Nanoscale materials articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Article |

    A scalable, one-pot, solution-based protocol for the controlled synthesis of uniform non-spherical block copolymer micelles is a desirable but challenging target. Now, a polymerization-induced crystallization-driven self-assembly process has been developed that offers facile access to 1D and platelet micelle morphologies and to near monodisperse cylinders of controlled length.

    • Charlotte E. Boott
    • , Jessica Gwyther
    •  & Ian Manners

  • Article |

    The synthesis of well-defined planar polymers presents a significant challenge for chemists seeking to investigate their potential for use in emerging technologies. Now, a two-dimensional conjugated aromatic polymer has been synthesized via endogenous solid-state polymerization of pre-arranged monomers, and its performance as an organic anode in an ambient temperature sodium cell tested.

    • Wei Liu
    • , Xin Luo
    •  & Kian Ping Loh

  • News & Views |

    Molecular daisy-chain structures are typically made up of two interlocked components and can exhibit muscle-like contraction and extension in one dimension. Zinc-based multicomponent systems that can operate in two and three dimensions have now been designed and synthesized.

    • Karine Fournel-Marotte
    •  & Frédéric Coutrot

  • Perspective |

    Although metal–organic frameworks are often seen as rigid crystalline structures, there is growing evidence that large-scale flexibility, the presence of defects, and long-range disorder are not the exception, but rather the norm. Here we propose that these concepts are inescapably intertwined, and the interfaces between them offer prospects for enhancement of materials' functionalities.

    • Thomas D. Bennett
    • , Anthony K. Cheetham
    •  & François-Xavier Coudert

  • Article |

    The operational simplicity of modifying the surfaces of thiol-capped gold nanoparticles has been a hallmark of their success in materials chemistry, despite having limited control over the surface composition. Now, SNAr chemistry on activated perfluoroaromatics has been shown to mimic this simplicity and allow for the synthesis of atomically precise nanomolecules.

    • Elaine A. Qian
    • , Alex I. Wixtrom
    •  & Alexander M. Spokoyny

  • Article |

    Aggregation usually prevents dissolution of graphene in water. Now, hydroxide ion adsorption has been shown to allow the stabilization of true single-layer graphene in water — with no surfactant required — so long as the liquid is degassed beforehand. The resulting aqueous dispersions can contain high concentrations of exfoliated graphene that are stable for several months.

    • George Bepete
    • , Eric Anglaret
    •  & Carlos Drummond

  • Article |

    Flat, prochiral molecules form chiral adsorbates on achiral surfaces, but such assemblies are globally racemic. Now, it is shown that this mirror symmetry can be broken through stereocontrolled on-surface synthesis. Enantiopure helicene molecules can be transformed into flat, enantiofacially adsorbed products through a cascade of reactions on Ag(111) monitored by high-resolution scanning probe microscopy.

    • Oleksandr Stetsovych
    • , Martin Švec
    •  & Ivo Starý

  • Article |

    Isolating nanoscale species in liquids permits their scalable manipulation, enabling numerous fundamental and applied processes. Thus, achieving true dissolution of 2D materials is particularly desirable. Now, ionic salts of a range of important layered materials have been shown to spontaneously dissolve, yielding solutions of charged, monodisperse, undamaged and easy-to-manipulate 2D nanosheets.

    • Patrick L. Cullen
    • , Kathleen M. Cox
    •  & Christopher A. Howard

  • Article |

    Biomolecular nanoscale compartments are ubiquitous in living systems. Although their formation is fairly straightforward, the same cannot be said of their inorganic counterparts. In this study, uniform nanoshells are observed self-assembling from stabilizer-free inorganic nanoparticles in water, under ambient conditions, and without the need for spherical tiling. This enables further study of inorganic prebiotic systems and compartmentalized biomimetic catalysis.

    • Ming Yang
    • , Henry Chan
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • Article |

    Crystals grow from nuclei. In systems where nuclei are nanometre-sized and form quickly, it is difficult to determine the mechanism of their formation. Now, through in situ TEM, the demixing of a supersaturated aqueous gold solution into metastable gold-poor and gold-rich liquid phases is observed, the latter yielding stable clusters that become nuclei for nanocrystal growth.

    • N. Duane Loh
    • , Soumyo Sen
    •  & Utkur Mirsaidov

  • Article |

    STM investigations and first principles calculations provide an understanding of the microscopic mechanism behind the mobility of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) on gold surfaces. Now, it is shown that a ballbot-type motion allows the formation of self-assembled monolayers due to the NHC extracting a gold atom from the surface, leading to a ligated gold adatom.

    • Gaoqiang Wang
    • , Andreas Rühling
    •  & Harald Fuchs

  • Article |

    During the Fischer-Tropsch catalytic reaction, alkanes are synthesized from carbon monoxide and hydrogen at high pressure and temperature. Now it is shown using scanning tunnelling imaging of a cobalt surface during reaction that linear alkane product molecules of a specific length self-assemble on terraces, facilitating the desorption of new product molecules created at step sites.

    • Violeta Navarro
    • , Matthijs A. van Spronsen
    •  & Joost W. M. Frenken

  • Article |

    Lateral anchoring of heteromolecules to graphene paves the way for the creation of hybrid materials with tunable properties. Now, following a surface-assisted dehydrogenative coupling reaction, the edges of graphene on silver have been functionalized with porphines. This enables the assembly of well-defined multifunctional graphene-based nanostructures.

    • Yuanqin He
    • , Manuela Garnica
    •  & Johannes V. Barth

  • Article |

    Natural collagen contains triple helices that are approximately 1,000 residues in length and cannot be formed by chemical synthesis. Now, short collagen-mimetic peptides that self-assemble into three-stranded helices have been designed. These peptides are inspired by the mathematics of tessellations, and the triple helices formed via this approach match or exceed the length of those found in natural collagen.

    • I. Caglar Tanrikulu
    • , Audrey Forticaux
    •  & Ronald T. Raines

  • Article |

    Photoexcited holes in CdS nanocrystals rapidly trap to the surface and although they are integral to nanocrystal photophysics and photochemistry, their dynamics have remained elusive. Time-resolved spectroscopy and theoretical modelling have now revealed that trapped holes in CdS nanorods are mobile and undergo a random walk on the nanocrystal surface.

    • James K. Utterback
    • , Amanda N. Grennell
    •  & Gordana Dukovic

  • News & Views |

    The calcination of metal–organic framework (MOF) precursors is promising for the preparation of nanoscale carbon materials, but the resulting morphologies have remained limited. Now, controlling the growth of precursor MOFs has enabled 1D carbon nanorods to be fabricated — these can then be readily unravelled into 2D graphene nanoribbons.

    • Jing Tang
    •  & Yusuke Yamauchi

  • Article |

    A broadly applicable strategy that can control the self-assembly of nanoparticles into a predefined structure has been reported. Integrating nanoparticles with DNA constructs creates individual modules that can be assembled into complex planar architectures. The approach combines nanoparticles with the selectivity and directionality of bonds provided by DNA.

    • Wenyan Liu
    • , Jonathan Halverson
    •  & Oleg Gang

  • Article |

    Quasicrystalline materials exhibit long-range order but no translational periodicity. Now, a random tiling quasicrystal has been fabricated on a Au(111) surface by coordination interactions between europium centres and linear dicarbonitrile linkers under stoichiometry control. The 2D metal–organic network exhibits the simultaneous presence of four-, five- and six-fold vertices and dodecagonal symmetry.

    • José I. Urgel
    • , David Écija
    •  & Johannes V. Barth

  • Article |

    Few-layer black phosphorus (BP) is a promising semiconductor, but it is highly reactive and susceptible to ambient degradation. Covalent functionalization with aryl radicals has now been shown to significantly improve the stability of exfoliated BP, as well as the performance of BP-based electronic devices through a controllable p-type doping effect.

    • Christopher R. Ryder
    • , Joshua D. Wood
    •  & Mark C. Hersam

  • Article |

    Dissipative self-assembly processes are energetically uphill and require the continuous consumption of energy. Now, by using ATP as a chemical fuel, the dissipative self-assembly of vesicles has been demonstrated. These transiently formed supramolecular assemblies are able to sustain a chemical reaction and it is shown that the yield depends on the lifetime of the vesicles.

    • Subhabrata Maiti
    • , Ilaria Fortunati
    •  & Leonard J. Prins

  • News & Views |

    Early theories suggested the possibility of atomically thin boron layers, but electron-deficient boron favours multicentre bonds and assembles into various polymorphs, making the synthesis of such layers challenging. Now, in two independent experiments, the deposition of atomic boron has offered this long-sought material on a silver platter.

    • Zhuhua Zhang
    • , Evgeni S. Penev
    •  & Boris I. Yakobson

  • Article |

    The influence of the thermodynamic driving force for photoinduced electron-transfer between single-walled carbon nanotubes and fullerene derivatives has been investigated. The Marcus inverted region and small reorganization energies were observed for this model organic heterojunction. Small reorganization energies aid in minimizing energy losses for solar conversion to electricity or fuels.

    • Rachelle Ihly
    • , Kevin S. Mistry
    •  & Jeffrey L. Blackburn

  • Article |

    A variety of two-dimensional materials have been reported in the past few years, yet single-element systems—such as graphene and black phosphorus—have remained rare. 2D allotropes of boron have long been predicted and recently investigated. Two boron sheets have now been grown on a Ag(111) surface by molecule beam epitaxy that exhibit significant chemical stability against oxidation.

    • Baojie Feng
    • , Jin Zhang
    •  & Kehui Wu

  • News & Views |

    Controlling interfaces between transition-metal oxides and dissimilar structures is crucial for practical applications, yet has remained a quandary. Now, a coherent interface that bridges a perovskite and a fluorite structure has been formed using judiciously chosen metal cations.

    • Kenneth R. Poeppelmeier
    •  & James M. Rondinelli

  • Article |

    Precise control of vesicle size is highly desirable both for basic biochemical research and biomedical applications. Now, monodispersed sub-100-nm vesicles with predefined sizes have been produced using a method based on membrane self-assembly within a DNA-nanostructure guide.

    • Yang Yang
    • , Jing Wang
    •  & Chenxiang Lin

  • Article |

    Controlling the morphology and composition of hybrid nanostructures is desirable for applications, but it has proven challenging to precisely combine different nucleation sites and growth modes. Now, three types of hierarchical 1D/2D nanostructures have been prepared by selectively growing semiconductor nanorod arrays (CdS or CdSe) on the different facets of hexagonal nanoplates.

    • Xue-Jun Wu
    • , Junze Chen
    •  & Hua Zhang

  • Article |

    Endohedral C70 fullerenes containing either one or two water molecules have now been prepared using a molecular-surgery approach. The structure of H2O@C70 was determined by single-crystal X-ray analysis, revealing the encapsulated water molecule to be in an off-centre position. In (H2O)2@C70, the two water molecules form a discrete dimer held together with a single hydrogen bond.

    • Rui Zhang
    • , Michihisa Murata
    •  & Yasujiro Murata

  • Article |

    The behaviour of heterostructures, crucial in nanodevices, largely depends on interfacial phenomena. These have proven difficult to control when the different materials adopt distinct crystal structures. Now, a coherent interface between perovskite and fluorite has been achieved that relies in particular on the coordination flexibility of judiciously chosen metal cations.

    • Marita O'Sullivan
    • , Joke Hadermann
    •  & Matthew J. Rosseinsky

  • Article |

    DNA nanostructures are typically used as molecular scaffolds. Now, it has been shown that they can also act as reusable templates for ‘molecular printing’ of DNA strands onto gold nanoparticles. The products inherit the recognition elements of the parent template: number, orientation and sequence asymmetry of DNA strands. This converts isotropic nanoparticles into complex building blocks.

    • Thomas G. W. Edwardson
    • , Kai Lin Lau
    •  & Hanadi F. Sleiman

  • News & Views |

    Mass production at the nanoscale requires molecular machines that can control, with high fidelity, the spatial orientation of other reactive species. The demonstration of a synthetic system in which a molecular robotic arm can be used to manipulate the position of a chemical cargo is a significant step towards achieving this goal.

    • Ivan Aprahamian

  • News & Views |

    Fullerene-based dendritic structures coated with 120 sugars can be made in high yields in a relatively short sequence of reactions. The mannosylated compound is shown to inhibit Ebola infection in cells more efficiently than monofullerene-based glycoclusters.

    • Sébastien Vidal

  • Article |

    Doping mesoporous materials is an attractive way to tune their properties, but typically disrupts the host materials’ structures. Ultrasmall graphitic pencil nanodots have now been prepared, doped with heteroatoms, and inserted in a well-dispersed manner within the ordered structure of mesoporous materials including TiO2, carbon and silica, by a co-assembly approach.

    • Biao Kong
    • , Jing Tang
    •  & Dongyuan Zhao

  • Article |

    Singlet fission, a spin-allowed conversion of a spin-singlet state into a pair of spin-triplet excitons, may be useful for the development of next-generation photovoltaics. Ultrafast coherence measurements now show that vibrational motions play a critical role in fission as they facilitate the mixing of triplet-pair states with singlet excitons.

    • Artem A. Bakulin
    • , Sarah E. Morgan
    •  & Akshay Rao

  • News & Views |

    A vast number of possible isomers exist for each fullerene, yet few are observed experimentally. Neutral fullerenes typically minimize adjacent pentagons, but charged ones often tolerate them. Now, a simple model taking into account structural strain and π electronic aspects predicts the asymmetric relative stabilities of charged isomers.

    • Patrick Fowler

  • Article |

    The stability of charged fullerenes is not as well understood as that of their neutral counterparts, with, for example, more frequent violations of the isolated-pentagon and pentagon-adjacency penalty rules. Now, a simple model based on the concepts of cage connectivity and frontier π orbitals predicts the relative stability of cationic and anionic fullerene isomers.

    • Yang Wang
    • , Sergio Díaz-Tendero
    •  & Fernando Martín

  • Article |

    Amphiphilic-peptide-driven opening of elastin-like protein molecules triggers the self-assembly of a multilayered membrane. This dynamic system can undergo morphogenesis into hierarchically ordered tubular structures that can be used to create complex scaffolds for tissue engineering.

    • Karla E. Inostroza-Brito
    • , Estelle Collin
    •  & Alvaro Mata

  • Article |

    The self-assembly of short amphiphilic α-helicomimetic foldamers bearing proteinaceous side-chains can be controlled by manipulating the side-chain sequence. This enables the foldamers to be programmed to form either discrete helical bundles containing isolated cavities, or pH-responsive water-filled channels with controllable pore diameters.

    • Gavin W. Collie
    • , Karolina Pulka-Ziach
    •  & Gilles Guichard

  • News & Views |

    Nanocrystals with precisely defined structures offer promise as components of advanced materials yet they are challenging to create. Now, a nanocrystal made up of seven cadmium and twelve chloride ions has been synthesized via a biotemplating approach that uses a de novo designed protein.

    • Li Shang
    •  & Gerd Ulrich Nienhaus

  • Article |

    Impure glycerol is obtained as a significant by-product of biodiesel production. Now it is shown that this crude glycerol can be reacted with water over very simple basic or redox oxide catalysts to produce methanol in high yields, together with other useful chemicals, in a one-step low pressure process.

    • Muhammad H. Haider
    • , Nicholas F. Dummer
    •  & Graham J. Hutchings

  • Article |

    Perovskite materials show great promise for solar cell devices, owing in particular to their high power conversion efficiency. Now, the addition of butylphosphonic acid 4-ammonium cations during a one-step process has been shown to improve both the efficiency and moisture stability of perovskite photovoltaics, through the formation of hydrogen-bonding crosslinks between neighbouring grains.

    • Xiong Li
    • , M. Ibrahim Dar
    •  & Michael Grätzel

  • Article |

    Controlling the self-assembly of nanoparticles using light has been demonstrated in many systems where the particle surfaces are functionalized with photoswitchable ligands. Now, it has been shown that the light-controlled self-assembly of non-photoresponsive nanoparticles can be achieved in a quantitative and reversible fashion by placing them in a photoresponsive medium.

    • Pintu K. Kundu
    • , Dipak Samanta
    •  & Rafal Klajn

  • Article |

    Rigid star-shaped azobenzene tetramers form a porous molecular crystal when the azobenzene moieties are in the trans configuration, and a non-porous amorphous material on their isomerization to the cis configuration. These two forms are reversibly interconverted in the solid state by light irradiation, thus enabling the photoswitching of optical and gas-capture properties.

    • Massimo Baroncini
    • , Simone d'Agostino
    •  & Alberto Credi

  • News & Views |

    Bioorthogonal catalysis provides new ways of mediating artificial transformations in living environs. Now, researchers have developed a nanodevice whose catalytic activity can be regulated by host–guest chemistry.

    • Asier Unciti-Broceta

  • Article |

    Regulation of bioorthogonal catalysis in living systems is challenging because of the complex intracellular environment. Now, the activity of protein-sized bioorthogonal nanozymes has been regulated by binding a supramolecular cucurbit[7]uril ‘gate-keeper’ onto the monolayer surface. This arrangement enables the controlled activation of profluorophores and prodrugs inside living cells for imaging and therapeutic applications.

    • Gulen Yesilbag Tonga
    • , Youngdo Jeong
    •  & Vincent M. Rotello

  • Article |

    Biopolymers adopt functional tertiary structures through folding and multiplex formation. Synthetic molecules with protein-like dimensions — monodisperse cyclic porphyrin polymers with diameters of 13–21 nm — have now been shown to exhibit biomimetic self-organization by forming nested structures on a gold surface. These assemblies are formed both under vacuum and during deposition from solution.

    • Dmitry V. Kondratuk
    • , Luís M. A. Perdigão
    •  & Harry L. Anderson

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Nanoscale materials across other nature.com journals