There’s an urgent demand for new antimicrobial compounds that are effective against constantly emerging drug-resistant bacteria. Two robotic chemical-synthesizing machines at the Molecular Foundry have joined the search.

Light-powered delivery of silver nanowires by photofluidic movement can offer rapid, noninvasive, repetitive, and on-demand healing of electrical conductors, investigators report.

Researchers show how graphene oxide suspended in water biodegrades in a reaction catalyzed by a human enzyme, with the effectiveness of the breakdown dependent on the colloidal stability of the suspension. The study should guide the development of graphene-based biomedical applications.

Today’s computer chips pack billions of tiny transistors onto a plate of silicon within the width of a fingernail. Each transistor, just tens of nanometers wide, acts as a switch that, in concert with others, carries out a computer’s computations. As dense forests of transistors signal back and forth, they give off heat — which can fry the electronics, if a chip gets too hot. A tabletop setup provides researchers with a more nuanced picture of heat production in microelectronics.

By tweaking the shape of the diamond nanostructures into the form of tiny umbrellas, researchers experimentally showed that the fluorescence intensity of their structures was three to five times greater than that of bulk diamond.

Americans, on average, replace their mobile phones every 22 months, junking more than 150 million phones a year in the process. Now researchers are on the path to creating biodegradable electronics by using organic components in screen displays. The researchers’ advancements could one day help reduce electronic waste in the world’s landfills.

Scientists have carried out a study aimed at precisely controlling phase transformations with high spatial precision, which represents a significant step forward in realizing new functionalities in confined dimensions. Such a precise control of phase transformations opens up new avenues for materials design and processing, as well as advanced nanodevice fabrication.

Researchers have been studying mucus in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, and their primary goal was to design inhalable therapeutic nanoparticles that cross the cystic fibrosis mucus barrier in the lung. But the work recently led the researchers to the unexpected discovery that mucus appears to change as the disease progresses; the mobility of these nanoparticles could vary widely in mucus from different patients.

Researchers have demonstrated an eco-friendly process that enables unprecedented spatial control over the electrical properties of graphene oxide. This two-dimensional nanomaterial has the potential to revolutionize flexible electronics, solar cells and biomedical instruments.

Researchers are the first to grow self-directed graphene nanoribbons on the surface of the semiconducting material germanium. This allows the semiconducting industry to tailor specific paths for nanocircuitry in their technologies.