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The development of new membrane materials for chemical separations is progressing rapidly, and their commercial success will require a more concerted effort from academia and industry.
Membrane materials provide economical means to achieve various separation processes — and their capabilities for processing organic fluids look set to expand significantly.
Andrew Livingston (Imperial College London) and Richard Baker (Membrane Technology and Research) talk to Nature Materials about the perks and pitfalls of membrane research and development, and how activities at the new Barrer Centre might lead to next-generation separation technologies.
A new report demonstrates an innovative approach to aligning crystallites of metal–organic frameworks such that thin films are created with oriented channels — potentially overcoming one of the major barriers to application of these highly topical materials.
Spectral hole burning is now demonstrated with phonons in amorphous systems, leading to highly reduced phonon dissipation and, therefore, long phonon lifetimes.
Liquid and gas purification using membrane materials permits a wide range of critical industrial processes, and here it is discussed how they might achieve molecular selectivity.
A theoretically proposed photonic crystal design with valley-dependent spin-split bulk bands allows for the independent control of valley and topology in a single system.
Heart-on-a-chip devices with integrated strain gauges for direct readout of tissue contractile strength allow for multiplexed drug-dose experiments and studies of functional maturation of cardiac tissue.
Spin-current-induced magnetization reversal of a perpendicularly magnetized thulium iron garnet film is reported. The spin current is driven by the current flowing through a Pt overlayer.
Acoustically opaque glass can regain its transparency through coherently driven fields. Combining experiments and theory, the phononic saturation process is presented as analogous to the spectral hole burning process.
Domain walls in ferroelectrics are known to be conductive, but details of the precise mechanism are elusive. Atomic-scale structural and chemical characterization of domain walls in BiFeO3 now reveals a build-up of charged defects.
Polar terminations are crucial to control the properties of surfaces, but they are intrinsically unstable. Entropic configurational contributions are now demonstrated to have a predominant role in the stability of CeO2(100) surface termination.
In photosynthesis the oxidation of water is a requirement for providing sufficient protons and electrons for fuel formation. A biphasic water splitting catalyst tailored for integration with high-performance semiconductor photoanodes is now reported.
The use of diamondoids as structure-directing agents allows the synthesis of metal–organic chalcogenide nanowires with an inorganic core having a three-atom cross-section and band-like conductivity.
Small molecular additives incorporated into films of conjugate polymers are shown to fill the voids present in the polymer network. As a result, the stability of organic transistors based on these materials is significantly improved.
Ternary organic blends using two non-fullerene acceptors are shown to improve the efficiency and stability of low-cost solar cells based on P3HT and of high-performance photovoltaic devices based on low-bandgap donor polymers.
A new model for collagen intrafibrillar mineralization shows the need for a balance between osmotic equilibrium and electroneutrality to establish Gibbs–Donnan equilibrium.
Mesenchymal stem cells primed on soft silicone substrates suppress fibrogenesis and are desensitized against subsequent mechanical activation in vitro and in vivo.
