There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

抗原变异可使得多种致病微生物易于逃避宿主免疫应答。表达在感染红细胞表面的恶性疟原虫红细胞表面蛋白1（PfPMP1）与感染红细胞、内皮细胞、树突状细胞以及胎盘的单个或多个受体作用，在黏附及免疫逃避中起关键的作用。每个单倍体基因组var基因家族编码约60种成员，通过启动转录不同的var基因变异体为抗原变异提供了分子基础。

疟原虫var基因转换速率变化导致抗原变异[英]／Paul H, Robert P, Christodoulou Z, et al//Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Memristive devices are electrical resistance switches that can retain a state of internal resistance based on the history of applied voltage and current. These devices can store and process information, and offer several key performance characteristics that exceed conventional integrated circuit technology. An important class of memristive devices are two-terminal resistance switches based on ionic motion, which are built from a simple conductor/insulator/conductor thin-film stack. These devices were originally conceived in the late 1960s and recent progress has led to fast, low-energy, high-endurance devices that can be scaled down to less than 10 nm and stacked in three dimensions. However, the underlying device mechanisms remain unclear, which is a significant barrier to their widespread application. Here, we review recent progress in the development and understanding of memristive devices. We also examine the performance requirements for computing with memristive devices and detail how the outstanding challenges could be met.

Memristive devices for computing

Although the field of polymer solar cell has seen much progress in device performance in the past few years, several limitations are holding back its further development For instance, current high-efficiency (>90%) cells are restricted to material combinations that are based on limited donor polymers and only one specific fullerene acceptor Here we report the achievement of high-performance (efficiencies up to 108%, fill factors up to 77%) thick-film polymer solar cells for multiple polymer:fullerene combinations via the formation of a near-ideal polymer:fullerene morphology that contains highly crystalline yet reasonably small polymer domains This morphology is controlled by the temperature-dependent aggregation behaviour of the donor polymers and is insensitive to the choice of fullerenes The uncovered aggregation and design rules yield three high-efficiency (>10%) donor polymers and will allow further synthetic advances and matching of both the polymer and fullerene materials, potentially leading to significantly improved performance and increased design flexibility

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Aggregation and morphology control enables multiple cases of high-efficiency polymer solar cells.

Optical antennas are devices that convert freely propagating optical radiation into localized energy, and vice versa. They enable the control and manipulation of optical fields at the nanometre scale, and hold promise for enhancing the performance and efficiency of photodetection, light emission and sensing. Although many of the properties and parameters of optical antennas are similar to their radiowave and microwave counterparts, they have important differences resulting from their small size and the resonant properties of metal nanostructures. This Review summarizes the physical properties of optical antennas, provides a summary of some of the most important recent developments in the field, discusses the potential applications and identifies the future challenges and opportunities.

Antennas for light

The study of nanostructures is creating a need for microscopes that can see beyond the limits of conventional visible light and ultraviolet microscopes. X-ray imaging is a promising option. A new microscope described this week achieves unprecedented resolution, and has the ability to see through containing material. It features a specially made two-component zone plate — a lens with concentric zones rather like the rings in the Fresnel lenses familiar in overhead projectors and elsewhere — that makes use of diffraction to project an image into a CCD camera sensitive to soft X-rays. Spatial resolution of better than 15 nm is possible. Analytical tools that have spatial resolution at the nanometre scale are indispensable for the life and physical sciences. It is desirable that these tools also permit elemental and chemical identification on a scale of 10 nm or less, with large penetration depths. A variety of techniques1,2,3,4,5,6,7 in X-ray imaging are currently being developed that may provide these combined capabilities. Here we report the achievement of sub-15-nm spatial resolution with a soft X-ray microscope—and a clear path to below 10 nm—using an overlay technique for zone plate fabrication. The microscope covers a spectral range from a photon energy of 250 eV (∼5 nm wavelength) to 1.8 keV (∼0.7 nm), so that primary K and L atomic resonances of elements such as C, N, O, Al, Ti, Fe, Co and Ni can be probed. This X-ray microscopy technique is therefore suitable for a wide range of studies: biological imaging in the water window8,9; studies of wet environmental samples10,11; studies of magnetic nanostructures with both elemental and spin-orbit sensitivity12,13,14; studies that require viewing through thin windows, coatings or substrates (such as buried electronic devices in a silicon chip15); and three-dimensional imaging of cryogenically fixed biological cells9,16.

Soft X-ray microscopy at a spatial resolution better than 15 nm

Two new soft X-ray scanning transmission microscopes located at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) have been designed, built and commissioned. Interferometer control implemented in both microscopes allows the precise measurement of the transverse position of the zone plate relative to the sample. Long-term positional stability and compensation for transverse displacement during translations of the zone plate have been achieved. The interferometer also provides low-distortion orthogonal x, y imaging. Two different control systems have been developed: a digital control system using standard VXI components at beamline 7.0, and a custom feedback system based on PC AT boards at beamline 5.3.2. Both microscopes are diffraction limited with the resolution set by the quality of the zone plates. Periodic features with 30 nm half period can be resolved with a zone plate that has a 40 nm outermost zone width. One microscope is operating at an undulator beamline (7.0), while the other is operating at a novel dedicated bending-magnet beamline (5.3.2), which is designed specifically to illuminate the microscope. The undulator beamline provides count rates of the order of tens of MHz at high-energy resolution with photon energies of up to about 1000 eV. Although the brightness of a bending-magnet source is about four orders of magnitude smaller than that of an undulator source, photon statistics limited operation with intensities in excess of 3 MHz has been achieved at high energy resolution and high spatial resolution. The design and performance of these microscopes are described.

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Interferometer‐controlled scanning transmission X‐ray microscopes at the Advanced Light Source

Phase locking of relativistic magnetrons has been achieved at power levels of \ensuremath{\sim}3 GW at 2.8 GHz, exceeding previous phase-locking power levels by 3 orders of magnitude. Two relativistic magnetrons interact directly through a short waveguide of length $l\ensuremath{\sim}\frac{n\ensuremath{\lambda}}{2}$ to allow locking. Power-density enhancement due to source coherence is directly measured in the radiation field. Phase locking occurs in \ensuremath{\sim}5 ns and is reproducible. Extension to 10-100 GW appears feasible with arrays of oscillators.

Phase Locking of Relativistic Magnetrons

Short wavelength x-ray radiation microscopy is well suited for a number of material and life science studies. The x-ray microscope (XM1) at the Advanced Light Source Synchrotron in Berkeley, California uses two diffractive Fresnel zone plate lenses. The first is a large condenser lens, which collects soft x-ray radiation from a bending magnet, focuses it, and serves as a linear monochromator. The second is the objective zone plate lens, which magnifies the image of the specimen onto a high-efficiency charge coupled device detector. The objective lens determines the numerical aperture and ultimate resolution. New objective lens zone plates with a minimum linewidth of 25 nm and excellent linewidth control have been fabricated using Berkeley Lab’s 100 keV Nanowriter electron beam lithography tool, a calixarene high-resolution negative resist, and gold electroplating. Although the condenser zone plate is less critical to the resolution of the instrument, its efficiency determines the flux on the sample and ul...

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Nanofabrication and diffractive optics for high-resolution x-ray applications

We present a novel fabrication method for incorporating nanometer to micrometer scale few-layer graphene (FLG) features onto substrates with electrostatic exfoliation. We pattern highly oriented pyrolytic graphite using standard lithographic techniques and subsequently, in a single step, exfoliate and transfer-print the prepatterned FLG features onto a silicon wafer using electrostatic force. We have successfully demonstrated the exfoliation/printing of 18 nm wide FLG nanolines and periodic arrays of 1.4 μm diameter pillars. Furthermore, we have fabricated graphene nanoribbon transistors using the patterned graphene nanoline. Our electrostatic force assisted exfoliation/print process does not need additional adhesion layers and could be stepped and repeated to deliver the prepatterned graphitic material over wafer-sized areas and allows the construction of graphene-based integrated circuits.

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Bruce Harteneck

Papers

Soft X-ray microscopy at a spatial resolution better than 15 nm

Interferometer‐controlled scanning transmission X‐ray microscopes at the Advanced Light Source

Phase Locking of Relativistic Magnetrons

Nanofabrication and diffractive optics for high-resolution x-ray applications

Electrostatic force assisted exfoliation of prepatterned few-layer graphenes into device sites.