Browse Articles | Nature Nanotechnology

Why plastic recycling stalls

Companies are scaling up advanced recycling technologies that could expand capacity, but experts think policies that level the economic playing field are currently the bottleneck.

Portable hand-powered nanocatalysis for water disinfection

A hand-rotation-powered, nanomaterial-enabled disinfection system generates reactive oxygen species that rapidly disinfect a wide range of pathogens by leveraging mechanically induced interfacial electric fields. This electricity-free operation, having high efficiency, safety and long-lasting microbial protection, offers a robust, portable solution for clean-water access in disaster situations and in environments where the electricity grid is unavailable.

• In-Yong Suh
• Young-Jun Kim
• Sang-Woo Kim

Unlocking silicon’s hidden talent for spin quantum photonics

By harnessing the hyperfine coupling to the hydrogen nuclear spin and a nearby ²⁹Si nuclear spin, a T-centre in silicon forms a combined quantum register and a spin–photon interface that is operational in the telecommunications original band.

• Elizaveta Semenova
• Alexander Huck

Sb-contacted MoS₂ flash memory for analogue in-memory searches

An analogue memory built from a two-dimensional material with antimony contacts enables very high, energy-efficient in-memory searches and k-nearest-neighbour classification, offering a scalable, low-power hardware platform for real-time edge artificial intelligence applications.

• Guoyun Gao
• Bo Wen
• Can Li

Sustainable functional ceramics

This Review establishes a roadmap to improve the sustainability of functional ceramics through a holistic approach that combines low-energy and low-CO₂ production methods, recycling strategies and supportive policy frameworks.

• Steffen Weinmann
• Lucie Quincke
• Jennifer L. M. Rupp

Cell-free immuno-profiling on a genetically programmed biochip

A microfluidic-free platform of miniaturized compartments displays on-chip-synthesized antigen gradients for quantitative epitope mapping of monoclonal antibodies and profiling of human sera and of human receptor–viral antigen interactions.

• Aurore Dupin
• Ohad Vonshak
• Roy H. Bar-Ziv

Band-hybridized selenium contact for p-type semiconductors

A band-hybridized selenium contact is developed for nanoscale p-type field-effect transistors (WSe₂, black phosphorus and carbon nanotubes), achieving a low contact resistance through a scalable fabrication process.

• Cong Wang
• Jianmiao Guo
• Yang Chai