes, field-effect transistors, photovoltaics and optoelectronics devices thanks to their easily tuneable electrical, optical and magnetic properties.

Researchers at IBM in New York say that wafer-scale molybdenum disulphide – a technologically important 2D material that shows great promise for a host of device applications

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the US have unveiled a new nanogenerator able to harvest energy from a beating heart as it moves.