Materials science articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    Heat treatment can transform some moiré superlattices into fully commensurate bilayers, where atoms in opposite layers align perfectly with each other. This structural transformation gives rise to markedly brighter interlayer excitons.

    • Chun Hung Lui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optically stimulated vibrational control for materials has the potential to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices. The vibrational control of FAPbBr3 perovskite solar cells has been demonstrated, where the fast dynamics of coupling between cations and inorganic sublattice may suppress non-radiative recombinations in perovskites, leading to reduced voltage losses.

    • Nathaniel. P. Gallop
    • , Dmitry R. Maslennikov
    •  & Artem A. Bakulin

  • Article |

    Early detection of electrical degradation in dielectric polymers is crucial but remains challenging. A general strategy of blending the polymer with chromogenic molecules is reported, which generates a visually discernible colour change as chemically activated by oxygen radicals generated in situ, indicating the early stage of electrical degradation in polymers.

    • Xiaoyan Huang
    • , Shuai Zhang
    •  & Jinliang He

  • Research Briefing |

    A traditional physical-reservoir device has limited flexibility and cannot perform well across a range of computing tasks, owing to the fixed reservoir properties of the physical system. However, by exploiting the rich magnetic phase spaces of a single chiral magnet, reservoir properties can be reconfigured. This control enables on-demand optimization of computational performance across diverse machine-learning tasks.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current physical neuromorphic computing faces critical challenges of how to reconfigure key physical dynamics of a system to adapt computational performance to match a diverse range of tasks. Here the authors present a task-adaptive approach to physical neuromorphic computing based on on-demand control of computing performance using various magnetic phases of chiral magnets.

    • Oscar Lee
    • , Tianyi Wei
    •  & Hidekazu Kurebayashi

  • Article |

    Chemical adsorption of CO on open metal sites enables separation from other gases but leads to selectivity and stability issues. Quasi-open metal sites in metal–organic frameworks are proposed here, which are accessible only by CO-induced structural transformation, enabling CO separation to 9N purity.

    • Xue-Wen Zhang
    • , Chao Wang
    •  & Jie-Peng Zhang

  • Article |

    Gold nanoclusters show promise as photothermal materials, but are often thermally unstable. Here ligand engineering is used to integrate molecular rotors with gold nanoclusters to dissipate thermal energy and improve photothermal therapy performance.

    • Jing Chen
    • , Peilin Gu
    •  & Chunhai Fan

  • Article |

    Liquid electrolytes in batteries are considered to be macroscopically homogeneous ionic transport media despite having a complex chemical composition and atomistic solvation structures. A micelle-like structure in a localized high-concentration electrolyte for which the solvent acts as a surfactant is reported.

    • Corey M. Efaw
    • , Qisheng Wu
    •  & Bin Li

  • Article |

    Multi-metal and perovskite oxides are attractive as oxygen evolution electrocatalysts, and thus far the most promising candidates have emerged from experimental methodologies. Active-learning models supplemented by structural-characterization data and closed-loop experimentation can now identify a perovskite oxide with outstanding performance.

    • Junseok Moon
    • , Wiktor Beker
    •  & Bartosz A. Grzybowski

  • Article |

    The rational design and assembly of colloidal quasicrystals is achieved by exploring the hybridization of nanoscale decahedra nanoparticles functionalized with DNA linkers.

    • Wenjie Zhou
    • , Yein Lim
    •  & Chad A. Mirkin

  • Editorial |

    Integrated design assisted by materials and technology innovations can help a transition from traditional to sustainable electronics.

  • Article |

    Pseudo-halide anion engineering is an effective surface passivation strategy for perovskite-based optoelectronics but the large chemical space of molecules limits its potential. Here, the authors create a machine learning workflow to find optimized pseudo-halide anions, which are verified in devices with improved performances.

    • Jian Xu
    • , Hao Chen
    •  & Edward H. Sargent

  • News & Views |

    Chiral single-photon emitters are desirable, versatile tools for quantum information processing. Exploiting proximity to a strain-induced local magnetic field in the van der Waals antiferromagnet NiPS3 enables the emission of high-purity chiral single photons from monolayer WSe2 at zero external magnetic field.

    • Jing Tang
    •  & Xi Ling

  • News & Views |

    An approach to analyse the deformation behaviour of polymer networks provides an enhanced set of structural information, improving our understanding of the elasticity of soft materials.

    • Michael Lang

  • News & Views |

    Terahertz photoconductivity measurements coupled with theoretical modelling reveals that thermal transient excitations to more delocalized states enhances hole mobility in organic molecular semiconductors.

    • Zhigang Shuai

  • Article |

    Production of bulk bicontinuous materials is limited by the ability to make uniform microarchitectures across large volumes. Here elastic microphase separation is used to fabricate bicontinuous materials with a homogeneous microstructure, with feature sizes tuned by the matrix stiffness.

    • Carla Fernández-Rico
    • , Sanjay Schreiber
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article |

    Simultaneously highly elastic and deformable gels that maintain their mechanical properties have remained elusive. Here, using in situ polymerization confined within nanochannels, the authors prepare hysteresis-free gels insensitive to crack propagation.

    • Weizheng Li
    • , Xiaoliang Wang
    •  & Feng Yan

  • Comment |

    An essential part of developing organic mixed ionic–electronic conducting materials and organic electrochemical transistors is consistent and standardized reporting of the product of charge carrier mobility and volumetric capacitance, the μC* product. This Comment argues that unexpected changes in transistor channel resistance can overestimate this figure of merit, leading to a confusion of comparisons in the literature.

    • Maryam Shahi
    • , Vianna N. Le
    •  & Alexandra F. Paterson

  • Article |

    The process of protein crystallization is poorly understood and difficult to program through the primary sequence. Here the authors develop a computational approach to designing three-dimensional protein crystals with prespecified lattice architectures with high accuracy.

    • Zhe Li
    • , Shunzhi Wang
    •  & David Baker

  • Article |

    Solid polymer electrolytes are crucial for the development of lithium batteries, but their lower ionic conductivity compared with liquid/ceramics at room temperature limits their practical use. Precise positioning of designed repeating units in alternating polymer sequences now allows the Li+ conductivity to be tuned by up to three orders of magnitude.

    • Shantao Han
    • , Peng Wen
    •  & Mao Chen

  • Article |

    Membrane/catalyst systems in the oxidative coupling of methane are promising for their high product selectivity but suffer from low volumetric chemical conversion rates, high capital cost and optimizing performance. A dual-layer additive manufacturing process, based on phase inversion, is now proposed to optimize a hollow-fibre membrane/catalyst system.

    • James Wortman
    • , Valentina Omoze Igenegbai
    •  & Suljo Linic

  • Article |

    Lithium-rich nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathodes are widely explored due to their high capacities related to their anionic redox chemistry. A compositional optimization pathway for these materials investigating the variation of using cobalt and nickel now provides valuable guidelines for future high-capacity cathode design.

    • Biao Li
    • , Zengqing Zhuo
    •  & Jean-Marie Tarascon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ferroelectric dead layers can form at perovskite interfaces—a major challenge in integrating oxide thin films into devices. Here, by depositing an in-plane-polarized epitaxial buffer layer of Bi5FeTi3O15, out-of-plane polarization is demonstrated in ultrathin films down to the single-unit-cell level.

    • Elzbieta Gradauskaite
    • , Quintin N. Meier
    •  & Morgan Trassin

  • News & Views |

    Oxide glasses can be intrinsically toughened by forming crystal-like, medium-range order clusters, which transform inversely to the amorphous state under stress, exciting multiple shear bands for plastic deformation.

    • Hewei Zhao
    •  & Lin Guo

  • News & Views |

    An additively manufactured AlSi10Mg alloy shows high fatigue strength, even close to its tensile strength, for micro-sized samples. The fine cells in its inherent three-dimensional network are considered as cages to limit damage accumulation.

    • Christopher Hutchinson

  • News & Views |

    Remotely powered vertical electrochemical transistors are demonstrated to track subtle nerve-cell activity even when the transistor core is fully shielded from the biological environment.

    • C. Eckel
    •  & R. T. Weitz

  • Article |

    Extracting information about polymer network topology from mechanical properties alone remains challenging. Here the authors develop a forensic approach to quantify network structural information by analysing their nonlinear mechanics.

    • Andrey V. Dobrynin
    • , Yuan Tian
    •  & Sergei S. Sheiko

  • Research Briefing |

    Self-healing behaviour in a nanotwinned diamond composite, at room temperature, has been quantitatively evaluated through tensile testing. The phenomenon is shown to arise from a transition of atomic interactions from repulsion to attraction and the formation of nanoscale diamond ‘osteoblasts’, in analogy to the process of bone healing in living organisms.

  • Article |

    Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) tape is widely used for lithium-ion batteries but its chemical stability has been largely overlooked. Reversible self-discharge is now shown to be virtually eliminated in LiFePO4–graphite cells by replacing PET with polypropylene jellyroll tape.

    • Anu Adamson
    • , Kenneth Tuul
    •  & Michael Metzger

  • Article |

    The room-temperature self-healing behaviour of a nanotwinned diamond composite is quantitatively evaluated and found to stem from both the formation of nanoscale diamond osteoblasts and the atomic interaction transition from repulsion to attraction.

    • Keliang Qiu
    • , Jingpeng Hou
    •  & Lin Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unit-cell-thick films of metal–organic frameworks with ordered porosity would be attractive for membrane applications as these thin systems combine large molecular flux with high selectivity. Here crystalline ZIF films are grown on a crystalline substrate with high H2/N2 gas separation performance.

    • Qi Liu
    • , Yurun Miao
    •  & Kumar Varoon Agrawal

  • Article |

    Trapped films of air known as plastrons are promising for underwater engineering but typically have short lifetimes. Here, aerophilic titanium alloy surfaces are developed with thermodynamically stabilized plastrons for antifouling applications.

    • Alexander B. Tesler
    • , Stefan Kolle
    •  & Wolfgang H. Goldmann

  • Article |

    Dynamic disorder reduces the carrier mobility in organic semiconductors (OSs) to an extent that depends on their specific electronic band structure. Here the authors study the temperature-dependent hole mobility of two structurally similar OSs and find that thermal access to transiently delocalized states enhances hole mobility in C8-DNTT-C8 compared to DNTT.

    • Samuele Giannini
    • , Lucia Di Virgilio
    •  & David Beljonne

  • Article |

    The rational design of out-of-equilibrium demixing transitions remains challenging. Active fluids are used to control the liquid–liquid phase separation of passive DNA nanostars and establish the activity-based control of the phase diagram.

    • Alexandra M. Tayar
    • , Fernando Caballero
    •  & Zvonimir Dogic

  • Article |

    Organic luminophores emit a bright near-infrared afterglow after X-ray irradiation and outperform commercially available radio sensitizers by producing higher levels of singlet oxygen, having potential applications in precision cancer theranostics.

    • Jingsheng Huang
    • , Lichao Su
    •  & Kanyi Pu

  • News & Views |

    By tracking the electrochromic doping front, a hole-limited electrochemical doping mechanism is discovered in organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors.

    • Ruiheng Wu
    • , Dilara Meli
    •  & Jonathan Rivnay

  • News & Views |

    In a non-collinear antiferromagnet, elementary spins rotate with opposite handedness with respect to the collective octupole magnetic moment when stirred by spin currents.

    • Enrique del Barco
    •  & Andrew D. Kent

  • News & Views |

    Amorphization can be an additional mechanism to assist plastic deformation in crystalline materials, providing a strategy to improve the load-bearing ability of brittle materials.

    • Shiteng Zhao
    •  & Xiaolei Wu

  • News & Views |

    Using the van der Waals crystal Sb2O3 as a buffer layer enables the growth of high-κ dielectrics on two-dimensional materials via atomic layer deposition.

    • Yang Liu
    •  & James C. Hone

  • Research Briefing |

    By optimizing the molecular organization of blue-emitting organic semiconductors, the vulnerability of the materials to extrinsic impurities that cause charge trapping, such as oxygen and water, is strongly reduced. Steric shielding of the electron-transporting core is shown to increase the electron transport by several orders of magnitude.

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