Techniques and instrumentation articles from across Nature Portfolio

Glycan atlassing is a method for the detection of the spatial organization of cell-surface glycosylation patterns at nanoscale. It shows that such patterns reflect the functional state of the cell, providing direct evidence that the cell-surface glycome encodes biological information via its spatial organization.

Real-time operando scattering and spectroscopy uncover how controlled disorder in sulfurized polyacrylonitrile stabilizes short sulfur chains, suppresses polysulfide loss and enables highly reversible lithium–sulfur batteries.

A DNA-tethered force-sensing platform delivers calibrated piconewton forces directly to Piezo1, revealing an activation threshold of about 15 pN independent of membrane tension, enabling precise, localized probing of mechanotransduction.

Transient absorption spectroscopy is a pump–probe method used to investigate light-induced dynamics. In this Primer, He et al. describe various transient absorption set-ups and outline a workflow for data analysis, addressing limitations while highlighting applications in chemistry, physics and materials science, alongside emerging multimodal approaches.

Multiplexed super-resolution microscopy of DNA-barcoded lectins and metabolically incorporated unnatural sugars quantitatively links the nanoscale spatial relationships of glycocalyx organization and cellular state.

Yuhan Bao and colleagues propose an asynchronous sparse imaging system that enables both HDR video capture and real-time visual encryption. By asynchronously modulating the transmittance in front of event-camera pixels, the system securely maps visual information into the time domain, providing a hardware foundation for future privacy preserving and efficient visual sensing.

Electron-beam control enables deterministic placement of tens of thousands of atomic defects in three-dimensional crystals, creating stable, programmable artificial matter for scalable quantum and nanoscale technologies.

An electron linear dichroism method uses electron energy loss spectroscopy with an atomic-sized probe and momentum transfer selection along two orthogonal directions to resolve orbital occupation at individual atomic columns in real space.

The authors show that crystal anisotropy can guide nanoscale wrinkles on rigid chip substrates at room temperature, turning hard dielectrics into tunable, aligned patterns that diffract light and could support future on-chip photonic devices.

Smita Dasari explains how a radio-frequency heating apparatus can be used to, for example, cure polymers as well as probe electrical conductivities and dielectric properties of various other materials ranging from epoxies to carbon fibres and MXenes.

Glycan atlassing is a method for the detection of the spatial organization of cell-surface glycosylation patterns at nanoscale. It shows that such patterns reflect the functional state of the cell, providing direct evidence that the cell-surface glycome encodes biological information via its spatial organization.

A paper in Nature demonstrates a fully integrated, closed-loop system that links machine learning-guided molecular design with robotic device fabrication, enabling both the discovery of new passivation molecules and the reproducible manufacture of high-efficiency perovskite solar cells.

Hala Farghaly explains how dynamic light scattering can be used to characterize materials for applications such as batteries, catalysts and solar cells.

Operando measurements of energy materials can resolve complex electrochemical processes, leading to in-depth mechanistic insight.

Real-time operando scattering and spectroscopy uncover how controlled disorder in sulfurized polyacrylonitrile stabilizes short sulfur chains, suppresses polysulfide loss and enables highly reversible lithium–sulfur batteries.