News & Views in 2013

Advances in materials science and layout design have enabled the realization of flexible and multifunctional electronic devices. Two demonstrations of electronic skins, which combine temperature and pressure sensing with integrated thermal actuators and organic displays, unveil the potential of these devices for robotics and clinical applications.

Semiconductor devices that convert light of arbitrary polarization into a flow of electron spin have now been demonstrated using an approach that is applicable to any semiconductor material.

The search for materials with colossal permittivity for use in capacitors has been met with limited success. A newly discovered co-doped titanium oxide material has an extremely high permittivity and negligible dielectric losses, and is likely to enable further scaling in electronic and energy-storage devices.

Cells at the edges of migrating epithelial sheets pull themselves towards unfilled space regardless of their direction of motion.

In addition to manipulating the charge or spin of electrons, another way to control electric current is by using the 'valley' degree-of-freedom of electrons. The first demonstration of the generation, transport and detection of valley-polarized electrons in bulk diamond now opens up new opportunities for quantum control in electronic devices.

The entropic repulsion between tethered molecular brushes at fluid interfaces templates the mixing of otherwise incompatible macromolecules.

A general approach for decorating nanoparticles with a highly dense shell of DNA linkers expands the range of building blocks that can be used for DNA-mediated nanoparticle self-assembly.

Experiments and simulations show that coherent twin boundaries, commonly believed to be perfect, are riddled with kinks and other defects.

Elucidating the relationship between the structure and magnetism of quasicrystals has long been a challenge. The discovery of an extended family of binary icosahedral quasicrystals with localized magnetic moments may be an important step in shedding light on this issue.

Photoexcited diamond can inject highly energetic electrons in solution and promote the catalysis of a broad range of chemical reactions.

In all likelihood, cheap and bright white organic light-emitting diodes will someday light up our homes. Three-dimensional models can now simulate the dynamics of charges and excitons governing the operation of these light sources and predict their performance with molecular precision.

Fabricating thin films of organic semiconductors that have molecular order across large areas has proved challenging. Now, three complementary approaches — molecular design, fluid-flow control and the use of nucleating agents — offer unprecedented opportunities for next-generation optoelectronic applications.

A complete understanding of the mechanism underpinning high-temperature superconductivity is notoriously elusive. The growing body of evidence suggesting that monolayer iron selenide superconducts up to 65 K indicates it may become an ideal model system for testing theoretical ideas.

The application of imaging techniques prevalent in materials science to the biological process of soft tissue calcification lends new insight into age-related cardiovascular disease.

Tissue-mimicking printed networks of droplets separated by lipid bilayers that can be functionalized with membrane proteins are able to spontaneously fold and transmit electrical currents along predefined paths.

Discrepancies in the glass-forming ability of metallic glasses have been explained in terms of the presence of local structural features in the liquid. Findings from molecular dynamics simulations now show that the structure of the crystal/liquid interface may play a bigger role than previously thought.