Engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • 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

  • Article |

    The assembly of nanoparticles into stoichiometry-controlled structures could lead to materials with novel properties and functions. Here, reaction systems are developed, which allow the rational assembly of differently functionalized gold nanoparticles (A and B) to give AB, AB2, AB3 and AB4nanoclusters.

    • Yong Wang
    • , Gang Chen
    •  & Hongyu Chen

  • Article |

    Multifunctional imaging probes are important in bionanotechnology. In this paper, the authors show that nanoparticles with magnetic cores, thin gold shells and an organic spacer layer support a novel magnetomotive photoacoustic imaging mode, and enhance contrast with respect to conventional imaging techniques.

    • Yongdong Jin
    • , Congxian Jia
    •  & Xiaohu Gao

  • Article |

    Miniaturizing fuel cells for biological applications is challenging due to poor performance at these small scales. Now Gao and coworkers show that electrodes made with porous microfibers composed of oriented carbon nanotubes are capable of delivering fast mass transport of the reagents and greatly enhanced currents.

    • Feng Gao
    • , Lucie Viry
    •  & Nicolas Mano

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