LATEST CONTENT

Focus

China

Focus issue

Since the opening of the country to the outside world thirty years ago, the output of scientific publications in materials science from China has risen from almost nowhere into now being the third largest in the world. In this special issue of Nature Materials we take a look at this rapid development in China.


Current issue

Cellular engineering

Letter by Gillette et al.

The contractile forces of cells can cause extracellular matrices to detach from their surroundings, which is problematic for biological studies and tissue engineering. Now, multiple phases of cell-seeded hydrogels can be integrated using a collagen-fibre-mediated method, resulting in the construction of well-defined and stable patterns of three-dimensional matrices.


Current issue

Crystals are the answer

Article by Shportko et al.

Although phase-change materials are of significant importance for optical and electronic information storage applications, the search for new materials so far has been based on empirical methods. Now, the discovery that their crystalline phase shows resonant bonding opens the way to a deterministic search for new phase-change materials.


Current issue

Lithium intercalation

Article by Delmas et al.

Although lithium iron phosphate is a promising electrode material for lithium-ion batteries, its intercalation mechanism remains unclear. Characterization by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy demonstrates that the lithium deintercalation process occurs as a wave moving through the crystal, and can be described by a domino-cascade model.


Current issue

One of the obstacles in using nanocrystals as fluorophores is that they tend to blink. This was though to be a very general feature. Now, very-high-quality core–shell CdSe/CdS nanocrystals showing highly reduced blinking have been grown. The reduced blinking seems to be related to the thickness of the CdS shell and the high quality of the core–shell interfaces.


Current issue

How tough is bone?

Article by Koester et al.

The propagation of sub-millimetre cracks reveals how the numerous internal structural dimensions in bone give rise to orientation and scale variation in its toughness. The true transverse toughness of cortical bone was found to be far higher than previously reported.



Extra navigation

Subscribe to Nature Materials

Subscribe


natureproducts


ADVERTISEMENT