Engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tissue engineering applications call for controllable micro-structural units as a platform, but their fabrication remains challenging. Here, Jeong et al. show a method that enables soft materials to self-organize into highly packed micro-honeycomb structures with aspect ratios up to 500, and tunable shapes.

    • Gi Seok Jeong
    • , Da Yoon No
    •  & Sang-Hoon Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum interferometry suffers from residual distinguishability between input photons. Here, the authors show theoretically and experimentally, in a two-photon measurement, how to overcome this by manipulating additional degrees of freedom.

    • Michał Jachura
    • , Radosław Chrapkiewicz
    •  & Konrad Banaszek

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Signal-to-noise ratio is one of the key factors that currently limit the diagnostic image quality and patient conditions of magnetic resonance imaging. Here, Corea et al. use fully printed flexible receive coils, conforming to patient bodies, to improve signals and patient comfort in clinical scanners.

    • Joseph R. Corea
    • , Anita M. Flynn
    •  & Ana C. Arias

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermoelectric materials with enhanced performances need to be identified. Here, the authors use the crystal field splitting energy of orbitals as a descriptor to design thermoelectric materials by solid solution maps and strain engineering in layered CaAl2Si2-type Zintl compounds.

    • Jiawei Zhang
    • , Lirong Song
    •  & Bo B. Iversen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-assemblies of polymers to form polymersomes in solution can be used as carriers for drug delivery, but it is challenging to control polymer crystallization to improve their mechanical stability. Here, Wang et al.show the formation of nanosized crystalsomes composed of polymer lamellar single crystals.

    • Wenda Wang
    • , Hao Qi
    •  & Christopher Y. Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scientists are increasingly realising the potential for natural materials in micro- and nanofabrication. Here, the authors employ silk-based resists for aqueous multiphoton lithography towards generating intricate structures by femtosecond direct writing.

    • Yun-Lu Sun
    • , Qi Li
    •  & Hong-Bo Sun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexible energy storage systems usually have limited energy densities. Here the authors report a flexible lithium–oxygen battery with the cathode consisting of titanium dioxide nanowire arrays grown on carbon textiles, which displays high mechanical strength as well as promising electrochemical performance.

    • Qing-Chao Liu
    • , Ji-Jing Xu
    •  & Xin-Bo Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Seebeck effect causes an electrical potential across a temperature gradient in a material, and is therefore useful for generating useful current from waste heat. Here, the authors show that the Seebeck effect can arise due to charge-carrier relaxation in addition to the conventional mechanism.

    • Peijie Sun
    • , Beipei Wei
    •  & Frank Steglich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineering strain in semiconductor structures provides additional control over the optical and electronic properties, which is promising for device applications. Fluegel et al. show that electronic Raman scattering provides a route to sensitively measure the degree of strain in thin semiconductor layers.

    • Brian Fluegel
    • , Aleksej V. Mialitsin
    •  & Angelo Mascarenhas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum phase transitions are a discontinuous change in a property of the ground state or the structure of the excited states as a system parameter traverses a critical point. Here, the authors recreate analogous effects with laboratory-achievable light-matter coupling in an on-chip superconducting circuit

    • M. Feng
    • , Y.P. Zhong
    •  & H. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal halide perovskites are promising for solar energy harvesting, but currently prone to a large hysteresis and current instability. Here, Xu et al. show improvements in a hybrid material in which the fullerene is distributed at perovskite grain boundaries and thus passivates defects effectively.

    • Jixian Xu
    • , Andrei Buin
    •  & Edward H. Sargent

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft biological composites have great potential in areas such as artificial tissue constructs and bio-integrated devices, but receive little attention. Here, the authors design soft biomimetic materials that can precisely reproduce the non-linear mechanics of relevant biological materials.

    • Kyung-In Jang
    • , Ha Uk Chung
    •  & John A. Rogers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Closely-spaced anisotropically-engineered single-domain nanomagnets may be exploited to encode and transmit binary information. Here, Gu et al. use time-resolved X-ray microscopy to image signal propagation at the intrinsic nanomagnetic switching limit in permalloy nanomagnet chains.

    • Zheng Gu
    • , Mark E. Nowakowski
    •  & Jeffrey Bokor

  • Article |

    The technological application of ultrafast terahertz magnons in itinerant ferromagnetic nanostructures is currently limited by magnon relaxation due to Landau damping. Here, Qin et al. demonstrate suppressed Landau damping and enhanced magnon lifetimes in ultrathin films of Fe–Pd alloy.

    • H. J. Qin
    • , Kh. Zakeri
    •  & J. Kirschner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-dimensional electron gases at oxide interfaces induce exotic behaviours. By studying samples with different crystal orientation, Herranz et al.show that the extension and anisotropy of the oxide quantum well properties can be controlled through selective sub-band filling via orientational tuning.

    • Gervasi Herranz
    • , Gyanendra Singh
    •  & Josep Fontcuberta

  • Article |

    Catenanes are structures composed of interlocked supramolecular rings, and they have possible applications as molecular switches and nanomotors. Here, the authors present a catenane formed of interlocked DNA rings, and show how each ring can display independent functionalities.

    • Zai-Sheng Wu
    • , Zhifa Shen
    •  & Yingfu Li

  • Article |

    The cheapest way to add new power stations to a domestic power grid is by tree-like connections to the network. A numerical basin stability analysis of Menck et al.suggests that this undermines a grid’s stability against blackouts but can be fixed with extra transmission lines to these otherwise ‘dead ends’.

    • Peter J. Menck
    • , Jobst Heitzig
    •  & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

  • Article |

    Strain engineering has been proposed as a promising strategy for manipulating the electronic properties of graphene. This scanning tunnelling microscopy study demonstrates the feasibility of controlling strain patterns in graphene down to the nanoscale.

    • Jiong Lu
    • , A.H. Castro Neto
    •  & Kian Ping Loh

  • Article |

    Nanomechanical resonators are attractive as ultra-low concentration sensors of biomolecules, as their small scale allows for sensitive mass detection. Here, using a nanowire array as part of a photonic crystal, such a device is presented for light trapping, absorption and low-concentration sensing.

    • Yuerui Lu
    • , Songming Peng
    •  & Amit Lal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Covalent organic frameworks form a porous skeleton with a precise pore size and geometry, but control of the pore surface is challenging. Here, a protocol is introduced for pore surface engineering of covalent organic frameworks, allowing the control of composition and density of organic groups in the pores.

    • Atsushi Nagai
    • , Zhaoqi Guo
    •  & Donglin Jiang

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