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Medical professionals and robotics engineers count on materials scientists for the development of electronic skins with lifelike tactile sensing capabilities.
Tactile sensors provide robots with the ability to interact with humans and the environment with great accuracy, yet technical challenges remain for electronic-skin systems to reach human-level performance.
The observations of unusual edge properties in scanning tunnelling spectroscopy and the predicted band structure in photoemission spectra of a monolayer FeSe superconductor reveal its non-trivial topological nature.
New findings suggest that the mechanical stretching of layered crystals can transform them from a polar to a nonpolar state. This could spur the design of multifunctional materials controlled by an electric field.
Strain engineering can tune a manganite film into an antiferromagnetic insulating state whose extreme photo-susceptibility allows for the ordinary ferromagnetic metal state to then be transiently realized.
Nanoparticles of gallium deposited on a sapphire substrate, which are now shown to remain stable in a state of solid/liquid coexistence across a temperature window wider than 600 K, may prove useful for studying the properties of solid/liquid interfaces and in plasmonic or catalytic applications.
Drug-loaded liposomes functionalized with proteins from the cell membrane of leukocytes target inflamed tissues without eliciting a substantial immune response.
This Review discusses the materials and electronic requirements for flexible sensors and electronic systems to mimic the mechanical and sensing properties of natural skin, with the goal of providing artificial prostheses with sensing capabilities.
Epitaxial strain is known to induce and enhance ferroelectricity in thin films of complex oxides. It is now shown that a polar-to-nonpolar transition might also occur.
Strain engineering can ‘hide’ the ordinal ferrometallic state in manganite films, pushing the system to a metastable state, which can then be controlled through photoexcitation.
Single-cell mechanical homeostasis is found to be driven by the mechanosensitive, collective subcellular dynamics of cytoskeletal tension and focal adhesions.
Molecular materials are shown to have asymmetry in their elastic modulus and coefficient of thermal expansion in tension and compression, associated with terminal chemical groups that alter network connectivity.
Coherent population-trapping studies of a single hole spin in quantum dot field-effect devices with low charge-noise performance provide insight into the anisotropy of the hole hyperfine interaction between hole and nuclear spins.
X-ray scattering and density functional theory calculations reveal that ligand-induced tensile stress can distort the rock-salt structure of small PbS and PbSe colloidal quantum dots, creating a Pb-deficient core surrounded by a Pb-enriched shell.
A real-time investigation shows that Ga nanoparticles in the solid γ-phase coexist with liquid Ga at a broad range of temperatures, as a result of nanoscale confinement, Laplace pressure and epitaxial matching with the substrate.
Increasing the edge concentration of metallic MoS2 nanosheets will improve their electrocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution. The activity of MoS2 can now be enhanced by facilitating electron injection from the electrode to the catalyst.
The chemical instability of perovskite oxide surfaces limits their energy conversion performance. Significantly enhanced electrochemical stability in a model perovskite electrocatalyst has now been achieved using less reducible cations.
Zeolites encapsulating clusters of silver offer interesting optical properties. Here it is shown how the interactions between these clusters and the framework can be tuned to achieve photoluminescence quantum yields approaching unity.
A biocompatible and biodegradable mesostructured form of silicon is used to make lipid-bilayer-supported bioelectric interfaces that can optically modulate the electrophysiology of single dorsal root ganglia neurons.
Results from a model soap foam consisting of compressible spherical bubbles suggest that soft glassy rheology results from emergent fractal geometry in the foam’s energy landscape.
Lipid nanoparticles incorporating proteins from the leukocyte plasma membrane retain the properties of liposomal formulations and enable delivery of drugs to inflamed tissues.
