From your general reading and lectures, describe a recent advance in Nanoscience (within the last 5 years), which you consider to be important. Give reasons as to why this is a critical development, map out the potential applications of this advance, and suggest how this development may change Nanoscience in particular and science in general over a longer time scale.

You should submit an essay of around 3000 words (excluding references and figure captions) on the following topic:
From your general reading and lectures, describe a recent advance in Nanoscience (within the last 5 years), which you consider to be important. Give reasons as to why this is a critical development, map out the potential applications of this advance, and suggest how this development may change Nanoscience in particular and science in general over a longer time scale.
Your essay should be prepared in the format and writing style of a manuscript for submission to the ACS journal Chemical Reviews, although will necessarily be much shorter. See the requirements for format of written assignments on the assignment submission page for further details and document templates. You should use well-structured prose, presenting a reasoned answer to the question. This should be supported by relevant literature references, appropriately cited using the ACS style. If figures are used they should be appropriately captioned. Your essay should be written at a level that would be understandable to a final-year undergraduate in a physical sciences or engineering discipline who does not have specific detailed knowledge of the topic you are covering.