Articles in 2018

Carl Heron and Joanne Dyer from the British Museum in London talk to Nature Materials about the research activities at the museum and how scientists can impact cultural heritage.

Dye molecules are shown to assemble into J-aggregate arrays by sequence-specific organization in the minor groove of DNA duplex sequences. Energy transfer through these structures displays the hallmarks of coherent coupling over distances that exceed those of conventional dipole-coupling processes.

Nanoparticle mimics of heparan sulfate proteoglycans offer a new strategy for the inhibition of a range of viral infections.

Engineering channels for ion transport in a SiGe solid-state electrolyte layer allows one to significantly decrease the spatial and temporal variations of the electrical characteristics in resistive switching memories.

Two independent research groups report on progress towards making every window a potential solar cell, using perovskite materials.

CsPbI_3–xBr_x solar cells, which undergo temperature- and moisture-driven reversible transitions between a non-perovskite transparent phase and a perovskite light-absorbing phase, are used as thermochromic photovoltaic devices integrated in windows.

Controlled widening of threading dislocations in SiGe layers epitaxially grown on Si allows the realization of resistive switching devices with enhanced uniformity, high on/off ratio and long retention times.

Investigation of the thermal transport properties of AgCrSe₂ reveals complete suppression of the transverse acoustic phonons by ultrafast dynamic disorder with only the longitudinal acoustic mode surviving, resembling the thermal conduction of liquids.

A perturbative method is proposed for the systematic design of mechanical metamaterials, where each element of the discrete model is associated with individual geometric features of the metamaterial, through the weak interaction between the unit cells.

Antigen pliability and lateral mobility in a Pickering emulsion adjuvant may be a safe and effective strategy to enhance adaptive immunity.

A thorough study comparing the performance of more than a hundred photonic and plasmonic lasers concludes that the latter are advantageous when their cavity volumes are close to the diffraction limit.