Soft materials articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perception plays a pivotal role in advancing future intelligent textiles. Here, the authors develop smart perceptual textiles using natural-derived ionic-conductive silk fibers. These textiles can electrically detect external hazards and precisely pinpointing human touch, making them suitable for smart protective clothing and soft human-machine interfaces.

    • Haojie Lu
    • , Yong Zhang
    •  & Yingying Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is useful to be able to equip marine animals with sensors, but it can be challenging to attach these to soft marine organisms. Here, the authors use an adhesive hydrogel to achieve rapid attachment of sensors to marine life including jellyfish, squid and lobster.

    • Camilo Duque Londono
    • , Seth F. Cones
    •  & Xuanhe Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photo-crosslinking polymerization facilitates precise control of hydrogel formation for various applications including tissue engineering, but most existing photo-crosslinking methods fail to achieve deep-tissue penetration, especially within bone structures. Here the authors report a strategy of low-dose X-ray-activated polymerization that enables deep-tissue hydrogel formation.

    • Hailei Zhang
    • , Boyan Tang
    •  & Gang Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inertial active matter can self-organize into coexisting phases that feature different temperatures, but experimental realizations are limited. Here, the authors report the coexistence of hot liquid and cold gas states in mixtures of overdamped active and inertial passive Brownian particles, giving a broader relevance.

    • Lukas Hecht
    • , Iris Dong
    •  & Benno Liebchen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polyamide-12 is the main polymer employed to produce 3D objects by laser sintering constraining the functionality of the items produced. Here, the authors report a clean and scalable approach for the functionalization of polyamide-12 particles, yielding materials that can be printed using commercial apparatus.

    • Eduards Krumins
    • , Liam A. Crawford
    •  & Steven M. Howdle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selective nanofiltration membranes with accurate molecular sieving offer a solution to recover rare metals and other valuable elements from brines but this demands the development of membranes with precise sub-nanometer pores surpassing those available today. Here, the authors report a scalable approach for membrane fabrication in which functionalized macrocycles are seamlessly oriented via supramolecular interactions during the interfacial polycondensation on a polyacrylonitrile support layer.

    • Shanshan Hong
    • , Maria Di Vincenzo
    •  & Suzana P. Nunes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Collective behavior of nonlinear soft valves forming fluid flow networks is not well understood. The authors reveal the mechanisms underlying the collective behavior of soft flow networks with negative differential resistance elements.

    • Alejandro Martínez-Calvo
    • , Matthew D. Biviano
    •  & Miguel Ruiz-García

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supramolecular polymeric materials have exhibited attractive features such as self-healing, reversibility and stimuli-responsiveness but because of the weak bonding nature of most noncovalent interactions, constructing supramolecular polymer materials with high robustness remains challenging. Here, the authors describe the construction of highly robust stimuli-responsive supramolecular polymer networks by using only a tiny amount of metallacycles as the supramolecular crosslinkers.

    • Lang He
    • , Yu Jiang
    •  & Shijun Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The extrusion-based three-dimensional printing of polymers, metals, and composites requires elevated temperatures and may lead to diverse undesirable defects on printed parts. Here, the authors develop a vapor-induced phase separation printing technique to construct polymeric, metallic, and composite parts by using a polymer as a binder.

    • Marc Sole-Gras
    • , Bing Ren
    •  & Yong Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The construction of three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks for gas separation is challenging due to the similar physicochemical properties of the gas mixture. Here, the authors report functional three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks by fine-tunning the pore environment with pyridine units to achieve effective separation of ethane from ethylene.

    • Yang Xie
    • , Wenjing Wang
    •  & Cheng Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sulfur-rich polymers are promising candidates for chemical recycling but lack efficient synthetic strategies for achieving diverse structures. Here, the authors report a synthesis strategy for polytrithiocarbonates which is compatible with a wide range of monomers enabling diverse structures via polycondensation of dithiols and dimethyl trithiocarbonate.

    • Jin-Zhuo Zhao
    • , Tian-Jun Yue
    •  & Wei-Min Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly of block copolymers can be controlled to give varying morphologies and functionalities, but there are still aspects of the process that are not well understood. Here, the authors report convoluted self-assembly behaviours of block copolymers with discotic liquid crystalline moieties.

    • Huanzhi Yang
    • , Yunjun Luo
    •  & Xiaoyu Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is challenging to achieve multicolor long-lived room temperature phosphorescence in intrinsic polymers, especially for white afterglow. Here, the authors report a strategy to obtain pure white afterglow micro-crosslinked polymers by covalently coupling different conjugated chromophores with precursors through a simple and rapid one-pot reaction.

    • Qingao Chen
    • , Lunjun Qu
    •  & Chaolong Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbaporphyrin dimers, known for their interesting photophysical properties and application in metal-organic chemistry, generally contain two identical subunits. Here, the authors highlight the benefits that can accrue from breaking the inherent symmetry of carbaporphyrin dimers and details a new approach to creating heterobimetallic complexes.

    • Haodan He
    • , Jiyeon Lee
    •  & Xian-Sheng Ke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many mechanical computation platforms developed till date lack a rational design strategy and have limited computational functions, such as stand-alone single logic gates, or deformation/transition behaviors. Byun at al. have reported a systematic design principle for integrated mechanical computing that enables the electronics-free design of autonomous and intelligent soft machines, which are seamlessly integrated.

    • Junghwan Byun
    • , Aniket Pal
    •  & Metin Sitti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous coordination polymers (PCPs) are commonly used in gas separation processes but developing PCPs that work at high temperatures and feature both high uptake capacity and selectivity remains challenging. Here, the authors report diffusion-rate sieving of propylene/propane at 300 K by constructing a PCP whose global and local dynamics cooperatively govern the adsorption process via gate opening for propylene and diffusion regulation for propane.

    • Yan Su
    • , Ken-ichi Otake
    •  & Cheng Gu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The distinctive interdependence in mixed ionic-electronic conductors emulates retinal pathway. Here, the authors develop a modular organic neuromorphic spiking circuit to replicate the interdependent functions of receptors, neurons and synapses that are chemically modulated by neurotransmitters.

    • Giovanni Maria Matrone
    • , Eveline R. W. van Doremaele
    •  & Yoeri van de Burgt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of supramolecular porous crystalline frameworks with architectures from secondary building units remains challenging. Here, the authors report ammonium node-assembled clusters as supramolecular secondary building units to sustain a body centered cubic hydrogenbonded framework with octahedral cages for haloform encapsulation and reversible photochromism.

    • Xiaojun Ding
    • , Jing Chen
    •  & Gang Ye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supramolecular confined catalysis aims to mimic the active pocket of an enzyme to enhance the efficiency and selectivity of catalytic reactions. Here, the authors describe the formation of chiral nanotubes stable in aqueous solution employing a chiral BINOL-phosphate which can accelerate the 3-aza-Cope rearrangement by a nanotubular interior confinement effect.

    • Kang Li
    • , Wei-Min Qin
    •  & Yue-Peng Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of membranes under harsh conditions, particularly involving the separation of complex organic solvents, remains challenging. Here the authors demonstrate an ultrathin organosiloxane polymer membrane using initiated chemical vapor deposition to effectively separate solutes within the molecular weight range of 150–300 g mol−1.

    • Jihoon Choi
    • , Keonwoo Choi
    •  & Dong-Yeun Koh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Smartphone cameras have been widely used for analysis purposes, but the use of magnetometers in smartphones is limited in this regard. In this study, the authors present a smartphone analyte sensor platform that utilizes the built in magnetometer to directly translate signals through analyte-responsive magnetic-hydrogel composites.

    • Mark Ferris
    •  & Gary Zabow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radioiodine capture from nuclear fuel waste and contaminated water sources is of environmental importance but technically challenging. Here, the authors report covalent organic frameworks with antiparallel eclipsed stacked structures with dynamic adsorption performance for iodine pollutants under various conditions.

    • Yinghui Xie
    • , Qiuyu Rong
    •  & Xiangke Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Suture repair is the current clinical treatment for meniscus tears, but inaccessible tears in company with re-tears susceptibility remain unresolved. Here the authors address these issues by developing a meniscus adhesive-based strategy for the seamless and dense reconstruction of torn meniscus.

    • Xihao Pan
    • , Rui Li
    •  & Hongwei Ouyang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Knitted fabrics are prized for their stretchability, breathability, and long-wearability in everyday life. This study combines experiments and simulations to present a micromechanical approach to understanding the origin of the anisotropic elasticity of four canonical patterns of knitted fabrics.

    • Krishma Singal
    • , Michael S. Dimitriyev
    •  & Elisabetta A. Matsumoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cocrystal engineering is a promising strategy for constructing multifunctional materials. Here, the authors describe nucleic-acid-base cocrystal systems with different colors of phosphorescence from their monomeric counterparts and high-temperature phosphorescence with antimicrobial effects and data encryption applications.

    • Wenqing Xu
    • , Guanheng Huang
    •  & David Lee Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The controllability of deformation height in reconfigurable touch displays currently limits their deliverable information. Hwang et al. present a light-triggered morphable tactile display enabling generation of refreshable, height-adjustable, and latchable 3D topologies with varying textures on a thin film surface.

    • Inwook Hwang
    • , Seongcheol Mun
    •  & Sungryul Yun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organic co-crystals are useful in the fabrication of functional materials, but it is challenging to achieve structural diversity of co-crystals. Here, the authors report nine sets of macrocycle cocrystals with diverse structures and stoichiometric ratios giving different luminescence properties.

    • Bin Li
    • , Lingling Liu
    •  & Chunju Li

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical recycling of plastic enables renewed production of pristine materials, but generally comes at a high energy cost. This review focuses on light-driven approaches for chemically recycling and upcycling plastic waste, with emphasis on reduced energy consumption and selective transformations of challenging to recycle backbone structures.

    • Laura Wimberger
    • , Gervase Ng
    •  & Cyrille Boyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Starting from simple building blocks with specific molecular packing geometries, here, the authors synthesized structurally complex covalent organic framework COF-305 with nine different stereoisomers of its constituents showing specific sequences on topologically equivalent sites.

    • Lei Wei
    • , Xinyue Hai
    •  & Yingbo Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mask-free multi-photon lithography allows the straightforward fabrication of nanostructures, but high precision and good resolution can be challenging to achieve. Here, the authors report a combination of photo-inhibition and chemical quenchers for improved lithography performance.

    • Lingling Guan
    • , Chun Cao
    •  & Xu Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing complex synthetic materials for enzyme immobilization could unlock the utility of biocatalysis in extreme environments. Here, the authors report on random copolymer brushes as dynamic immobilization supports that enable supra-biological catalytic performance of immobilized enzymes.

    • Héctor Sánchez-Morán
    • , Joel L. Kaar
    •  & Daniel K. Schwartz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Currently polyamide membranes fabricated by interfacial polymerization are limited by inherently negative charge as well as narrow charge tailoring window restricting the application of these membranes. Here, the authors report a facile ionic liquid-decoupled bulk/interfacial diffusion strategy to fabricate polyamide membranes which can transform on-demand from inherently negative to highly positive and near-neutral charge.

    • Bian-Bian Guo
    • , Chang Liu
    •  & Zhi-Kang Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Common stereolithography-based 3D printing relies on photopolymerization using photoinitiators. Here, the authors replace the conventional photoinitiators with low-cost, widely used thermal initiators to achieve 3D-printed objects.

    • Doron Kam
    • , Omri Rulf
    •  & Shlomo Magdassi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The efficient separation of iso-butene, an important raw material in chemical industry, remains challenging due to similar molecular properties of C4 olefins. Here, the authors report a sulfate-pillared adsorbent for the molecular sieving of iso-C4H8 from C4H6 and n-C4H8 with good benchmark uptake ratios and Henry’s selectivities.

    • Junhui Liu
    • , Hanting Xiong
    •  & Jun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The separation and purification of C6 cyclic hydrocarbons by thermal distillation is an energy intensive process which may be replaced by alternative energy-efficient adsorptive techniques. Here, the authors report a chain-like coordination polymer which facilitates complete separation of benzene, cyclohexene, and cyclohexane via an ideal molecular sieving mechanism.

    • Feng Xie
    • , Lihang Chen
    •  & Jing Li

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