A mechanical metamaterial made from a DNA hydrogel.

Lee, Jong Bum,Peng, Songming,Yang, Dayong,Roh, Young Hoon,Funabashi, Hisakage,Park, Nokyoung,Rice, Edward J,Chen, Liwei,Long, Rong,Wu, Mingming,Luo, Dan Nature Pub. Group 2012 Nature nanotechnology Vol.7 No.12

<P>Metamaterials are artificial substances that are structurally engineered to have properties not typically found in nature. To date, almost all metamaterials have been made from inorganic materials such as silicon and copper, which have unusual electromagnetic or acoustic properties that allow them to be used, for example, as invisible cloaks, superlenses or super absorbers for sound. Here, we show that metamaterials with unusual mechanical properties can be prepared using DNA as a building block. We used a polymerase enzyme to elongate DNA chains and weave them non-covalently into a hydrogel. The resulting material, which we term a meta-hydrogel, has liquid-like properties when taken out of water and solid-like properties when in water. Moreover, upon the addition of water, and after complete deformation, the hydrogel can be made to return to its original shape. The meta-hydrogel has a hierarchical internal structure and, as an example of its potential applications, we use it to create an electric circuit that uses water as a switch.</P>

Self-replication of DNA rings.

Kim, Junghoon,Lee, Junwye,Hamada, Shogo,Murata, Satoshi,Ha Park, Sung Nature Pub. Group 2015 Nature nanotechnology Vol.10 No.6

<P>Biology provides numerous examples of self-replicating machines, but artificially engineering such complex systems remains a formidable challenge. In particular, although simple artificial self-replicating systems including wooden blocks, magnetic systems, modular robots and synthetic molecular systems have been devised, such kinematic self-replicators are rare compared with examples of theoretical cellular self-replication. One of the principal reasons for this is the amount of complexity that arises when you try to incorporate self-replication into a physical medium. In this regard, DNA is a prime candidate material for constructing self-replicating systems due to its ability to self-assemble through molecular recognition. Here, we show that DNA T-motifs, which self-assemble into ring structures, can be designed to self-replicate through toehold-mediated strand displacement reactions. The inherent design of these rings allows the population dynamics of the systems to be controlled. We also analyse the replication scheme within a universal framework of self-replication and derive a quantitative metric of the self-replicability of the rings.</P>

Direct seawater desalination by ion concentration polarization.

Kim, Sung Jae,Ko, Sung Hee,Kang, Kwan Hyoung,Han, Jongyoon Nature Pub. Group 2010 Nature nanotechnology Vol.5 No.4

<P>A shortage of fresh water is one of the acute challenges facing the world today. An energy-efficient approach to converting sea water into fresh water could be of substantial benefit, but current desalination methods require high power consumption and operating costs or large-scale infrastructures, which make them difficult to implement in resource-limited settings or in disaster scenarios. Here, we report a process for converting sea water (salinity approximately 500 mM or approximately 30,000 mg l(-1)) to fresh water (salinity <10 mM or <600 mg l(-1)) in which a continuous stream of sea water is divided into desalted and concentrated streams by ion concentration polarization, a phenomenon that occurs when an ion current is passed through ion-selective membranes. During operation, both salts and larger particles (cells, viruses and microorganisms) are pushed away from the membrane (a nanochannel or nanoporous membrane), which significantly reduces the possibility of membrane fouling and salt accumulation, thus avoiding two problems that plague other membrane filtration methods. To implement this approach, a simple microfluidic device was fabricated and shown to be capable of continuous desalination of sea water (approximately 99% salt rejection at 50% recovery rate) at a power consumption of less than 3.5 Wh l(-1), which is comparable to current state-of-the-art systems. Rather than competing with larger desalination plants, the method could be used to make small- or medium-scale systems, with the possibility of battery-powered operation.</P>

Highly stretchable electric circuits from a composite material of silver nanoparticles and elastomeric fibres.

Park, Minwoo,Im, Jungkyun,Shin, Minkwan,Min, Yuho,Park, Jaeyoon,Cho, Heesook,Park, Soojin,Shim, Mun-Bo,Jeon, Sanghun,Chung, Dae-Young,Bae, Jihyun,Park, Jongjin,Jeong, Unyong,Kim, Kinam Nature Pub. Group 2012 Nature nanotechnology Vol.7 No.12

<P>Conductive electrodes and electric circuits that can remain active and electrically stable under large mechanical deformations are highly desirable for applications such as flexible displays, field-effect transistors, energy-related devices, smart clothing and actuators. However, high conductivity and stretchability seem to be mutually exclusive parameters. The most promising solution to this problem has been to use one-dimensional nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes and metal nanowires coated on a stretchable fabric, metal stripes with a wavy geometry, composite elastomers embedding conductive fillers and interpenetrating networks of a liquid metal and rubber. At present, the conductivity values at large strains remain too low to satisfy requirements for practical applications. Moreover, the ability to make arbitrary patterns over large areas is also desirable. Here, we introduce a conductive composite mat of silver nanoparticles and rubber fibres that allows the formation of highly stretchable circuits through a fabrication process that is compatible with any substrate and scalable for large-area applications. A silver nanoparticle precursor is absorbed in electrospun poly (styrene-block-butadiene-block-styrene) (SBS) rubber fibres and then converted into silver nanoparticles directly in the fibre mat. Percolation of the silver nanoparticles inside the fibres leads to a high bulk conductivity, which is preserved at large deformations (σ???2,200?S?cm(-1) at 100% strain for a 150-?m-thick mat). We design electric circuits directly on the electrospun fibre mat by nozzle printing, inkjet printing and spray printing of the precursor solution and fabricate a highly stretchable antenna, a strain sensor and a highly stretchable light-emitting diode as examples of applications.</P>

Microwave-driven coherent operation of a semiconductor quantum dot charge qubit.

Kim, Dohun,Ward, D R,Simmons, C B,Gamble, John King,Blume-Kohout, Robin,Nielsen, Erik,Savage, D E,Lagally, M G,Friesen, Mark,Coppersmith, S N,Eriksson, M A Nature Pub. Group 2015 Nature nanotechnology Vol.10 No.3

<P>An intuitive realization of a qubit is an electron charge at two well-defined positions of a double quantum dot. This qubit is simple and has the potential for high-speed operation because of its strong coupling to electric fields. However, charge noise also couples strongly to this qubit, resulting in rapid dephasing at all but one special operating point called the 'sweet spot'. In previous studies d.c. voltage pulses have been used to manipulate semiconductor charge qubits but did not achieve high-fidelity control, because d.c. gating requires excursions away from the sweet spot. Here, by using resonant a.c. microwave driving we achieve fast (greater than gigahertz) and universal single qubit rotations of a semiconductor charge qubit. The Z-axis rotations of the qubit are well protected at the sweet spot, and we demonstrate the same protection for rotations about arbitrary axes in the X-Y plane of the qubit Bloch sphere. We characterize the qubit operation using two tomographic approaches: standard process tomography and gate set tomography. Both methods consistently yield process fidelities greater than 86% with respect to a universal set of unitary single-qubit operations.</P>

Gate-tunable phase transitions in thin flakes of 1T-TaS2.

Yu, Yijun,Yang, Fangyuan,Lu, Xiu Fang,Yan, Ya Jun,Cho, Yong-Heum,Ma, Liguo,Niu, Xiaohai,Kim, Sejoong,Son, Young-Woo,Feng, Donglai,Li, Shiyan,Cheong, Sang-Wook,Chen, Xian Hui,Zhang, Yuanbo Nature Pub. Group 2015 Nature nanotechnology Vol.10 No.3

<P>The ability to tune material properties using gating by electric fields is at the heart of modern electronic technology. It is also a driving force behind recent advances in two-dimensional systems, such as the observation of gate electric-field-induced superconductivity and metal-insulator transitions. Here, we describe an ionic field-effect transistor (termed an iFET), in which gate-controlled Li ion intercalation modulates the material properties of layered crystals of 1T-TaS2. The strong charge doping induced by the tunable ion intercalation alters the energetics of various charge-ordered states in 1T-TaS2 and produces a series of phase transitions in thin-flake samples with reduced dimensionality. We find that the charge-density wave states in 1T-TaS2 collapse in the two-dimensional limit at critical thicknesses. Meanwhile, at low temperatures, the ionic gating induces multiple phase transitions from Mott-insulator to metal in 1T-TaS2 thin flakes, with five orders of magnitude modulation in resistance, and superconductivity emerges in a textured charge-density wave state induced by ionic gating. Our method of gate-controlled intercalation opens up possibilities in searching for novel states of matter in the extreme charge-carrier-concentration limit.</P>

Structural engineering of nanoporous anodic aluminium oxide by pulse anodization of aluminium.

Lee, Woo,Schwirn, Kathrin,Steinhart, Martin,Pippel, Eckhard,Scholz, Roland,Gö,sele, Ulrich Nature Pub. Group 2008 Nature nanotechnology Vol.3 No.4

<P>Nanoporous anodic aluminium oxide has traditionally been made in one of two ways: mild anodization or hard anodization. The first method produces self-ordered pore structures, but it is slow and only works for a narrow range of processing conditions; the second method, which is widely used in the aluminium industry, is faster, but it produces films with disordered pore structures. Here we report a novel approach termed 'pulse anodization' that combines the advantages of the mild and hard anodization processes. By designing the pulse sequences it is possible to control both the composition and pore structure of the anodic aluminium oxide films while maintaining high throughput. We use pulse anodization to delaminate a single as-prepared anodic film into a stack of well-defined nanoporous alumina membrane sheets, and also to fabricate novel three-dimensional nanostructures.</P>

Multi-terminal transport measurements of MoS2 using a van der Waals heterostructure device platform.

Cui, Xu,Lee, Gwan-Hyoung,Kim, Young Duck,Arefe, Ghidewon,Huang, Pinshane Y,Lee, Chul-Ho,Chenet, Daniel A,Zhang, Xian,Wang, Lei,Ye, Fan,Pizzocchero, Filippo,Jessen, Bjarke S,Watanabe, Kenji,Taniguchi, Nature Pub. Group 2015 Nature nanotechnology Vol.10 No.6

<P>Atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors such as MoS2 hold great promise for electrical, optical and mechanical devices and display novel physical phenomena. However, the electron mobility of mono- and few-layer MoS2 has so far been substantially below theoretically predicted limits, which has hampered efforts to observe its intrinsic quantum transport behaviours. Potential sources of disorder and scattering include defects such as sulphur vacancies in the MoS2 itself as well as extrinsic sources such as charged impurities and remote optical phonons from oxide dielectrics. To reduce extrinsic scattering, we have developed here a van der Waals heterostructure device platform where MoS2 layers are fully encapsulated within hexagonal boron nitride and electrically contacted in a multi-terminal geometry using gate-tunable graphene electrodes. Magneto-transport measurements show dramatic improvements in performance, including a record-high Hall mobility reaching 34,000???cm(2)???V(-1)???s(-1) for six-layer MoS2 at low temperature, confirming that low-temperature performance in previous studies was limited by extrinsic interfacial impurities rather than bulk defects in the MoS2. We also observed Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in high-mobility monolayer and few-layer MoS2. Modelling of potential scattering sources and quantum lifetime analysis indicate that a combination of short-range and long-range interfacial scattering limits the low-temperature mobility of MoS2.</P>

A sub-1-volt nanoelectromechanical switching device.

Lee, Jeong Oen,Song, Yong-Ha,Kim, Min-Wu,Kang, Min-Ho,Oh, Jae-Sub,Yang, Hyun-Ho,Yoon, Jun-Bo Nature Pub. Group 2013 Nature nanotechnology Vol.8 No.1

<P>Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) switches have received widespread attention as promising candidates in the drive to surmount the physical limitations currently faced by complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. The NEM switch has demonstrated superior characteristics including quasi-zero leakage behaviour, excellent density capability and operation in harsh environments. However, an unacceptably high operating voltage (4-20 V) has posed a major obstacle in the practical use of the NEM switch in low-power integrated circuits. To utilize the NEM switch widely as a core device component in ultralow power applications, the operation voltage needs to be reduced to 1 V or below. However, sub-1 V actuation has not yet been demonstrated because of fabrication difficulties and irreversible switching failure caused by surface adhesion. Here, we report the sub-1 V operation of a NEM switch through the introduction of a novel pipe clip device structure and an effective air gap fabrication technique. This achievement is primarily attributed to the incorporation of a 4-nm-thick air gap, which is the smallest reported so far for a NEM switch generated using a 'top-down' approach. Our structure and process can potentially be utilized in various nanogap-related applications, including NEM switch-based ultralow-power integrated circuits, NEM resonators, nanogap electrodes for scientific research and sensors.</P>