Video: Glass flowers bloom in nail art

Cosmetic nail treatments have existed for thousands of years, but the wild nail art designs seen today only really became popular in the past decade. We take a brief look at this history and highlight one nail artist whose designs are inspired by nature.

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Laser-based process allows direct creation of 3D glass structures

Glass additive manufacturing is a less developed field compared to methods for printing plastic, metal, and ceramic, but the last few years saw significant advances. Three researchers in France now propose that two-photon polymerization, a technique used in fields such as micro/nanophotonics, could offer an effective way to 3D print glass directly rather than by layer-on-layer procedures.

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Fab-bow-lous synthesis: Researchers grow graphene nanoribbons for lower cost at higher yield

Graphene nanoribbons are a family of carbon allotropes that exhibit semiconducting properties promising for electronic applications. However, the conventional bottom-up synthesis method for graphene nanoribbons is a costly and low-yield process. Researchers led by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology developed an alternative method that is higher yield and lower cost.

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Stretching the possibilities: Bendable single-crystalline diamonds hold potential for next-generation electronics

Diamonds have many desirable properties for application in electronic devices, but their rigid crystalline structure and brittle nature make it difficult to use diamonds for such a purpose. An international team of researchers led by City University of Hong Kong revealed in 2018 that diamonds are bendable on the nanoscale, and a follow-up paper published by them this month expands on that finding.

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