Reviews & Analysis

This PrimeView highlights the experimental workflow of macromolecular crystallography - a tool that uses x-ray radiation to determine the electronic structure of biomolecules and their complexes.

This Primer offers a practical and rational introduction to macromolecular crystallography, whether to engage directly with or to critically assess results, with a focus on understanding the diffraction data, solving the phase problem, building and refining the atomic model, and interpreting the resulting atomic structure.

This PrimeView highlights the capabilities of laser-driven ultrafast transmission electron microscopy, with femtosecond resolution, in materials science, condensed matter and nanophotonics.

Laser-driven ultrafast tranmission electron microscopy (UTEM) approaches such as stroboscopic UTEM enable the study of ultrafast reversible processes at time resolutions at the femtosecond scale and beyond. This Primer focuses on stroboscopic UTEM, describing its experimental set-up and variants, and covers the various applications of this technique in condensed matter physics, including imaging structural dynamics, photo-induced near-field electron microscopy, attosecond-scale imaging, dark-field imaging and beyond.

Flow biocatalysis uses enzymes in continuous flow reactors to efficiently scale biocatalytic reactions. This PrimeView highlights the different reactor types and example uses of flow biocatalysis.

This Primer highlights the key principles and recent advancements of flow biocatalysis, covering essential reactor designs, immobilization strategies and analytics. Practical industrial examples and guidelines for reproducibility are emphasized, providing newcomers and experts with actionable insights to design, optimize and effectively implement continuous biocatalytic processes.

This PrimeView highlights the metal-organic chemical vapour deposition process for forming 2-dimensional materials from gaseous precursors.

This Primer explores metal–organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) as a transformative technique for synthesizing wafer-scale 2D dichalcogenides. The MOCVD apparatus, the growth mechanism, process conditions, current applications across next-generation 3D integration, photonics, optoelectronics, flexible electronics and the future potential of MOCVD are discussed.

This PrimeView highlights time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR), a pump-probe technique for measuring heat transfer in materials. The experimental set-up is modular and can accommodate a variety of TDTR experiments as illustrated in this PrimeView.

This Primer provides a comprehensive road map into the experimental design, theory, data collection and interpretation of time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) experiments and variants for measuring the thermal properties of materials. The applications of TDTR are discussed, along with its inherent limitations, and future research directions for nanoscale thermal property measurements are presented.

This PrimeView highlights the setup of an amplitude-based kelvin probe force microscope, covers fundamental considerations for data analysis and reproducibility, and describes the various applications of KPFM setups.

Kelvin probe force microscopy is an extension of atomic force microscopy used to measure electrical properties of materials such as conductive and semiconductive samples, including surface potential, work functions and surface charge. These are retrieved at the same time as topographical information.

This PrimeView highlights how diversity oriented clicking is used to generate lead compounds through screening a wide variety of molecules with different clicked groups and thus different 3D structures and chemistries.

Diversity oriented clicking (DOC) is an approach for creating a diverse range of molecules from click chemistry-reactive connective hubs. This Primer by Wang et al. covers the concepts behind DOC, the hubs and click chemistries available for DOC strategies, and the application of DOC-generated structures with a focus on the generation of molecular probes and bioactive molecules for drug discovery.

This PrimeView highlights the application of surface-plasmon-resonance-based sensors for sensing clinical markers - in this case, antibodies - in biofluid.

Surface plasmon resonance sensing enables the label-free detection of molecular interactions at metal surfaces and highly sensitive measurements of film thickness. Refractive index changes caused by changes in the environment around a metal–dielectric interface cause variations in the interface optical response, which enable highly sensitive and time-resolved measurements.

This PrimeView highlights the core concepts behind the manipulation of particles using acoustic tweezers.

Acoustic tweezers use ultrasound waves for non-contact manipulation of particles and cells, offering high biocompatibility and safe handling of samples. Their various configurations enhance functionality across scales, granting a great versatility, whereas addressing current reproducibility and technological limitations will promote wider applications in biomedical fields and precision medicine.

This PrimeView highlights the modular design of flow chemistry for high-throughput synthesis. Using tubing, unions, in-line reactors, and other customizable components, this method increases the surface area available for reactions compared to batch setups.

Flow chemistry is a synthesis technique that uses pumps, tubing and connectors to control reactions spatially rather than temporally. This spatial control enables faster reaction times, better temperature regulation and higher yields over traditional batch processes, making it advantageous for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and advanced materials.