Rice materials scientists create flat sandwich of sulfur, molybdenum and selenium

Like a sandwich with wheat on the bottom and rye on the top, Rice University scientists have cooked up a tasty new twist on two-dimensional materials.

The Rice laboratory of materials scientistJun Louhas made a semiconductingtransition-metal dichalcogenide(TMD) that starts as a monolayer ofmolybdenum diselenide. They then strip the top layer of the lattice and replace precisely half the selenium atoms with sulfur.

The new material they callJanussulfur molybdenum selenium (SMoSe) has a crystalline construction the researchers said can host an intrinsic electric field and that also shows promise for catalytic production of hydrogen.

The work is detailed this month in the American Chemical Society journalACS Nano.

The two-faced material is technically two-dimensional, but like molybdenum diselenide it consists of three stacked layers of atoms arranged in a grid. From the top, they look like hexagonal rings a lagraphene, but from any other angle, the grid is more like a nanoscalejungle gym.

Tight control of the conditions in a typicalchemical vapor depositionfurnace 800 degrees Celsius (1,872 degrees Fahrenheit) at atmospheric pressure allowed the sulfur to interact with only the top layer of selenium atoms and leave the bottom untouched, the researchers said. If the temperature drifts above 850, all the selenium is replaced.

Like the intercalation of many other molecules demonstrated to have the ability to diffuse into the layered materials, diffusion of gaseous sulfur molecules in between the layers of theseVan der Waalscrystals, as well as the space between them and the substrates, requires sufficient driving force, said Rice postdoctoral researcher Jing Zhang, co-lead author of the paper with graduate student Shuai Jia. And the driving force in our experiments is controlled by the reaction temperature.

Close examination showed the presence of sulfur gave the material a larger band gap than molybdenum diselenide, the researchers said.

This type of two-faced structure has long been predicted theoretically but very rarely realized in the 2-D research community, Lou said. The break of symmetry in the out-of-plane direction of 2-D TMDs could lead to many applications, such as a basal-plane active 2-D catalyst, robust piezoelectricity-enabled sensors and actuators at the 2-D limit.

He said preparation of the Janus material should be universal to layered materials with similar structures. It will be quite interesting to look at the properties of the Janus configuration of other 2-D materials, Lou said.

Co-authors of the paper are graduate students Weibing Chen and Zehua Jin and postdoctoral researcher Hua Guo of Rice; research scientist Iskandar Kholmanov and professor Li Shi, the Myron L. Begeman Fellow in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin; and graduate students Liang Dong and Dequan Er and Vivek Shenoy, a professor of materials science and engineering, of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics and of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Lou is a professor of materials science and nanoengineering.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Welch Foundation, the Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation supported the research.

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Two Faced 2D Material is a First at Rice - R & D Magazine

Machine-learning system for smoother streaming To combat the frustration of video buffering or pixelation, researchers at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed Pensieve, an artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning to pick different algorithms depending on network conditions thereby delivering a higher-quality streaming experience with less rebuffering than existing systems.

Studies show that users abandon video sessions if the quality is too low, leading to major losses in ad revenue for content providers. Sites constantly have to be looking for new ways to innovate, according to MIT Professor Mohammad Alizadeh, whose team created Pensieve.

Sites like YouTube use adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms to try to give users a more consistent viewing experience. At the same time, it saves bandwidth: People usually dont watch videos all the way through, and so, with literally 1 billion hours of video streamed every day, it would be a big waste of resources to buffer thousands of long videos for all users at all times.

In experiments, Pensieve could stream video with 10 to 30 percent less rebuffering than other approaches, and at levels that users rated 10 to 25 percent higher on key quality of experience metrics. (Source: MIT CSAIL)

The researchers pointed out that while ABR algorithms have generally gotten the job done, viewer expectations for streaming video keep inflating, and often arent met when sites like Netflix and YouTube have to make imperfect trade-offs between things like the quality of the video versus how often it has to rebuffer.

The Pensieve AI system was found to be able to stream video with 10 to 30 percent less rebuffering than other approaches, and at levels that users rated 10 to 25 percent higher on key quality of experience (QoE) metrics.

In experiments, Pensieve could stream video with 10 to 30 percent less rebuffering than other approaches, and at levels that users rated 10 to 25 percent higher on key quality of experience metrics. (Source: MIT CSAIL)

Pensieves neural network surveys the conditions of the users network in order to determine the appropriate bitrate for the situation. (Source: MIT)

Pensieve can also be customized based on a content providers priorities. For example, if a user on a subway is about to enter a dead zone, YouTube could turn down the bitrate so that it can load enough of the video that it wont have to rebuffer during the loss of network, the team said.

Mimicking human thought According to Purdue University researchers, a new computing technology called organismoids mimics some aspects of human thought by learning how to forget unimportant memories while retaining more vital ones.

Purdue postdoctoral research associate Fan Zuo, at left, and materials engineering professor Shriram Ramanathan, used a ceramic quantum material to create the technology. (Source: Purdue University)

Kaushik Roy, Purdue Universitys Edward G. Tiedemann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering explained, The human brain is capable of continuous lifelong learning, and it does this partially by forgetting some information that is not critical. I learn slowly, but I keep forgetting other things along the way, so there is a graceful degradation in my accuracy of detecting things that are old. What we are trying to do is mimic that behavior of the brain to a certain extent, to create computers that not only learn new information but that also learn what to forget.

Central to the research is a ceramic quantum material called samarium nickelate, which was used to create devices called organismoids. The work was performed by researchers at Purdue, Rutgers University, MIT, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

These devices possess certain characteristics of living beings and enable us to advance new learning algorithms that mimic some aspects of the human brain, Roy said. The results have far reaching implications for the fields of quantum materials as well as brain-inspired computing.

When exposed to hydrogen gas, the material undergoes a massive resistance change, as its crystal lattice is doped by hydrogen atoms. The material is said to breathe, expanding when hydrogen is added and contracting when the hydrogen is removed.

The main thing about the material is that when this breathes in hydrogen there is a spectacular quantum mechanical effect that allows the resistance to change by orders of magnitude. This is very unusual, and the effect is reversible because this dopant can be weakly attached to the lattice, so if you remove the hydrogen from the environment you can change the electrical resistance.

Organismoids might have applications in the emerging field of spintronics. Conventional computers use the presence and absence of an electric charge to represent ones and zeroes in a binary code needed to carry out computations. Spintronics, however, uses the spin state of electrons to represent ones and zeros, the team said. This could bring circuits that resemble biological neurons and synapses in a compact design not possible with CMOS circuits. Whereas it would take many CMOS devices to mimic a neuron or synapse, it might take only a single spintronic device. In future work, the researchers said they may demonstrate how to achieve habituation in an integrated circuit instead of exposing the material to hydrogen gas.

RNA nanodevices in living cells Synthetic biologists at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University are converting microbial cells into living devices that are able to perform useful tasks ranging from the production of drugs, fine chemicals and biofuels to detecting disease-causing agents and releasing therapeutic molecules inside the body.

To accomplish this, they said they fit cells with artificial molecular machinery that can sense stimuli such as toxins in the environment, metabolite levels or inflammatory signals. Much like electronic circuits, these synthetic biological circuits can process information and make logic-guided decisions. Unlike their electronic counterparts, however, biological circuits must be fabricated from the molecular components that cells can produce, and they must operate in the crowded and ever-changing environment within each cell.

So far, synthetic biological circuits can only sense a handful of signals, giving them an incomplete picture of conditions in the host cell. They are also built out of several moving parts in the form of different types of molecules, such as DNAs, RNAs, and proteins, that must find, bind and work together to sense and process signals. Identifying molecules that cooperate well with one another is difficult and makes development of new biological circuits a time-consuming and often unpredictable process.

The team at Wyss is now presenting an all-in-one solution that imbues a molecule of ribo nucleic acid or RNA with the capacity to sense multiple signals and make logical decisions to control protein production with high precision.

The studys approach resulted in a genetically encodable RNA nano-device that can perform an unprecedented 12-input logic operation to accurately regulate the expression of a fluorescent reporter protein in E. coli bacteria only when encountering a complex, user-prescribed profile of intra-cellular stimuli. Such programmable nano-devices may allow researchers to construct more sophisticated synthetic biological circuits, enabling them to analyze complex cellular environments efficiently and to respond accurately.

The teams approach evolved from its previous development of so-called Toehold Switches first published in 2014 which are programmable hairpin-like nano-structures made of RNA. In principle, RNA Toehold Switches can control the production of a specific protein: when a desired complementary trigger RNA, which can be part of the cells natural RNA repertoire, is present and binds to the toehold switch, the hairpin structure breaks open. Only then will the cells ribosomes get access to the RNA and produce the desired protein.

We wanted to take full advantage of the programmability of Toehold Switches and find a smart way to use them to expand the decision-making capabilities of living cells. Now with Ribocomputing Devices, we can couple protein production to specific combinations of many different input RNAs and only activate production when conditions allow it, said co-first and co-corresponding author Alexander Green, Ph.D. Green developed Toehold Switches with Yin and began the present study as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Yins team.

Illustration of an RNA-based ribocomputing device that makes logic-based decisions in living cells. The long gate RNA (blue) detects the binding of an input RNA (red). The ribosome (purple/mauve) reads the gate RNA to produce an output protein. (Source: Alexander Green / Arizona State University)

Green is now Assistant Professor at the Biodesign Institute and the School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University where he continued experiments with his graduate student and co-author Duo Ma.

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System Bits: Aug. 15 - SemiEngineering

Columbia researchers wired a single molecular cluster to gold electrodes to show that it exhibits a quantized and controllable flow of charge at room temperature. (Image courtesy of Bonnie Choi/Columbia University.)

A major goal in the field of molecular electronics, which aims to use single molecules as electronic components, is to make a device where a quantized, controllable flow of charge can be achieved at room temperature. A first step in this field is for researchers to demonstrate that single molecules can function as reproducible circuit elements such as transistors or diodes that can easily operate at room temperature.

A team led by Latha Venkataraman, professor of applied physics and chemistry at Columbia Engineering and Xavier Roy, assistant professor of chemistry, have published a study inNature Nanotechnologythat is the first to reproducibly demonstrate current blockadethe ability to switch a device from the insulating to the conducting state where charge is added and removed one electron at a timeusing atomically precise molecular clusters at room temperature.

Bonnie Choi, a graduate student in the Roy group and co-lead author of the work, created a single cluster of geometrically ordered atoms with an inorganic core made of just 14 atomsresulting in a diameter of approximately 0.5 nanometersand positioned linkers that wired the core to two gold electrodes, much as a resistor is soldered to two metal electrodes to form a macroscopic electrical circuit.

The researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope technique that they have pioneered to make junctions comprising a single cluster connected to the two gold electrodes, which enabled them to characterize its electrical response as they varied the applied bias voltage. The technique allows them to fabricate and measure thousands of junctions with reproducible transport characteristics.

"We found that these clusters can perform very well as room-temperature nanoscale diodes whose electrical response we can tailor by changing their chemical composition," said Venkataraman.

"Theoretically, a single atom is the smallest limit, but single-atom devices cannot be fabricated and stabilized at room temperature, Venkataraman added. With these molecular clusters, we have complete control over their structure with atomic precision and can change the elemental composition and structure in a controllable manner to elicit certain electrical response."

A number of studies have used quantum dots to produce the similar effects but because the dots are much larger and not uniform in size, due to the nature of their synthesis, the results have not been reproducible. The Venkataraman-Roy team worked with smaller inorganic molecular clusters that were identical in shape and size, so they knew exactlydown to the atomic scalewhat they were measuring.

"Most of the other studies created single-molecule devices that functioned as single-electron transistors at four degrees Kelvin, but for any real-world application, these devices need to work at room temperature. And ours do," said Giacomo Lovat, a postdoctoral researcher and co-lead author of the paper. "We've built a molecular-scale transistor with multiple states and functionalities, in which we have control over the precise amount of charge that flows through. It's fascinating to see that simple chemical changes within a molecule, can have a profound influence on the electronic structure of molecules, leading to different electrical properties."

Top: molecular structure of the Co6S8core as determined by SCXRD (blue, cobalt; yellow, sulfur). The core is a magnetic singlet (S=0) in the neutral state, a doublet (S=) in the 1+ state and a triplet (S=1) in the 2+ state. Bottom: structure of the molecular connector L used to wire the cluster into a junction. (Image courtesy of Bonnie Choi/Columbia University.)

Particularly interesting was the fact that these junctions were characterized by a "sequential" mode of charge flow; each electron transiting through a cluster junction stopped on the cluster for a while.

Usually, in small-molecule junctions, electrons "pushed" through the junction by the applied bias make the leap continuously, from one electrode into the other, so that the number of electrons on the molecule at each instant of time is not well-defined.

"We say the cluster becomes 'charged' since, for a short time interval before the transiting electron jumps off into the other metal electrode, it stores one extra charge," said Roy. "Such sequential, or discrete, conduction mode is due to the cluster's peculiar electronic structure that confines electrons in strongly localized orbitals.

These orbitals also account for the observed 'current blockade' regime when a low bias voltage is applied to a cluster junction, Roy continued. The current drops to a very small value at low voltage as electrons in the metal contact don't have enough energy to occupy one of the cluster orbitals. As the voltage is increased, the first cluster orbital that becomes energetically accessible opens up a viable route for electrons that can now jump on and off the cluster, resulting in consecutive 'charging' and 'discharging' events. The blockade is lifted, and current starts flowing across the junction."

The researchers tailored the clusters to explore the impact of compositional change on the clusters' electrical response and plan to build upon their initial study. They will design improved cluster systems with better electrical performances (e.g. higher on/off current ratio, different accessible states), and increase the number of atoms in the cluster core while maintaining the atomic precision and uniformity of the compound.

This would increase the number of energy levels, each corresponding to a certain electron orbit that they can access with their voltage window. Increasing the energy levels would impact the on/off ratio of the device, perhaps also decreasing the power needed for switching on the device if more energy levels become accessible for transiting electrons at low bias voltages.

"Most single-molecule transport investigations have been performed on simple organic molecules because they are easier to work with," Venkataraman noted. "Our collaborative effort here through the Columbia Nano Initiative bridges chemistry and physics, enabling us to experiment with new compounds, such as these molecular clusters, that may not only be more synthetically challenging, but also more interesting as electrical components."

For more transistor developments, check out this Transistor Controlled By Heat Signals.

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Single Molecules Act as Reproducible Transistors at Room Temperature - ENGINEERING.com

There is an emerging biotech movement that promises to transform medical science and radically overhaul the arduous process of bringing new drugs, foods and cosmetics to market.

Teams of academic and government researchers and a handful of start-ups have created human organs-on-chips miniaturized versions of livers, lungs, kidneys, intestines and other vital innards. The nascent science, now being evaluated by the FDA, offers a less time-consuming and costly way to test drugs, foods, cosmetics and dietary supplements for efficacy and toxicity, with the goal of vastly improving upon traditional cell culture and animal-based methods.

It sounds futuristic, but it's not sci-fi. Each organ-on-a-chip, roughly the size of a AA battery, is made from a flexible, translucent polymer. Inside are tiny tubes, each less than a millimeter in diameter, lined with living human cells extracted from a particular organ. When nutrients, air, blood and test compounds, such as experimental drugs or cosmetic ingredients, are pumped through the tubes, the cells replicate some of the key functions of that organ, just as they do in the body.

More from Modern Medicine: The cost of America's most expensive prescription drugs Huge ER bills leave patients in shockScientists treat diabetes, obesity with genetically altered skin grafts

Data published by FDAReview.org, a project of the nonpartisan Independent Institute, indicates that only about 1 in 10 drugs that enter clinical trials ultimately win Food and Drug Administration approval. According to the California Biomedical Research Association, it takes an average of 12 years for a drug to travel from preclinical research to the patient, at an average cost of $359 million. Do the math on the 90 percent of those drugs that don't make it and you can see the need for a revolutionary new approach.

"The current tools don't always give us the complete picture," said Geraldine Hamilton, president and chief scientific officer at Boston-based Emulate, a three-year-old private spin-off of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, a pioneer of organs-on-chips that has a multiyear R&D agreement with the FDA.

"When you put cells in a [petri] dish, they're in a static environment and don't interact with each other in the same way as they do in the body," she said, referring to a common preclinical first step. Tests on animal systems, Hamilton added, often do not accurately translate to those in humans, because of dissimilarities in our respective biologies.

Emulate has combined design, engineering and biology to recreate a dynamic microenvironment housed within its organ chips. "Think of the chip like a home away from home for an organ," Hamilton explained. "We can control the way cells interact with each other by applying relevant mechanical forces." For example, Emulate's lung chip can simulate breathing in and out. Blood and airflow are reproduced in the chip's tiny channels.

Besides increasing the speed and accuracy of drug testing, organs-on-chips present a range of game-changing potentials. They can be embedded with a particular disease, such as cancer or asthma, and provide researchers with a cost-effective mini laboratory for introducing immune cells or drugs and observing reactions in real time. It's also possible to grow separate chips of a human gut, a cow gut and an insect gut and then compare how each species' intestines react to a pesticide, an implausible experiment using those actual animals. Further down the road are you-on-a-chip models containing stem cells, a key component in so-called personalized medicine, and an entire human-on-a-chip, linking every organ together to study holistic interactions between cells and tissues.

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It sounds futuristic, but it's not sci-fi: Human organs-on-a-chip - CNBC

Self-collapse lithography The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has developed a technology called self-collapse lithography.

The technology, reported in the journal Nano Letters, resembles the combination of nanoimprint, selective removal and a chemical lift-off process. More specifically, though, the technology provides insights into patterning using a chemical lift-off lithography technique.

In the flow, researchers first devised a substrate. The substrate is patterned with conventional lithography techniques at feature sizes blow 30nm, according to UCLA. Then, a chemical composition is applied on the substrate. The chemical composition self assembles into a pattern formed by the original lithographic technique. This is called a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) process.

Following those events, an elastomeric stamp is applied to the SAM layer. The stamp is based on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material. The roof of the stamp collapses on the surface, according to UCLA. Then, the stamp is raised, which, in turn, selectively removes various SAM molecules on the surface. This is sometimes called a chemical lift-off process.

With the technology, researchers devised patterns from 2m to sub-30nm, according to UCLA. This is done by decreasing the stamp relief heights from 1m to 50nm, according to researchers

Molecular chips Columbia University has made a breakthrough in the field of molecular electronics.

Using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) technique, researchers have deposited and formed a single cluster of geometrically ordered atoms. The cluster is made up of 14 atoms, which has a diameter of about 0.5nm.

Then, they wired the core atoms to two gold electrodes. This enabled researchers to characterize its electrical response by applying a voltage on the structure.

Columbia researchers wired a single molecular cluster to gold electrodes. (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Choi/Columbia University)

This, in turn, enabled researchers to demonstrate the so-called current blockade effect. This is the ability to switch a device from the insulating to the conducting state. We found that these clusters can perform very well as room-temperature nanoscale diodes whose electrical response we can tailor by changing their chemical composition, said Latha Venkataraman, a professor of applied physics and chemistry at Columbia. Theoretically, a single atom is the smallest limit, but single-atom devices cannot be fabricated and stabilized at room temperature. With these molecular clusters, we have complete control over their structure with atomic precision and can change the elemental composition and structure in a controllable manner to elicit certain electrical response.

Giacomo Lovat, a postdoctoral researcher, added: Most of the other studies created single-molecule devices that functioned as single-electron transistors at four degrees Kelvin, but for any real-world application, these devices need to work at room temperature. And ours do. Weve built a molecular-scale transistor with multiple states and functionalities, in which we have control over the precise amount of charge that flows through. Its fascinating to see that simple chemical changes within a molecule, can have a profound influence on the electronic structure of molecules, leading to different electrical properties.

Select dep blog A group has launched a new blog that provides the latest research into the world of atomic-level processing for IC manufacturing.

The site, called Atomic Limits, provides the latest on selective deposition, atomic layer etch (ALE) and other subjects. In one of its latest postings, the site reported the latest finding from the recent 2nd Area Selective Deposition workshop (ASD2017).

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Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 15 - SemiEngineering

August 15, 2017 Credit: University of Nottingham

As electronic devices continue to shrink to meet the demand for pocket sized and wearable technology, scientists are working to develop the minute components that make them work and a team at the University of Nottingham have developed a new approach for the preparation of a coaxial cable around 50,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair.

This miniscule wire comprising a carbon nanotube located inside a boron nitride nanotube can be produced on a preparative scale and may represent an important step towards the miniaturisation of electronic devices.

The multi-national team of experts from the UK and Hungary, was jointly led by Andrei Khlobystov, a Professor of Nanomaterials and Director of the University of Nottingham's Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre (nmRC), and Graham Rance, a Research Fellow in Nanomaterials Characterisation at the nmRC, who possess complementary expertise in the synthesis and characterisation of carbon nanomaterials. The study entitled 'Growth of carbon nanotubes inside boron nitride nanotubes by coalescence of fullerenes: toward the world's smallest coaxial cable' has been published in Small Methods, a new journal focused on cutting-edge developments in experimental approaches to the production of nano- and microscale materials.

Coaxial cables essential for the safe transport of electric current that power modern-day devices are typically made up of an inner conductor (usually copper) surrounded by an insulating plastic jacket. However, as consumer demand for smaller electronic devices increases, the limit to which these current materials can be used is rapidly being reached. Copper, for instance, is known to lose its high conductivity when scaled down to very small sizes and thus new materials are becomingly increasingly important.

Miniature wires

Carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight and, most importantly, highly electrically conducting miniature wires, typically 1-5 nanometres in diameter, but up to centimetres in length, and are ideal for the core of an insulated nanoscale cable. Boron nitride nanotubes, whilst structurally similar to carbon nanotubes, by comparison are electrically insulating, perfect for surrounding the conducting core. The challenge was to arrange these two nanoscale materials one inside the other in the required co-axial geometry. This research has shown that by placing small, football-shaped, carbon-rich molecules (C60-fullerenes) inside boron nitride nanotubes and heating the resultant materials to very high temperatures (above 1000 oC), the fullerenes spontaneously transform into carbon nanotubes, leading to the formation of an electrically conducting carbon nanotube inside an electrically insulating boron nitride nanotube the world's smallest coaxial cable.

Professor Khlobystov said: "Currently most modern technologies are heavily dependent on the use of metals, some of which are becoming increasingly rare and costly. Therefore, there is a need to work towards replacing metals with more abundant and sustainable elements, such as carbon and other light elements. Our study demonstrates the principle of how nanoscale cables with conducting cores and insulating shells can be fabricated from simple ingredients. The next challenge is to test their electrical and mechanical properties to determine the scope of these materials for technological applications."

Broad ranging applications

Dr Rance said: "Our approach for the preparation of a miniaturised coaxial cable further explores the ability of hollow nanoscale tubules to control the formation of new and interesting nanostructures inside the inner cavity, some that cannot be prepared in any other way. On a fundamental level, this research is helping us to understand the behaviour of molecules when confined to very small spaces; however, on a more practical level, we anticipate this strategy will lead to the production of novel materials, with potentially broad ranging applications, from nanoscale electronics, to catalytic materials and in sensing devices."

The research was carried out by experts in synthetic and analytical chemistry, materials science and electron microscopy and builds the concept of carbon nano test tubes developed by Prof. Khlobystov (World's tiniest test tubes, Guinness Book of World Records 2005), where the nanotube acts simultaneously as a container for molecules and a reaction vessel for chemical transformations. His pioneering work on carbon nano-containers and nano-reactors continues to lead to new ways of directing molecular assembly and studying chemical reactions.

Professor Katalin Kamaras, Research Professor and expert in vibrational spectroscopy collaborated on the research, with her team working at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. Professor Kamaras said: "My research group has been working on the spectroscopy of carbon nanostructures for a long time. Spectroscopy yields knowledge on the internal dynamics of the encapsulated molecules and can follow their transformations based on their physical properties. Through our collaboration with Prof. Khlobystov it became possible to "see" the structures we had only indirect information on. This joint research has the potential of opening new possibilities in both fundamental and applied materials science."

The UK research was performed at the state of the art Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre (nmRC). The vision of the centre is to become a world-leading facility for the characterisation and analysis of molecular materials at the nano and microscale. With a unique suite of 20 major instruments the centre is staffed by experts with medical, scientific and engineering backgrounds. They are currently working on a wide range of research from cancer cells and 3-D printed medical implants to semiconductors and solar cells.

Explore further: Chemical reactions 'filmed' at the single-molecule level

More information: Kate E. Walker et al. Growth of Carbon Nanotubes inside Boron Nitride Nanotubes by Coalescence of Fullerenes: Toward the World's Smallest Coaxial Cable, Small Methods (2017). DOI: 10.1002/smtd.201700184

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Reactions in tiny containerstowards the world's smallest coaxial cable - Phys.Org