Engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Targeted delivery of microparticles is desirable for rapid, sensitive biological assays or self-assembly process. Here Daset al. use catalytic reactions on the surface of microfluidic chambers to generate unidirectional flows that carry and deposit microparticles to selective regions of the chamber.

    • Sambeeta Das
    • , Oleg E. Shklyaev
    •  & Ayusman Sen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous selective forces shape animal locomotion patterns and as a result, different animals evolved to use different gaits. Here, Ramdyaet al. use live and in silicoDrosophila, as well as an insect-model robot, to gain insights into the conditions that promote the ubiquitous tripod gait observed in most insects.

    • Pavan Ramdya
    • , Robin Thandiackal
    •  & Dario Floreano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrogel actuators have been widely developed to be osmotic-driven but many are in fact only capable of producing low forces. Here, the authors developed high speed and high force hydrogel actuators capable of camouflage optically and sonically with low fatigue over multiple cycles.

    • Hyunwoo Yuk
    • , Shaoting Lin
    •  & Xuanhe Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic lanterns are made by merging several single-mode cores into one multimode core. Here, the authors show this type of structure can both perform wavelength-to-time mapping of multimode states of light and couple such light to an array of single-photon avalanche detectors.

    • Harikumar K Chandrasekharan
    • , Frauke Izdebski
    •  & Robert R. Thomson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Telephone cord blisters constitute a well-known example of patterns generated following buckling in thin films. Here the authors develop an analytical approach that can model the sectional height profiles along the blisters that they measure experimentally and simulate numerically.

    • Yong Ni
    • , Senjiang Yu
    •  & Linghui He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Brain machine interfaces (BMI) enable sensorimotor control of movement yet the parameters that may affect these pathways are not known. Here the authors show systematically that increasing the rate of control from brain as well as feedback rates to the subject results in better performance on a BMI task in monkeys.

    • Maryam M. Shanechi
    • , Amy L. Orsborn
    •  & Jose M. Carmena

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithium-based batteries employing silicon anodes and sulfur cathodes are promising for combining low cost and high capacity, but have been limited in terms of cycling stability. Here authors present cycling and characterization data supporting beneficial synergies between a selenium disulfide cathode and a silicon anode.

    • KwangSup Eom
    • , Jung Tae Lee
    •  & Thomas F. Fuller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Shaping ceramics into complex forms is a formidable goal. Here, the authors present an approach to self-shaping ceramics, inspired by self-folding processes in plants, in which the ceramic microstructure is embedded with aligned platelets that control the orientation of heat-induced shrinkage.

    • Fabio L. Bargardi
    • , Hortense Le Ferrand
    •  & André R. Studart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Twin transmission across grain boundaries has important influence on deformation and fracture in hexagonal close-packed metals. Here, experimental and computational statistical analyses show that whether twins cross grain boundaries depends not only on crystal misorientation but also strongly on anisotropy in crystallographic slip.

    • M. Arul Kumar
    • , I. J. Beyerlein
    •  & C. N. Tomé

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon nanotube yarns with high loadings of pseudocapacitive material are desirable, e.g., for emerging wearable technologies. Here authors make biscrolled yarns with high loadings of MnO2nanoparticles confined in carbon nanotube galleries, demonstrating very high linear and areal capacitances.

    • Changsoon Choi
    • , Kang Min Kim
    •  & Seon Jeong Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of organic electronics calls for low-cost printing techniques that can prepare high quality, large-area organic single crystals. Here, Rigaset al. achieve this goal by combining spray printing and antisolvent crystallization and test the method on various materials and substrates.

    • Grigorios-Panagiotis Rigas
    • , Marcia M. Payne
    •  & Maxim Shkunov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling elastic waves in medium is essential to many applications in mechanical to earthquake engineering. Ma et al. demonstrate selective suppression of different vibrational modes in a three-dimensional rod-shape structure, which shows fluid-like elasticity with only longitudinal waves propagating.

    • Guancong Ma
    • , Caixing Fu
    •  & Ping Sheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By forming heterostructures of different layered two-dimensional materials, functional spintronic devices may be built by exploiting the materials’ different spin-orbit coupling and spin transport properties. Here, the authors demonstrate a spin switch in a gated structure of graphene and MoS2.

    • Wenjing Yan
    • , Oihana Txoperena
    •  & Fèlix Casanova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electronic devices based on negative differential resistance hold promise for multi-valued logic applications. Here, the authors implement such functionalities using an atomically thin phosphorene/rhenium disulfide van der Waals heterostructure, and further demonstrate the implementation of a ternary inverter.

    • Jaewoo Shim
    • , Seyong Oh
    •  & Jin-Hong Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most microelectronic devices today exploit the electronic properties of semiconductors. Here, the authors demonstrate a microelectronic device for free-space electrons by using the enhanced fields in a microstructured metal surface to induce effective photoemission.

    • Ebrahim Forati
    • , Tyler J. Dill
    •  & Dan Sievenpiper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable quantum information processing requires controllable high-coherence qubits. Here, the authors present superconducting flux qubits with broad frequency tunability, strong anharmonicity and high reproducibility, identifying photon shot noise as the main source of dephasing for further improvements.

    • Fei Yan
    • , Simon Gustavsson
    •  & William D. Oliver

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The wettability properties of graphene hold promise for the realisation of flow control devices. Here, the authors demonstrate that the degree of water penetration through a nickel mesh coated with graphene can be controlled electrically, enabling dynamic locomotion of water droplets.

    • Rassoul Tabassian
    • , Jung-Hwan Oh
    •  & Il-Kwon Oh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stem cell therapy of myocardial infarction is hampered by poor survival of injected cells. Here the authors develop injectable aggregates of stem cells differentiated to an early cardiac stage and encapsulated in a biodegradable micromatrix, and show their enhanced therapeutic efficacy in a heart infarction mouse model.

    • Shuting Zhao
    • , Zhaobin Xu
    •  & Xiaoming He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Given the scarcity and cost of platinum, it is important to develop sustainable processes for its recycling. Here, the authors report the dissolution of metallic platinum using reductive and oxidative gases to repetitively change its surface oxidation state, in the absence of an external electric current.

    • Nejc Hodnik
    • , Claudio Baldizzone
    •  & Karl J. J. Mayrhofer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vapour-deposited glasses show high stability compared to that of aged glasses, but a structural understanding remains elusive. Here, Reid et al. find that vapour deposited and liquid-cooled glasses show identical structures, suggesting these two classes of films lie on the same path to equilibrium.

    • Daniel R. Reid
    • , Ivan Lyubimov
    •  & Juan J. de Pablo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Large-scale screens on whole animals could facilitate drug discovery, but are technically challenging. Here, Mondal et al. develop a microfluidic chip combined with an automated imaging platform that enables high-throughput, high-resolution screening of Caenorhabditis elegansdisease models.

    • Sudip Mondal
    • , Evan Hegarty
    •  & Adela Ben-Yakar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analysis of bacteria and their response to antibiotics in real time is challenging. Here the authors report a microcantilever based system that can detect and discriminate between bacteria species and, due to the ability to discriminate between alive and dead samples, measure response to antibiotics.

    • Hashem Etayash
    • , M. F. Khan
    •  & Thomas Thundat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molecular electronics holds promise to overcome scaling limits of conventional technologies, but is currently limited to low frequency operation. Here, Trasobares et al. show radio frequencies of up to 17.8 GHz in a molecular diode based on ferrocenyl undecanethiol self-assembled monolayers on gold nanodots.

    • J. Trasobares
    • , D. Vuillaume
    •  & N. Clément

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Zeolite crystal with porous structure is predicted to be a good membrane material for water purification, but experiments show water uptake orders of magnitude smaller than the theory. Here, Fasano et al. attribute this disagreement to the additional diffusion resistance induced by surface defects.

    • Matteo Fasano
    • , Thomas Humplik
    •  & Pietro Asinari

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermal management is important for designing bio-nano interfaces for biosensing and thermotherapic applications. Here the authors perform simulations showing that nm-thick water layers between graphene and cell membranes display layered ordering, promoting interfacial thermal coupling and thermal dissipation.

    • Yanlei Wang
    • , Zhao Qin
    •  & Zhiping Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Moving particles on a vibrating plate dates back to 1780s, but it is still challenging to control individual particles in a parallel way. Here, Zhou et al. use a single acoustic actuator and an algorithm to control multiple objects simultaneously and independently for sorting and pattern formation.

    • Quan Zhou
    • , Veikko Sariola
    •  & Ville Liimatainen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Imaging buried interfaces is necessary to assess the quality of electronic devices and their degradation mechanisms. Here, Hirohata et al. use energy-filtered scanning electron microscopy to image buried defects in an inorganic lateral spin-valve device, at the nanometre scale and non-destructively.

    • Atsufumi Hirohata
    • , Yasuaki Yamamoto
    •  & Andrew J. Vick

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Photosynthetic microalgae could provide an ecologically sustainable route to produce solar biofuels and high-value chemicals. Here, the authors review various optical management strategies used to manipulate the incident light in order to increase the efficiency of microalgae biofuel production.

    • Matthew D. Ooms
    • , Cao Thang Dinh
    •  & David Sinton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The extensive use of pesticides in agriculture calls for efficient spraying techniques to reduce pollution of soils and groundwater by toxic chemicals. Damak et al. simultaneously spray liquids containing oppositely charged polyelectrolytes that form defects, pinning droplets on targeted surfaces.

    • Maher Damak
    • , Md Nasim Hyder
    •  & Kripa K. Varanasi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chiral compounds are extremely important as they can be used in medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. Here, Kuhn and co-workers use a mesoporous metal structure encoded with chiral information in order to induce asymmetry in electrochemical synthesis of mandelic acid.

    • Thittaya Yutthalekha
    • , Chularat Wattanakit
    •  & Alexander Kuhn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional metal extraction processes rely on energy intensive pyro- or hydrometallurgical methods which generate pollutants. Here, the authors reveal a high-throughput electro-desulfurization process to convert molten stibnite to pure antimony in a single step, reducing emissions and energy consumption.

    • Huayi Yin
    • , Brice Chung
    •  & Donald R. Sadoway

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resistive switching in metal oxides is related to the migration of donor defects. Here Baeumer et al. use in operandoX-ray spectromicroscopy to quantify the doping locally and show that small local variations in the donor concentration result in large variations in the device resistance.

    • Christoph Baeumer
    • , Christoph Schmitz
    •  & Regina Dittmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The control over the motion and deformation of liquid droplets is essential to many microfluidic and actuation systems. Zavabeti et al. demonstrate that applying a pH or ionic gradient across a droplet of liquid metal alloy of gallium results in its motion due to a breaking of the surface charge symmetry.

    • Ali Zavabeti
    • , Torben Daeneke
    •  & Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of vortex flow exhibits a rich spectrum of complicated geometries. Here, An et al. utilize these features to control and mass produce inorganic and organic particles via an electrospraying process, whereby the shape of vortex rings translates into particles during a freezing process.

    • Duo An
    • , Alex Warning
    •  & Minglin Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mimicking the intrinsic adaptability of biological systems in synthetic materials has been a challenge. Here, Sacanna and co-workers have used dewetting forces between an oil phase and solid colloidal substrate to facilitate shape shifting particles that can change geometry by chemical and optical signals.

    • Mena Youssef
    • , Theodore Hueckel
    •  & Stefano Sacanna

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recently, negative pressure has been observed in perovskite nanowires by annealing the wires from a lower-density phase. Here, the authors show that the negative pressure enhances the piezoelectric coefficient of PbTiO3 and Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 nanowires experimentally and by ab initiocalculations.

    • Alexander Kvasov
    • , Leo J. McGilly
    •  & Nava Setter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Graphitic carbon nitride is a promising hydrogen evolution photocatalyst, although there is limited understanding of its mechanistic operation. Here, the authors employ molecular heptazine-based model catalysts to identify catalytically relevant defects and to rationally design a highly active carbon nitride photocatalyst.

    • Vincent Wing-hei Lau
    • , Igor Moudrakovski
    •  & Bettina V. Lotsch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Platinum-based nanowires are promising for fuel cell applications due to their high catalytic activity. Here the authors report on hierarchical platinum-cobalt nanowires with high-index facets showing specific/mass activities for oxygen reduction reaction 39.6/33.7 times higher than commercial Pt/C catalyst.

    • Lingzheng Bu
    • , Shaojun Guo
    •  & Xiaoqing Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wearable sensors can provide continuous, convenient feedback for users but typically focus on a small number of physiological parameters. Here, the authors report a skin-worn sensing system that combines a biosensor for lactate detection with an electrocardiogram in one patch, with applications for exercise monitoring.

    • Somayeh Imani
    • , Amay J. Bandodkar
    •  & Patrick P. Mercier

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