Small, smooth, and bendable diamonds: If you manage to deform a diamond, it usually means you have broken it. Diamonds have very high hardness, but they do not deform elastically. This limits their usefulness for some applications. However, Banerjee et al. discovered that diamond nanoneedles can deform elastically after all (see the Perspective by LLorca). The key was in their small size (300 nm), which allowed for very smooth-surfaced, defect-free diamonds. The deformation was close to the theoretical limit for diamond, which opens up the potential for applications in microelectronics and drug delivery. Science , this issue p. 300 ; see also p. 264

Single-crystalline silicon nanowires can be reversibly stretched above 10% elastic strain at room temperature.

Smartly designed nanoarchitectures with effective hybridization of transition metal oxides/hydroxides are promising to realize high performance electrodes for energy storage devices. To promote the applications of high-power supercapacitors, a seed-assisted method is firstly applied to prepare mesoporous Ni–Co–Mn hydroxide nanoflakes (NCMH) on nickel foam with practical mass loadings (higher than 5 mg cm⁻²). Further mechanism study reveals that the Ni(OH)₂ nanorod arrays, which are firstly prepared by a hydrothermal process, serve as seeds for the successful deposition of NCMH nanoflakes. Through this convenient and cost effective method, this design results in a more orderly spatial distribution, lower intrinsic resistance and shorter electron transport pathways. The proof-of-concept application of NCMH as a binder-free supercapacitor electrode reveals an impressive specific capacity of 1043.1 μA h cm⁻² at a high mass loading of 5.2 mg cm⁻². The NCMH//activated carbon asymmetric device delivered a maximum energy density of 55.42 W h kg⁻¹ at a power density of 750 W kg⁻¹, exhibiting great potential as an energy storage device and shedding light on the structural design of nanomaterials.