Materials science articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Metallic particles are known to etch the surface layers of graphite by catalytic hydrogenation. Here, the authors report the sub-surface etching of graphite by Ni nanoparticles, revealing the formation of networks of tunnels, which are observed microscopically and could be modified for various applications.

    • Maya Lukas
    • , Velimir Meded
    •  & Ralph Krupke

  • Article |

    The bombardment of structural metals in nuclear reactors by high-energy particles causes them to develop defects, such as stacking-fault tetrahedra defects, that are difficult to cure. Yu et al.find that in nanotwinned silver such defects can be removed at room temperature by the propagation of mobile twin boundaries.

    • K. Y. Yu
    • , D. Bufford
    •  & X. Zhang

  • Article |

    Spin-dependent transport length in organic semiconductors is expected to be large due to their small spin–orbit coupling; however, lengths of only a few nanometres have been observed to date at room temperature. This work reports a large spin diffusion length of 110 nm at room temperature in a spin valve device containing C60molecules.

    • Xianmin Zhang
    • , Shigemi Mizukami
    •  & Terunobu Miyazaki

  • Article |

    Superionic materials have rigid crystal structures but liquid-like ionic conductivity above a critical temperature, which may be useful for switching and storage applications. Using ultrafast X-ray probes, Miller et al.show that the superionic transition timescale is determined by the ionic hopping time.

    • T. A. Miller
    • , J. S. Wittenberg
    •  & A. M. Lindenberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the influence of disorder on the properties of two-dimensional materials is of increasing importance, given the interest in these compounds for electronic applications. Using a scanning transmission electron microscope, Dumcencoet al. quantify the atomic mixing in two-dimensional films of Mo1–xWxS2.

    • Dumitru O Dumcenco
    • , Haruka Kobayashi
    •  & Kazu Suenaga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In metals, plasmon properties are fixed once the structure is built, but in graphene they can be altered by electric or magnetic fields. Using electrical time-of-flight measurements, Kumada et al. show wide plasmon velocity tunability in graphene with a varying magnetic field.

    • N. Kumada
    • , S. Tanabe
    •  & T. Fujisawa

  • Article |

    Blood clotting is caused by biopolymer-mediated aggregation of platelets and is enhanced by fast shear flows. Chen et al. find a similar process that arises during the self-assembly of polymer–colloid composites—a process that can be controlled and even reversed by flow rate and interparticle interaction.

    • Hsieh Chen
    • , Mohammad A. Fallah
    •  & Alfredo Alexander-Katz

  • Article |

    Iron-based superconductors have the potential to carry higher currents and withstand higher magnetic fields than present-day superconducting cables. Using an approach developed for cuprates, Si et al. improve the high-field performance of iron-based superconductors well beyond that of conventional superconductors.

    • Weidong Si
    • , Su Jung Han
    •  & Qiang Li

  • Article |

    Purely organic materials are generally insulating and while charge-carrier generation can provide electrical conductivity, it is rare for single-component systems. Here, symmetric hydrogen bonding between tetrathiafulvalene-based molecules gives rise to room-temperature conductivity and low pressure metallic state transitions.

    • Takayuki Isono
    • , Hiromichi Kamo
    •  & Hatsumi Mori

  • Article |

    The ability to control the magnetic order in a material with an electric field will enable low-power non-volatile memories and new types of computer logic. Ryanet al. demonstrate that europium titanate under moderate strain exhibits strong magnetoelectric coupling that could be valuable to this endeavour.

    • P. J. Ryan
    • , J-W Kim
    •  & D. G. Schlom

  • Article |

    Non-Abelian anyons are exotic quasiparticles envisioned to be promising candidates for solid-state quantum computation. Clarkeet al. propose a device fabricated from fractional quantum Hall states and superconductors that supports a new type of non-Abelian defect that binds parafermionic zero modes.

    • David J. Clarke
    • , Jason Alicea
    •  & Kirill Shtengel

  • Article |

    The collective gyrotropic excitation of an array of spin vortices has frequencies that depend on the polarities and chirality of individual vortices. This work demonstrates control of the spectral response of the system by tuning the excitation frequency or the external magnetic field.

    • S. Jain
    • , V. Novosad
    •  & S.D. Bader

  • Article |

    One of the many exotic characteristics of systems that exhibit the fractional quantum Hall effect is the presence of chiral edge modes that carry energy but no net charge. Gurman et al.demonstrate the use of quantum dots to transform this energy into a measurable current, enabling them to better probe these modes.

    • I. Gurman
    • , R. Sabo
    •  & D. Mahalu

  • Article |

    Colloidal quantum dots may be used in a variety of emerging technologies, particularly if charged states can be stabilized. Here, cadmium selenide core-shell nanocrystals are engineered for trion emission at low temperatures, and their finite size introduces an acoustic phonon bottleneck, inhibiting spin relaxation.

    • Mark J. Fernée
    • , Chiara Sinito
    •  & Brahim Lounis

  • Review Article |

    Hydrogels are water-containing polymer networks that have been applied in various biological settings. Burdick and Murphy review recent advances in the development of dynamic hydrogels whose properties and mechanics change in response to biological signals.

    • Jason A. Burdick
    •  & William L. Murphy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metamaterials can be designed with anisotropy, which tailors their optical properties to enable interesting functionalities. Here, the anisotropy of a Maltese-cross metamaterial is actively controlled by an actuator, allowing for tunable birefringence and dichroism in the terahertz frequency region.

    • W.M. Zhu
    • , A.Q. Liu
    •  & N.I. Zheludev

  • Article |

    Sub-wavelength structures can be used to convert between light and plasmon polaritons. Genevetet al. design holographic plasmonic interfaces that couple vortex light beams to surface plasmons, allowing them to detect the orbital angular momentum of the beam with a simple silicon photodiode.

    • Patrice Genevet
    • , Jiao Lin
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polymer-based actuators, which deform in response to external stimuli, may advance the understanding of biological movement or realization of soft robotics. Here, Harada et al. report a photo-responsive supramolecular hydrogel that displays expansion–contraction abilities owing to host–guest interactions.

    • Yoshinori Takashima
    • , Shogo Hatanaka
    •  & Akira Harada

  • Article |

    Nanowires with sharp interfaces between two different semiconducting materials could lead to useful nanoelectronic and nanophotonic structures. Hocevar et al.develop a method to integrate a gallium arsenide section in silicon nanowires with atomically sharp interfaces and no dislocations.

    • Moïra Hocevar
    • , George Immink
    •  & Erik Bakkers

  • Article |

    The 3D self-assembly of nanocrystals could generate materials with unique optical and electronic properties. Barrowet al. report the DNA-mediated assembly of symmetrical 3D gold tetrahedra, pentamers and hexamers, and elucidate their plasmon modes.

    • Steven J. Barrow
    • , Xingzhan Wei
    •  & Paul Mulvaney

  • Article |

    Organic electronic materials are promising candidates for applications in which flexible electronic devices are required. Yiet al. demonstrate a high-performance, flexible organic transistor based on solution-processed small molecules that can be fabricated with a simple, low-cost process.

    • Hee Taek Yi
    • , Marcia M. Payne
    •  & Vitaly Podzorov

  • Article |

    Heterogeneous composite materials, which are potentially useful for flexible electronics, are widespread in nature but synthetic examples are rare. Here, a site-specific hierarchical approach is used to fabricate composites with extreme local variations in elastic modulus and which are reversibly stretchable.

    • Rafael Libanori
    • , Randall M. Erb
    •  & André R. Studart

  • Article |

    The frictional force required to move a liquid drop on a surface is known to depend upon the drop resting time. N'guessan et al. demonstrate that water drops on graphene surfaces are an exception, which is attributable to the chemical homogeneity and stability of graphene surfaces.

    • Hartmann E. N’guessan
    • , Aisha Leh
    •  & Priyanka Wasnik

  • Article |

    Polariton condensates provide an arena in which to study interesting non-equilibrium condensate dynamics. Tosi et al. generate stable vortex lattices in a polariton condensate and study their macroscopic wavefunction, uncovering a nonlinear regime for topological defects at high densities.

    • G. Tosi
    • , G. Christmann
    •  & J.J. Baumberg

  • Article |

    Medium-range structural ordering is expected to exist in supercooled liquids yet direct probes of this are difficult to achieve. Capponi et al.report a new metastable phase of organic molecular glasses exhibiting long-living, highly enhanced orientational order above its glass transition temperature.

    • Simona Capponi
    • , Simone Napolitano
    •  & Michael Wübbenhorst

  • Article |

    Graphene and single-walled carbon nanotubes have high electrical conductivities and large specific surface areas. Here, these properties are extended into three dimensions by producing a seamless carbon nanotube graphene hybrid material.

    • Yu Zhu
    • , Lei Li
    •  & James M. Tour

  • Article |

    The potential use of graphene in spintronic devices is limited by its weak spin–orbit coupling. Marchenko et al. report an enhancement of the spin splitting in graphene due to hybridization with gold 5dorbitals, showing a very large Rashba spin–orbit splitting of about 100 meV.

    • D. Marchenko
    • , A. Varykhalov
    •  & O. Rader

  • Article |

    Crystalline material may be stabilized by complementary DNA interactions but its subsequent capacity for structural transformation is poorly understood. Here, by tuning the DNA handshaking between two sets of nanoparticles, a Martensitic transformation within the binary colloidal crystals is observed.

    • Marie T. Casey
    • , Raynaldo T. Scarlett
    •  & John C. Crocker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical activity resulting from electronic transitions in chiral inorganic materials is rare. Liu et al. report the synthesis of amino acid-derived amphiphile templated chiral TiO2fibres, which exhibit an optical response to polarized light resulting from valence to conduction band electronic transitions.

    • Shaohua Liu
    • , Lu Han
    •  & Shunai Che

  • Article |

    Understanding charge transport and the fundamental limits on conductivity in polymer semiconductors is important for improving device performance. Wanget al. report a transport regime close to band-like conduction and the observation of the Hall effect in an electrochemically-doped polymer semiconductor.

    • Shun Wang
    • , Mingjing Ha
    •  & C Leighton

  • Article |

    Metamaterial cloaks can manipulate light to effectively hide objects from view, but they mostly rely on rigid structures that are tailored specifically for the chosen object. Shin et al.demonstrate an elastic, smart metamaterial cloak that can adapt to a range of deformations and object sizes.

    • Dongheok Shin
    • , Yaroslav Urzhumov
    •  & David R. Smith

  • Article |

    Integration of different compounds with silica is important for developing small-scale optical devices, yet the high temperatures needed to build silica waveguides impose limits. Here, a room-temperature, self-assembly approach is shown, which produces long microwires containing nanodiamonds or organic dyes.

    • Masood Naqshbandi
    • , John Canning
    •  & Maxwell J. Crossley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Control of spin statistics by spin injection from ferromagnetic electrodes has been shown to achieve only weak effects in organic optoelectronic devices. Wang et al.use instead polarization of spins after injection, at high magnetic fields and low temperatures, achieving a 50% change in device characteristics.

    • Jianpu Wang
    • , Alexei Chepelianskii
    •  & Neil C. Greenham

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