The measurement of transverse currents through nanopores holds great promise for rapid DNA sequencing, however, the technology is error prone. In this work, a new procedure is developed to overcome the intrinsic structural noise by making use of correlations of currents between neighboring bases.

The measurement of transverse currents through nanopores holds great promise for rapid DNA sequencing, however, the technology is error prone. In this work, a new procedure is developed to overcome the intrinsic structural noise by making use of correlations of currents between neighboring bases.

Organic vapor phase deposition (OVPD) is important in the manufacture of thin films used in advanced optoelectronic devices. New analysis and measurement of the properties of the boundary layer in OVPD finds that the layer extends unexpectedly far from the substrate, providing insights into mechanisms governing the uniformity and morphology of deposited layers.

The alignment of liquid crystals (LCs) is exquisitely sensitive to lipids and proteins at interfaces, making LCs strong candidates for biosensors. This work shows that the quantification of LC alignment can be substantially improved by illuminating LC sensors using circular, rather than linear, crossed polarizers, producing unparalleled detection sensitivity of surface chemicals.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are electromagnetic excitations recently found to enable ultracompact quantum circuitry. For the first time, two indistinguishable SPPs are produced and made to interfere, demonstrating conclusively that they behave as bosons and opening up new opportunities for controlling quantum states.

Scientists combine metals and ferrites to construct metamaterial particles that transform electric and magnetic fields in a controllable manner, producing nonreciprocal light scattering and other counterintuitive properties. These materials could be used in future exotic applications such as perfect electromagnetic isolators or thin-sheet phase shifters.

Single-crystal organic field effect transistors (OFETs) have been fabricated that exhibit an unprecedentedly sharp turn-on behavior which exceeds the performance of the most advanced crystalline silicon transistors. These OFETs are essentially trap-free and pave the way for studies of the intrinsic charge transport properties in these molecular crystals.

Semiconductors known as highly mismatched alloys (HMAs) have unique properties that make them useful in the fabrication of intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs). Now a theoretical and experimental study of GaNPAs with ~40% phosphorus and up to 2% nitrogen finds that this HMA has an electronic band structure well suited for IBSC applications.

Chalcogenide glasses can undergo photoinduced transformation, which makes them invaluable for applications such as rewritable compact disks and photoreceptor technologies. A study of amorphous Se, in which two coexisting photoexcitation pathways generate defect states in the band gap, finds that only one of the pathways can trigger bond rearrangement leading to structural transformation.