Materials for devices articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Significant attention has been devoted to understanding the low-electric-field properties of carriers in moiré graphene, but high-electric-field transport has not been as well explored. Here, the authors find non-monotonic transport behavior at moiré minigaps due to competition between inter-band tunneling and coupling to out-of-equilibrium phonons.

    • Jubin Nathawat
    • , Ishiaka Mansaray
    •  & Jonathan P. Bird

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Doping is widely adopted to make organic semiconductors more conductive, yet the impact of molecular electronic properties on doping performance is still not fully understood. Armleder et al. compute host-dopant interactions and show that a short-range overscreening effect strongly affects conductivity.

    • Jonas Armleder
    • , Tobias Neumann
    •  & Artem Fediai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Van der Waals magnetic materials, which maintain their magnetic ordering down to a monolayer have been found to host a variety of spin textures, including topological spin textures such as skyrmions. Here, Khela et al. demonstrate laser induced topological switching, between skyrmions, anti-skyrmions and stripe domains in CrGeTe3.

    • Maya Khela
    • , Maciej Da̧browski
    •  & Elton J. G. Santos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing tactile sensors with high spatial resolution are crucial to manufacture large scale flexible electronics. Here, the authors develop a micro-cage structure by exploiting photo-reticulated strain localization films (prslPDMS), which shows the strain local confinement effect and could be used to prepare ultralow crosstalk sensor arrays.

    • Yufei Zhang
    • , Qiuchun Lu
    •  & Junyi Zhai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The recombination between electrons and holes in electroluminescence processes has never been directly evaluated. Here, Yasuji et al. directly visualize, with spectroscopic techniques, operation dynamics in light-emitting electrochemical cells during device operation, leading to a rapid device evaluation.

    • Kosuke Yasuji
    • , Tomo Sakanoue
    •  & Katsuichi Kanemoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Printed organic and inorganic electronics continue to be of large interest for several applications. Here, the authors propose laser printing as a facile process for fabricating printed electronics with minimum feature sizes below 1 µm and demonstrate functional diodes, memristors, and physically unclonable functions.

    • Liang Yang
    • , Hongrong Hu
    •  & Martin Wegener

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coupling electromagnetic radiation with matter is promising to tailor optoelectronics properties of functional materials. Here, the authors demonstrate that internal fields induced by coherent lattice motions can be used to control transient excitonic optical response in halide perovskite crystals.

    • Xuan Trung Nguyen
    • , Katrin Winte
    •  & Antonietta De Sio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Surface wear is a major hindrance in the solid/solid interface of triboelectric nanogenerators, severely affecting output performance and stability. Here, authors show metallic glass as one triboelectric interface can enhance the triboelectrification efficiency and endow the device with humidity- and wear-resistance.

    • Xin Xia
    • , Ziqing Zhou
    •  & Yunlong Zi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Laminated van der Waals (vdW) metallic electrodes can improve the contact of 2D electronic devices, but their scalability is usually limited by the transfer process. Here, the authors report a strategy to deposit vdW contacts onto various 2D and 3D semiconductors at the wafer scale.

    • Lingan Kong
    • , Ruixia Wu
    •  & Yuan Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanochannels in laminated graphene oxide nanosheets featuring confined mass transport have attracted interest in multiple research fields. As an important aspect for efficient pressure-driven membrane processes, authors investigate the response and deformation behaviours of such nanochannels to different external conditions.

    • Kecheng Guan
    • , Yanan Guo
    •  & Hideto Matsuyama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Treating acute disease like anaphylaxis is challenging due to the inability to administer therapeutics in a timely manner and regulate pharmacokinetics precisely within a short time window. Here the authors develop active acoustic metamaterials-driven transdermal drug delivery for rapid and on-demand acute disease management.

    • Junhua Xu
    • , Hongwei Cai
    •  & Feng Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Manipulating electrical and magnetic anisotropies will stimulate multi-terminal device applications. Here, the authors discover axis dependence of current rectifications, magnetic properties and magnon modes in van der Waals multiferroic CuCrP2S6.

    • Xiaolei Wang
    • , Zixuan Shang
    •  & Jianhua Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Developing an artificial olfactory system that can mimic the biological functions remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop an artificial chemosensory synapse based on a flexible organic electrochemical transistor gated by the potential generated by the interaction of gas molecules with ions in a chemoreceptive ionogel.

    • Hamna Haq Chouhdry
    • , Dong Hyun Lee
    •  & Nae-Eung Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-healing materials hold great promise for applications in wearable electronics, artificial muscles and soft robots but selfhealing at subzero temperatures remains a great challenge. Here, the authors present a robust subzero healable glassy polymer by incorporating polyphenol nano-assemblies with a large number of end groups into polymerizable deep eutectic solvent elastomers.

    • Nan Wang
    • , Xin Yang
    •  & Xinxing Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Development of Soft shape-memory materials is often limited to the synthesis of two-dimensional specimens and rely on bending mechanisms and scaffolding topology to perform three-dimensional morphing. Here, the authors demonstrate a shape-memory composite material made from main-chain liquid crystal elastomer microparticles dispersed in a silicone polymer matrix which enables molding into full-volume objects of any shape or size.

    • Matej Bobnar
    • , Nikita Derets
    •  & Andraž Rešetič

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metasurface-based antennas show variable beam-patterns in response to the time width of electromagnetic pulses. This concept advances the design of antennas and wireless communication environments by using the pulse width as a new degree of freedom.

    • Daiju Ushikoshi
    • , Riku Higashiura
    •  & Hiroki Wakatsuchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conductive materials with tissue-matched softness are needed for ultra-soft electronics. Here, the authors report ultra-soft and conductive bottlebrush elastomer composites and fabricate them into electronics with laser cutting and 3D printing methods.

    • Pengfei Xu
    • , Shaojia Wang
    •  & Xinyu Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient photonic neuromorphic systems remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop an in-sensor Reservoir Computing system for multi-tasked pattern classification based on a light-responsive semiconducting polymer (p-NDI) with efficient exciton dissociations, charge trapping capability, and through-space charge-transport characteristics.

    • Xiaosong Wu
    • , Shaocong Wang
    •  & Weiguo Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A suppressed energy loss through Dexter energy transfer is crucial to achieve highly efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes. Here, authors synthesize quadrupolar donor-acceptor-donor type thermally activated delayed fluorescence sensitizers and realize device with maximum efficiency of 43.9%.

    • Hyuna Lee
    • , Ramanaskanda Braveenth
    •  & Jang Hyuk Kwon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bilayer sensors and sensor arrays with a catalytic CeO2 filter are proposed as a facile platform for high-performance gas sensors and electronic noses. Authors show the bilayer sensors enhance selectivity toward aromatic compounds, and the arrays provide comprehensive information such as gas concentration and composition.

    • Seong-Yong Jeong
    • , Young Kook Moon
    •  & Jong-Heun Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermal analogues to electrical transistors offer the potential for heat flow switching and amplification. Here, the authors demonstrate a macroscopic magnetic thermal transistor with applications in thermal control and thermal logic circuits.

    • Lorenzo Castelli
    • , Qing Zhu
    •  & Geoff Wehmeyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exploiting the electrical and mechanical properties of CNT films remain elusive because of the difficult material process. Here, Wang et al. report multifunctional MWCNT films with crystalline structure which exhibited great electromagnetic interference shielding efficiency, high thermoelectric power factor, and large ampacity.

    • Hong Wang
    • , Xu Sun
    •  & Junjie Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The limitation in metal-semiconductor contact has been a major challenge for high-performance organic field-effect transistors. Here, the authors fabricate the contact by transferring platinum electrode on solution-processed organic films, realizing ultralow total contact resistance down to 14 Ω ∙ cm.

    • Junpeng Zeng
    • , Daowei He
    •  & Xinran Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing ultrathin and flexible antenna is of great interest for efficient wireless data communication and transmission at fast-growing IoT applications. The authors report a flexible ultrawideband Ti3C2 monopole antenna by combining strategies of interfacial modification and advanced extrusion printing technology.

    • Weiwei Zhao
    • , Hao Ni
    •  & Qiang Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The surface localized charges in colloidal quantum dots induce a degradation that limits the electroluminescence performance. Here, Chen et al. propose quantum dots with monmonotonically-graded core/shell/shell structures to boost the device’s performance by reducing the surface-bulk coupling.

    • Xingtong Chen
    • , Xiongfeng Lin
    •  & Song Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing scaled electronic devices for neuromorphic applications remains a challenge. Here, Zhang et al. develop an artificial molecular synapse based on self-assembled peptide molecule monolayer whose conductance can be dynamically modulated and used for waveform recognition.

    • Yuchun Zhang
    • , Lin Liu
    •  & Yong Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of sensitive hydrogel sensor without additional mobile ionic species is challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate force-induced ion generation in a skin sensor based on zwitterionic hydrogel, and build a throat-worn silent-speech recognition system with high recognition accuracy.

    • Sijia Xu
    • , Jie-Xiang Yu
    •  & Lei Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exploration of deep sea areas relies on sonar and other visual and auditory sensors, but gaining information via temperature sensing in deep sea areas is difficult to realize. Here, the authors design an elastic, self-healable and sensitive thermal sensor which can identify a temperature difference as low as 0.01 K with a resolution of 0.001 K

    • Yucheng Zhang
    • , Dekai Ye
    •  & Chao Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft robotics holds promise for realizing easy control over complex locomotion and deformation. Lin et al. report an earthworm-inspired untethered magnetic robot that consists one-piece-mold folded diaphragm to achieve large three-dimensional deformation with inside-volume change capability.

    • Dezhao Lin
    • , Fan Yang
    •  & Ruihong Li

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Materials for devices across other nature.com journals