Mechanical engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensitivity-dependent data analysis methods disrupted the development of artificial olfactory technologies. Here, authors present a data-centric artificial olfactory system based on eigengraph that reflects the intrinsic electrochemical interaction.

    • Seung-Hyun Sung
    • , Jun Min Suh
    •  & Seong Chan Jun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Developing superior structural materials has been challenging because of the inherent conflict between their strength and toughness. Here, the authors use 3D-printing to produce a high-entropy alloy with a microstructure resembling nano-bridged honeycomb structure with good strength and toughness.

    • Punit Kumar
    • , Sheng Huang
    •  & Robert O. Ritchie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional desalination processes generate clean water and reject brine to sea, which is harmful to the aquatic life. Here, the authors propose a low- cost scalable and foldable mangrove-mimetic device for solar thermal distillation and passive salt collection without brine discharge.

    • Mohamed A. Abdelsalam
    • , Muhammad Sajjad
    •  & TieJun Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Four-dimensional (4D) printing ceramics is a challenge due to their weak deformability. Here, the authors report a hydrogel-dehydration-driven direct 4D printing approach, enabling simple and efficient manufacturing of various complex ceramic objects

    • Rong Wang
    • , Chao Yuan
    •  & Qi Ge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Handheld robots are limited in controllable degrees of freedom, which can result in lower dexterity for clinical applications. Here, Wang et al. report a handheld time-share driven robot with one motor that powers multiple motion modules for high-dextrous operation.

    • Yunjiang Wang
    • , Xinben Hu
    •  & Haoran Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In existing soft robotic sensing strategies, additional components and design changes are often required to sense the environment. Zou et al. introduce a retrofit self-sensing strategy for soft pneumatic actuators, utilizing internal pressure variations arising from interactions.

    • Shibo Zou
    • , Sergio Picella
    •  & Johannes T. B. Overvelde

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drones are an effective and flexible tool for safety assessment of aging infrastructure, especially in locations with challenging accessibility. Here, authors demonstrate a phase-based sampling moiré technique with a drone for measurement of millimeter-scale infrastructural displacement in bridges.

    • Shien Ri
    • , Jiaxing Ye
    •  & Norihiko Ogura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambiguity in human-oriented traffic laws poses a significant challenge to the regulation of self-driving vehicles. Here, the authors present a trigger-based hierarchical online compliance monitor for self-assessment of self-driving vehicles using ambiguous compliance threshold selection principles.

    • Wenhao Yu
    • , Chengxiang Zhao
    •  & Ding Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors demonstrate highly stretchable conductive porous elastomers that can achieve up to 1200% strain with low or negative Poisson’s ratios by uniaxial, biaxial, and triaxial hot-pressing strategies.

    • Xiaoyu Zhang
    • , Qi Sun
    •  & Guoqing Zu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A shellular is a micro-architectured material, composed of a continuous smooth-curved thin shell in the form of a triply periodic minimal surface. Here, authors propose schellular designs applied to pressure vessels and demonstrate its competitive practical features against spherical and cylindrical vessels.

    • Yoon Chang Jeong
    • , Seung Chul Han
    •  & Kiju Kang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Timely detection of moving events in a scene plays a vital role in autonomous robots. In this work, authors develop a method to detect moving events from lidar points, achieving a temporal resolution in the order of microseconds.

    • Huajie Wu
    • , Yihang Li
    •  & Fu Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The unequal distribution of medical resources means that bronchoscopic services are often unavailable in underdeveloped areas. Here, the authors present an AI co-pilot bronchoscope robot that features a user-friendly plug-and-play catheter and an AI-human shared control algorithm, to enable novice doctors to conduct lung examinations safely.

    • Jingyu Zhang
    • , Lilu Liu
    •  & Haojian Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is still challenging to study the atomistic mechanism of inelastic deformation in metallic glasses owing to their amorphous structure. Here, the authors report an anomalous temperature dependence of the onset of plasticity in metallic glasses at low temperature.

    • Yifan Wang
    • , Jing Liu
    •  & Wei Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Generating microfluidic droplets with application-specific desired characteristics is hard. Here the authors report fluid-agnostic machine learning models capable of accurately predicting device geometries and flow conditions required to generate stable single and double emulsions.

    • Ali Lashkaripour
    • , David P. McIntyre
    •  & Polly M. Fordyce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventionally, a continuous motion or “dynamic friction” is expected to take place after the initial rupture under friction. Here, the authors perform direct measurement of real contact and slip at the frictional interface and show that the secondary rupture takes place after each initial rupture.

    • Songlin Shi
    • , Meng Wang
    •  & Jay Fineberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The epidermal surface of leaves and flower petals often display cells with wavy geometries. Here the authors provide evidence that this pattern represents an energy-efficient mechanism to protect plants from deleterious surface fissures and toughen the plants’ protective surface.

    • Amir J. Bidhendi
    • , Olivier Lampron
    •  & Anja Geitmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Contact electrification triggers gas breakdown. Using Coulomb force to estimate voltage, this work provides experimental evidence for the Paschen curves that govern such discharge.

    • Hongcheng Tao
    •  & James Gibert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the pursuit of advancing laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology, researchers have successfully converged the realms of sound and light. Here, the authors unveil the synergistic potential of synchronized x-ray imaging and acoustics to illuminate hidden instabilities in LPBF process.

    • Milad Hamidi Nasab
    • , Giulio Masinelli
    •  & Roland E. Logé

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors demonstrate a low-force and energy-efficient elastocaloric air cooling approach based on coil-bending of NiTi ribbons/wires. The device achieves continuous cold outlet airflow with a temperature drop of 10.6 K and a specific cooling power of 2.5 W g−1 at a low specific driving force of 26 N g−1.

    • Xueshi Li
    • , Peng Hua
    •  & Qingping Sun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors report a controllable third-order cusp singularity in the phase-tracked closed-loop oscillation of two coupled mechanical modes. This finding addresses the challenge of constructing and controlling higher-order singularities.

    • Xin Zhou
    • , Xingjing Ren
    •  & Hui Jing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Breakthrough ultrasonic imaging captures objects behind barriers. Leveraging Fabry-Perot resonance with a unique resonance-tailoring panel, our method allows imaging through high-impedance barriers helping to revolutionise underwater and brain imaging.

    • Chung Il Park
    • , Seungah Choe
    •  & Yoon Young Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pumping fluids at small scales near fluid-fluid interfaces remains challenging. Pandey et al. present a pump that drives interfacial flow by traveling waves on a deformable boundary.

    • Anupam Pandey
    • , Zih-Yin Chen
    •  & Sunghwan Jung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Efficient production of MSC secretome for therapeutic applications remains a challenging task. Here, the authors present an approach whereby an acoustofluidic mechanobiological environment can form reproducible 3D MSC aggregates, allowing for secretome production with high efficiency.

    • Ye He
    • , Shujie Yang
    •  & Tony Jun Huang

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Optimisation tasks in the inverse design of metamaterials with machine learning were limited due to the representations of generative models. Here the author comments a recent publication in Nature Communications which generates a latent space representation that unlocks non-linear optimisations.

    • Angkur Jyoti Dipanka Shaikeea

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Truss metamaterials are ubiquitous but their vast design space is far from fully explored. Here, authors use machine learning to present a unified, continuous latent space description, enabling the rapid generation of trusses with tunable or exceptional linear and nonlinear mechanical properties.

    • Li Zheng
    • , Konstantinos Karapiperis
    •  & Dennis M. Kochmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This work demonstrates a wind-powered device for cooling permafrost in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Composed of a windmill, mechanical clutch, and a heat exchanger with a phase change material, pilot experiments show soil temperature reduction with superior efficiency compared to traditional thermosyphons.

    • Yinghong Qin
    • , Tianyu Wang
    •  & Weixin Yuan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Direct methane protonic ceramic fuel cells are promising electrochemical energy conversion devices. However, their performance and stability remain challenging. Here, the authors develop a self-assembled Ni-Rh bimetallic catalyst which shows great enhancements in power output and long-term operational sustainability.

    • Kyungpyo Hong
    • , Mingi Choi
    •  & Jongsup Hong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Future robots require compact sensing architectures capable of discerning multiple stimuli. Here, Baines et al., present a multi-modal deformation and temperature sensor which, exploiting the light-to-state mapping, discerns combined stimuli of bending, stretching, compression, and temperature.

    • Robert Baines
    • , Fabio Zuliani
    •  & Jamie Paik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing magnetic actuation systems using a single permanent magnet can only achieve 2-DoF orientation manipulation. Wang et al. propose a magnetic actuation method that uses a single anisotropic soft magnet instead of a permanent magnet to enable full 3-DoF orientation manipulation of small, untethered robots.

    • Heng Wang
    • , Junhao Cui
    •  & Yuxiang Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When a low-viscosity fluid displaces into a higher viscosity fluid, the liquid-liquid interface becomes unstable causing finger-like patterns. These patterns are usually observed in two fluids, but here Kim et al. describes the development of fingers in a single polyelectrolyte fluid adjacent to a charge-selective interface under the influence of a potential gradient.

    • Jeonghwan Kim
    • , Joonhyeon Kim
    •  & Rhokyun Kwak

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    High pressure and low temperature are the greatest challenges faced by scientists to explore deep oceans, which remain largely unknow to us today. Li et al. review these challenges and give insight into designing soft robots, inspired by deep-sea creatures, that enable resilient operations in harsh conditions.

    • Guorui Li
    • , Tuck-Whye Wong
    •  & Tiefeng Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relation between the rebound behavior of droplets and surface structure is crucial to regulating the surface dynamic wettability based on structure design. Zhao et al. explore droplet rebound numbers when the droplet impacts laser-ablated microstructures with different structure spaces and report that droplets can consecutively rebound 17 times.

    • Shengteng Zhao
    • , Zhichao Ma
    •  & Luquan Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors demonstrate a fast and versatile microprinting technique to produce high-performance and customizable piezoelectric elements by employing a conductive spiny disc to electrostatically trigger instability to the liquid-air interface of the ink.

    • Xuemu Li
    • , Zhuomin Zhang
    •  & Zhengbao Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A critical step to enable practical structural superlubricity (SSL) applications is to enable high throughput to both fabrication and performance evaluation. Here, the authors demonstrate an automated system for efficient and multiple SSL materials transfer and tribological measurement.

    • Li Chen
    • , Cong Lin
    •  & Ming Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether stick-slip instabilities can give rise to avalanches of slip lengths is an outstanding issue in solid friction. Here, the authors demonstrated that there indeed exists a critical regime in which stick-slip friction can be described by a common set of statistical laws of avalanche dynamics.

    • Caishan Yan
    • , Hsuan-Yi Chen
    •  & Penger Tong

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The availability of maker resources such as 3D printers, makerspaces, and public repositories enable researchers to share information with research peers, educators, industry, and the general public. This broadens the impact of research and inspires its extension and application.

    • Larry L. Howell
    •  & Terri Bateman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current methods for thin film peeling suffer from limitations because of complicated preparations and the limitations of applied films. Li et al. present a peeling method for the thin film’s detachment that is achieved by driving liquid to percolate and spread into the bonding layer under electric fields.

    • Peiliu Li
    • , Xianfu Huang
    •  & Ya-Pu Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sun et al. introduce a novel embedded shape-morphing method, enabling robots to adapt to environments or tasks by changing their morphologies through embedded actuation, sensing, and shape locking, all within a robot’s body.

    • Jiefeng Sun
    • , Elisha Lerner
    •  & Jianguo Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fields of stress and plastic strain tensors in a sample under high pressures in diamond-anvil cells are important, but measuring them is difficult. Here, the authors suggest a coupled experimental-analytical-computational approach to measure them before, during, and after α−ω transformation in Zr.

    • Valery I. Levitas
    • , Achyut Dhar
    •  & K. K. Pandey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The intricate and delicate anatomy of the brain poses challenges to achieving efficient and precise medical treatments. Here, the authors introduce ultrasound-activated microrobots that can autonomously aggregate and propel upstream inside the complex vasculature of a living mouse brain.

    • Alexia Del Campo Fonseca
    • , Chaim Glück
    •  & Daniel Ahmed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Want to mute or focus on speech from a specific region in a crowded room? Here, the authors built an acoustic swarm that, along with neural networks, separates and localizes concurrent speakers in the 2D space with high precision.

    • Malek Itani
    • , Tuochao Chen
    •  & Shyamnath Gollakota

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