We study the charge transport and heat transfer through a nano-junction composed of a small metallic grain weakly coupled to two metallic leads. We focus on the cotunneling regime out-of-equilibrium, where the bias voltage and the temperature gradient between the leads strongly drive electron and phonon degrees of freedom in the grain, which in turn have a strong feedback on the transport throu...

Although amorphous structures have been widely obtained in various multi-component metallic alloys, amorphization in pure metals has seldom been observed and remains a long-standing scientific curiosity and technological interest. Here we present experimental evidence of localized solid-state amorphization in bulk nanocrystalline nickel introduced by quasi-static compression at room temperature...

The density of the transmission eigenvalues of Pb nano-contacts has been estimated recently in mechanically controllable break-junction experiments. Motivated by these experimental analyses, here we study the evolution of the density of the transmission eigenvalues with the disorder strength and the number of channels supported by the ballistic constriction of a quantum point contact in the fra...

Zr-Pd metallic glassy thin films with a hierarchical nano-scale structure, produced by magnetron sputtering of the Zr and Pd powder mixture, demonstrate a unique combination of physical and biochemical properties. Thermal stability of the nano-structured glassy samples, their resistance to oxidation in dry air and phase transformation behavior are discussed in the present work. These binary all...

Virus capsids and crystalline surfactant vesicles are two examples of self-assembled shells in the nano- to micrometer size range. Virus capsids are particularly interesting since they have to sustain large internal pressures while encapsulating and protecting the viral DNA. We therefore study the mechanical properties of crystalline shells of icosahedral symmetry on a substrate under a uniaxia...

The formation of purely metallic meso-porous metal thin films by partial interface coalescence of self-assembled metal nano-particles across aqueous solutions of Pluronics triblock lyotropic liquid crystals is demonstrated for the first time. Small angle X-ray scattering was used to study the influence of the thin film composition and processing conditions on the ordered structures. The structu...

Scientists have long dreamt of an optical microscope that can be used to see a sample in nanometre resolution. Because light propagates through water and air, an optical microscope can be used to see, in vivo, the details of living matter and other materials in their unperturbed natural condition. In addition, an optical microscope provides colour images that contain much richer information tha...

To substitute for petroleum, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) is an environmentally benign process to produce synthetic diesel (n-paraffin) from syngas. Industrially, the synthetic gasoline (iso-paraffin) can be produced with a FTS process followed by isomerization and hydrocracking processes over solid-acid catalysts. Herein, we demonstrate a cobalt nano-catalyst synthesized by physical-sputter...

Nano-metallic oxide particles have been found to be potentially effective microstructural reinforcements for cement mortar and become a research hotspot in recent years nano-modification technology of building materials. However, different conclusions obtained due various researchers used methods, which resulted deficiency the performance comparison between nano-metallic particles. In present s...

Metals of hybrid nano-/microstructures are of broad technological and fundamental interests. Manipulation of shape and composition on the nanoscale, however, is challenging, especially for multicomponent alloys such as metallic glasses. Although top-down approaches have demonstrated nanomoulding, they are limited to very few alloy systems. Here we report a facile method to synthesize metallic g...