Materials for devices articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marangoni swimmers have high relative speed, considering the body length and absence of a mechanical system but the fabricating is complex. Song et al. transform simple pen strokes into dynamic, programmable robots that can ‘swim’ with striking versatility.

    • Seo Woo Song
    • , Sumin Lee
    •  & Jiyun Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While reservoir computing can process temporal information efficiently, its hardware implementation remains a challenge due to the lack of robust and energy efficient hardware. Here, the authors develop an all-ferroelectric reservoir computing system, showing high accuracies and low power consumptions in various tasks like the time-series prediction.

    • Zhiwei Chen
    • , Wenjie Li
    •  & Jun-Ming Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Isotropization temperature determines the temperature at which Liquid Crystals Elastomer (LCE) material actuates. Here, the authors give a general strategy based on dynamic covalent bonds for tuning the isotropization temperature for LCEs.

    • Yanjin Yao
    • , Enjian He
    •  & Yan Ji

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The application of multivariate gas sensors is limited due to their size and cost. Here the authors developed a compact gas sensor with multiple chemiresistive and potentiometric readouts enabling 3D discriminative response of gases at (sub)ppm levels and used the sensor for early fire detection.

    • Hong Zhang
    • , Zuobin Zhang
    •  & Jianxin Yi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Future intelligent vision systems need efficient capacitor-free spiking photoreceptor for color perception. Here, Wang et al. report a metal oxide-based vertically integrated spiking cone photoreceptor array which transduces light into spike trains with a power consumption of less than 400 picowatts.

    • Xiangjing Wang
    • , Chunsheng Chen
    •  & Qing Wan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energy harvesting by utilizing optical control has emerged as a promising solution to alleviate energy and environmental crisis. However, it is challenging to realise nano-scale energy storage and conversion in the same material. Here the authors report a nonferroelectric molecular [CoGa] crystal that uses light as an external stimulus to exhibit photoenergy conversion and energy storage properties.

    • Pritam Sadhukhan
    • , Shu-Qi Wu
    •  & Osamu Sato

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient selector devices remains a challenge. Here, the authors propose a CuAg alloy-based selector with excellent ON/OFF ratio and thermal stability. It can effectively suppress the sneak-path current in 1S1R arrays, making it suitable for storage class memory and neuromorphic computing applications.

    • Xi Zhou
    • , Liang Zhao
    •  & Dongdong Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Insect-scale untethered micro aerial vehicles such as artificial dandelion devices suffer from high flight randomness and inadequate controllability. Chen et al. design and fabricate an untethered dandelion-inspired microflier, which is spatially and temporally controlled by an ultralight and supersensitive light-driven bimorph soft actuator.

    • Yuanhao Chen
    • , Cristian Valenzuela
    •  & Wei Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient photonic neuromorphic systems remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop a new class of memristor sensitive to the dual electro-optical history obtained by exploiting electrochemical, photovoltaic and photo-assisted oxygen ion motion effects at a high temperature superconductor / semiconductor interface.

    • Ralph El Hage
    • , Vincent Humbert
    •  & Javier E. Villegas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temperature-induced insulator-to-metal transitions are usually accompanied by structural phase transitions. Here the authors demonstrate an enhancement of the electrical conductance in a thin film of a biologically relevant metal-organic framework, without noticeable change in the structure, assigned to be of mainly electronic origin.

    • Pooja Sindhu
    • , K. S. Ananthram
    •  & Nirmalya Ballav

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A central goal of spintronics is electric control of magnetism. One particularly promising method makes use of spin-orbit torques which arise due to the combination of electric current, and the intrinsic spin-orbit effect in a material. Here, Grezes et al demonstrate non-volatile electrical control of the spin-orbit torque generated at the interface between an oxide and a metal.

    • Cécile Grezes
    • , Aurélie Kandazoglou
    •  & Jean-Philippe Attané

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing functional density is desirable for future scaling of electronics. Here, the authors use a nanowire ferroelectric tunnel field-effect transistor to achieve reconfigurable signal modulations for low-power and high-density analogue circuits.

    • Zhongyunshen Zhu
    • , Anton E. O. Persson
    •  & Lars-Erik Wernersson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    2D semiconductors with nonlinear optical properties hold promise for multifunction integration in electronic-photonic integrated circuits. Here, the authors report the synthesis of 2D SnP2Se6 and its integration with a SiN photonic platform, showing strong odd-even layer-independent second harmonic generation activity at 1550 nm and broadband photoresponse.

    • Cheng-Yi Zhu
    • , Zimeng Zhang
    •  & Cheng-Yan Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The complex coupling between charge-carriers and phonons in bismuth oxyiodide (BiOI) are uncovered, showing how carrier localisation is avoided and long transport lengths achieved. As a result, BiOI is revealed to be highly effective for X-ray detection.

    • Robert A. Jagt
    • , Ivona Bravić
    •  & Robert L. Z. Hoye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite advances in additive manufacturing of piezoceramics, resultant transducers generally suffer from high porosity, weak piezoelectric responses, and limited geometry. Here, authors report the design and printing of fully packaged freeform ultrasonic transducers capable of traveling inside mm-sized channels and deliver localized high ultrasound energy.

    • Haotian Lu
    • , Huachen Cui
    •  & Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The integration of high-κ dielectric layers with 2D semiconductors is essential for electronic applications, but remains challenging. Here the authors report a dry transfer method of wafer-scale Al2O3 and HfO2 thin films for the realization of top-gated monolayer MoS2 transistors and logic gates.

    • Zheyi Lu
    • , Yang Chen
    •  & Yuan Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ionic-junction devices are difficult to integrate with fiber-shaped tissues like nerves and muscles for applications in implantable bioelectronics due to their large size and bulk structure. Authors realize here easy to implant fiber-shaped iontronics through an integrated opposite charge grafting process, enabling the construction of ionic logic gates and artificial neural pathways.

    • Yi Xing
    • , Mingjie Zhou
    •  & Gang Wang

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    This comment explores ethical aspects in developing and testing minimal-risk devices, such as wearables and biomedical sensors. Authors outline the process of independent review, emphasizing the different levels of review depending on the research design and risk level. They also share examples of practical scenarios, highlighting key ethical considerations.

    • Anna Wexler
    •  & Emily Largent

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensing and processing UV light is essential for advanced artificial visual perception system. Here, the authors report a controllable UV-ultrasensitive neuromorphic vision sensor using organic phototransistors to integrate sensing, memory and processing functions, and perform the static image and dynamic movie recognition.

    • Ting Jiang
    • , Yiru Wang
    •  & Wenping Hu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stretchable and degradable elastomers are crucial for developing transient and bioresorbable electronics. Herein, Han et al. tuned the diverse properties of biodegradable PLCL elastomers and demonstrated their application in soft, perceptive robotic grippers and transient, suture-free cardiac jackets.

    • Won Bae Han
    • , Gwan-Jin Ko
    •  & Suk-Won Hwang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing the speed of magnetization switching is an obvious pathway to improve spintronic device performance. However, very fast magnetization switching is accompanied by instabilities. Here, Gidding et al study these instabilities using optical pumping, and show that instability generated spin-waves can achieve a high enough amplitude to drive switching of the magnetization, with a distinctive coherent pattern.

    • M. Gidding
    • , T. Janssen
    •  & A. Kirilyuk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In order to be used on a large scale, unclonable tags for anti-counterfeiting should allow mass production at low cost, as well as fast and easy authentication. Here, the authors show how to use one-step annealing of gold films to quickly realize robust tags with high capacity, allowing fast deep-learning based authentication via smartphone readout.

    • Ningfei Sun
    • , Ziyu Chen
    •  & Qian Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dynamic machine vision requires recognizing the past and predicting the future of moving objects. Here, the authors demonstrate retinomorphic photomemristor networks with inherent dynamic memory for accurate motion recognition and prediction.

    • Hongwei Tan
    •  & Sebastiaan van Dijken

  • Article
    | Open Access

    2D COFs are promising for resistance-related applications, but usually form powders where poor contacts at grain boundaries inhibit the conductivity. Here authors show that halide perovskites can act as electric glues to bond 2D COFs to improve their conductivity, activating them to detect NO2 with high selectivity and sensitivity.

    • Wen Ye
    • , Liangdan Zhao
    •  & Jian-Mei Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electroadhesion in soft robotics provides controllable interfacial attraction for robotic functionalities but materials selection is limited. Here, Gao et. al. present an iontronic adhesive to design a soft iontronic gripper with self-healability, tunable adhesion at reduced voltages and rapid release.

    • Dace Gao
    • , Gurunathan Thangavel
    •  & Pooi See Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing an infrared machine vision system that can efficiently perceive, convert, and process a massive amount of data remains a challenge. Here, the authors present a retina-inspired 2D optoelectronic device based on van der Waals heterostructure that can perform the data perception and spike-encoding simultaneously for night vision, sensing, spectroscopy, and free-space communications.

    • Fakun Wang
    • , Fangchen Hu
    •  & Qi Jie Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Small-scale manipulation of liquids is being controlled with bulky pumps or power sources. Dradrach et al. show a light-driven pumping of micro-liter liquid using a centimeter-long liquid crystal elastomer strip.

    • Klaudia Dradrach
    • , Michał Zmyślony
    •  & Piotr Wasylczyk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Origami-inspired engineering has enabled intelligent materials and structures to react to environments, yet a complete sense-decide-act autonomous loop is still challenging. Yan et al. introduce autonomous origami robots by embedding sensing, computing, and actuating in compliant, conductive materials.

    • Wenzhong Yan
    • , Shuguang Li
    •  & Ankur Mehta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pure organic room-temperature phosphorescencent materials draw much attention but realising electroluminescence under electric excitation is challenging. Here the authors propose a donor-oxygen-acceptor molecular design realizing aggregation-induced organic room-temperature electrophosphorescence with high external quantum efficiency.

    • Lulin Xu
    • , Yuhang Mo
    •  & Junqiao Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooperative transitions have acquired much attention for low transition barriers, ultrafast kinetics, and structural reversibility but cooperative transitions are rare in molecular crystals and their origin is poorly understood. Here the authors show that reorientation of the alkyl side chains in a 2-dimensional quinoidal terthiophene triggers cooperative behavior, and establish alkyl chain engineering to control the polymorphic behavior.

    • Daniel William Davies
    • , Bumjoon Seo
    •  & Ying Diao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dielectric elastomers (DEs) are widely used in soft actuators but existing DE actuators often require high driving electrical fields. Here the authors demonstrate that introducing cyanoethyl cellulose into plasticized PVC gel confers high dielectric permittivity and allows the fabrication of elastomer actuators with high permittivity and low viscoelasticity

    • Jianjian Huang
    • , Xiaodie Zhang
    •  & Dongjie Guo

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