Computer simulations have revealed how the electrical conductivity of many materials increases with a strong electrical field in a universal way. This development could have significant implications for practical systems in electrochemistry, biochemistry, electrical engineering and beyond.

Researchers want to put your signature up in lights. Using thousands of nanometer-scale wires, the researchers have developed a sensor device that converts mechanical pressure – from a signature or a fingerprint – directly into light signals that can be captured and processed optically.

Chemists have figured out how to synthesize nanomaterials with stainless steel-like interfaces. Their discovery may change how the form and structure of nanomaterials are manipulated, particularly those used for gas storage, heterogeneous catalysis and lithium-ion batteries.

The atoms that make up metallic glasses lack the orderly lattice structure present in most other crystalline solids. Researchers have now shown that within randomly packed clusters of atoms, a fractal pattern emerges at the scale of two atomic diameters.

Researchers around the globe are on a quest for materials capable of capturing and storing greenhouse gases. This shared goal led researchers to team up to explore the feasibility of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes to trap and store two greenhouse gases in particular: carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

Physicists unveil a project known as Gecko Hamaker, a new computational and modeling software tool plus an open science database to aid those who design nano-scale materials.

Semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots, are tiny, nanometer-sized particles with the ability to absorb light and re-emit it with well-defined colors. With low-cost fabrication, long-term stability and a wide palette of colors, they have become a building blocks of the display technology, improving the image quality of TV-sets, tablets, and mobile phones. Exciting quantum dot applications are also emerging in the fields of green energy, optical sensing, and bio-imaging.

Whether triggered by cats, bees, pollen or mites, allergies are on the rise. And the bad news doesn’t stop there. The only current therapy that treats their causes is allergen-specific immunotherapy — or allergy shots — which can cause severe side effects. Now, researchers report the development of a potentially better allergy shot that uses nanocarriers to address these unwanted issues.

A new article discusses how DNA molecules can be assembled into tailored and complex nanostructures, and further, how these structures can find uses in therapeutics and bionanotechnological applications. The researchers outline the superior properties of DNA nanostructures. Moreover, these DNA nanostructures provide new applications in molecular medicine, such as novel approaches in tackling cancer. Tailored DNA structures could find targeted cells and release their molecular payload selectively into the cells.

A detailed nano-mechanical study of mechanical degradation processes in silicon structures containing varying levels of lithium ions offers good news for researchers attempting to develop reliable next-generation rechargeable batteries using silicon-based electrodes.