Structural properties articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sub-nano clusters with atomic precision provide a compelling platform for bridging heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, but their synthesis remains a great challenge. Here, the authors report a precursor-preselected wet-chemistry strategy to synthesize highly dispersed Fe2 clusters supported on mesoporous carbon nitride.

    • Shubo Tian
    • , Qiang Fu
    •  & Yadong Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Encoding functionalities in covalent organic frameworks (COFs) is important for widening their application field but the development of fluorescent COFs is hampered by a lack of guiding design principles. Here the authors demonstrate tuning and switching of the photoluminescence in 2D COFs made of non-emissive building blocks.

    • Xing Li
    • , Qiang Gao
    •  & Kian Ping Loh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water between two parallel solid plates can form mono-, bi-, or more layers. Here, the authors investigate the behavior of water confined between graphene sheets and find that the phase separation to mono- and bi-layer creates 2D droplets by bending the sheets which form ripples.

    • Hiroaki Yoshida
    • , Vojtěch Kaiser
    •  & Lydéric Bocquet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Improved compressive elasticity was lately demonstrated for carbon aerogels but the problem of reversible stretchability remained a challenge. Here the authors use a hierarchical structure design and synergistic effects between carbon nanotubes and graphene to achieve high stretchability in carbon aerogels.

    • Fan Guo
    • , Yanqiu Jiang
    •  & Chao Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When nanomaterials are exposed to ionizing radiation, they often sustain mesoscopic changes not seen in their bulk form. Here, the authors use a helium ion microscope to induce and examine transformations in nanoporous alumina, drawing connections between atomic structure and nano- and microscale behavior in materials under irradiation.

    • Morteza Aramesh
    • , Yashar Mayamei
    •  & Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While lithium-oxygen batteries offer a green method to power vehicles, the sluggish decomposition of lithium peroxide limits device performance. Here, the authors direct lithium peroxide formation into amorphous nanostructures to enable its facile decomposition and improve charging efficiency.

    • Arghya Dutta
    • , Raymond A. Wong
    •  & Hye Ryung Byon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Knowledge of the thermodynamic potential is crucial to characterize the macroscopic state of soft porous crystals. Here, the authors present a generalized thermodynamic approach to construct the Helmholtz free energy and identify the conditions under which a material becomes flexible.

    • L. Vanduyfhuys
    • , S. M. J. Rogge
    •  & V. Van Speybroeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Excitons in light-harvesting complexes are known to significantly improve solar energy harnessing. Here, the authors investigate and explain extreme robustness against temperature of excitons in purple photosynthetic bacteria.

    • Margus Rätsep
    • , Renata Muru
    •  & Arvi Freiberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Twin nucleation in face-centered cubic metals with high twin-fault energies should theoretically be unfavourable, but instead twinning is very often observed. Here, the authors report a new twinning route in nanocrystalline platinum that bypasses the high twin-fault energy barrier using closely spaced partial dislocations.

    • Lihua Wang
    • , Pengfei Guan
    •  & Xiaodong Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoscale crystals can experience lattice instability and a tension-compression asymmetry of their strength. Here, Mameka and colleagues scrutinize the proposition that these phenomena arise from surface-induced stress, finding that the surface tension contributes significantly, while the surface stress does not measurably impact the nanomechanical behaviour.

    • Nadiia Mameka
    • , Jürgen Markmann
    •  & Jörg Weissmüller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tailoring the thermodynamics of metal-hydrogen interactions is crucial for tuning the properties of metal hydrides but remains difficult to control. Here, the authors create an yttrium hydrogen sensor sensitive to pressure changes of up to four orders of magnitude by adding zirconium into the Y lattice.

    • Peter Ngene
    • , Alessandro Longo
    •  & Bernard Dam

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-assembly of synthetic molecules in living cells can influence cell function, but is extremely challenging due to the complex environment of cells. Here the authors report the self-assembly of small organic molecules that locate, target and self-report their supramolecular behavior in living cells.

    • David Y. W. Ng
    • , Roman Vill
    •  & Tanja Weil

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional grain growth models assume the velocity of a grain boundary is proportional to its curvature but cannot account for the many deviations observed experimentally. Here, the authors present a model that connects grain growth directly to the disconnection mechanism of grain boundary migration and can account for these deviations.

    • Spencer L. Thomas
    • , Kongtao Chen
    •  & David J. Srolovitz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrogenated amorphous carbon is a promising solid lubricant, but the underlying mechanisms surrounding its superlubricity remain unclear. Here the authors reveal that the attainment of a superlubricious state is dependent on the in-situin-situ formation of a nanostructured tribolayer through different carbon rehybridization pathways.

    • Xinchun Chen
    • , Chenhui Zhang
    •  & Jianbin Luo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deformation-induced defects with high formation energy are difficult to nucleate in aluminium. Here, the authors use a miniaturized projectile impact to nucleate the high stacking fault energy 9R phase in a thin film of ultrafine-grained aluminium, and show sessile Frank loops stabilize it.

    • Sichuang Xue
    • , Zhe Fan
    •  & Xinghang Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The efficiencies of materials-based catalysts are determined by the surface atomic and electronic structures, but harnessing this relationship can be challenging. Here, by engineering strain into cobalt oxide, the authors transform a once poor hydrogen evolution catalyst into one that is competitive with the state of the art.

    • Tao Ling
    • , Dong-Yang Yan
    •  & Shi-Zhang Qiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The control over the crystallographic orientation at functional oxide interfaces is crucial to the performance of oxide-based electronics. Here, Zhou et al. provide a detailed insight into the thermodynamic and kinetic process of nucleation-mediated crystal growth at the ZnO and MgO interface.

    • Hua Zhou
    • , Lijun Wu
    •  & Yimei Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexoelectric coupling between strain gradients and polarization influences the physics of ferroelectric devices but it is difficult to directly probe its effects. Here, Li et al. use principal component analysis to compare STEM images with phase-field modeling and extract the flexoelectric contributions.

    • Q. Li
    • , C. T. Nelson
    •  & S. V. Kalinin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Production of affordable, clean hydrogen relies on efficient oxygen evolution, but improving catalytic performance for the reaction in acidic media is challenging. Here the authors show how tuning the nanoporous morphology of iridium/iridium oxide leads to an improvement in activity/stability, compared with conventional iridium-based oxides.

    • Yong-Tae Kim
    • , Pietro Papa Lopes
    •  & Nenad M. Markovic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coherent twin boundaries (CTBs) in face-centered cubic metals are usually considered unable to slide at room temperature. Here, the authors use in situ transmission electron microscopy and molecular dynamics to show CTB sliding in copper nanopillars when leading and trailing partial dislocations have similar Schmid factors.

    • Zhang-Jie Wang
    • , Qing-Jie Li
    •  & Zhi-Wei Shan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Grain boundaries are thought to significantly mediate phase transformations in nanoparticles. Here, the authors combine multichannel plasmonic nanospectroscopy and transmission Kikuchi diffraction to study the role of grain boundaries in hydriding reactions of Pd nanoparticles on a single-particle level.

    • Svetlana Alekseeva
    • , Alice Bastos da Silva Fanta
    •  & Christoph Langhammer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Doping a metal nanocluster with heteroatoms dramatically changes its properties, but it remains difficult to dope with single-atom control. Here, the authors devise a strategy to dope single atoms of Ag or Cu into hollow Au nanoclusters, creating precise alloy nanoparticles atom-by-atom.

    • Shuxin Wang
    • , Hadi Abroshan
    •  & Rongchao Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Redox processes in metal oxide surfaces can exhibit structure sensitivities which are difficult to uncover. Here, the authors use atomic-resolution imaging to demonstrate facet dependent alterations in the surfaces of supported vanadium oxide upon reduction and oxidation.

    • Martin Ek
    • , Quentin M. Ramasse
    •  & Stig Helveg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal/oxide interfaces play an important role in heterogeneous catalysis and redox reactions, but their buried nature makes them difficult to study. Here, the authors use environmental transmission electron microscopy to probe the atomic-level transformations at Cu2O/Cu interfaces as they undergo redox reactions.

    • Lianfeng Zou
    • , Jonathan Li
    •  & Guangwen Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificial materials that replicate the mechanical properties of nacre represent important structural materials, but are difficult to produce in bulk. Here, the authors exploit the bottom-up assembly of 2D nacre-mimetic films to fabricate 3D bulk artificial nacre with an optimized architecture and excellent mechanical properties.

    • Huai-Ling Gao
    • , Si-Ming Chen
    •  & Shu-Hong Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanical properties of silk are determined by tight stacks of sheet-like peptide crystals distributed in amorphous regions. Here, the authors heat and stretch silk fibres to align these crystal into a long range ordered carbon structure and dramatically enhance the silk strength.

    • Se Youn Cho
    • , Young Soo Yun
    •  & Hyoung-Joon Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the factors that determine the properties of permanent magnets, which play a central role in many industrial applications, can help in improving their performance. Here, the authors study how changes in the iron content affect the microstructure of samarium cobalt magnets.

    • M. Duerrschnabel
    • , M. Yi
    •  & L. Molina-Luna

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Atomically thin boron nitride remains undercharacterized in terms of their mechanical properties. Here authors test high-quality mono- and few-layer BN and show it to be one of the strongest electrically insulating materials and dramatically better in interlayer integrity than graphene under indentation.

    • Aleksey Falin
    • , Qiran Cai
    •  & Lu Hua Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Auxetic materials—those that expand laterally when stretched—can possess enhanced mechanical properties, including shear modulus, indentation resistance, and fracture toughness. Here the authors show that 1T-type crystalline 2D transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit intrinsic in-plane negative Poisson’s ratios.

    • Liping Yu
    • , Qimin Yan
    •  & Adrienn Ruzsinszky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pore structure plays an important role in dictating gas storage performance for nanoporous materials. Here, Smit and colleagues develop a topological approach to quantify pore structure similarity, and exploit the resulting descriptor to screen for materials that possess structural similarities with top-performers.

    • Yongjin Lee
    • , Senja D. Barthel
    •  & Berend Smit

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quasicrystals promise exciting technological advances in optical devices, but their formation mechanism is yet not fully understood. Here, the authors describe a two-dimensional dodecagonal fullerene quasicrystal, forming on a Pt3Ti(111)-surface due to the complex adsorption-energy landscape.

    • M. Paßens
    • , V. Caciuc
    •  & S. Karthäuser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heat conduction at the nanoscale is unlike macroscopic diffusion and phonons can travel in straight lines without dissipation. Here Anufrievet al. show that heat conduction can be spatially directed in nanostructured silicon and exploit this effect to concentrate heat into a focal point.

    • Roman Anufriev
    • , Aymeric Ramiere
    •  & Masahiro Nomura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The high-temperature tetragonal phase of HfO2 is technologically useful but difficult to stabilize at room temperature. Here, the authors observe in real-time the transformation of a HfO2nanorod from its room temperature to tetragonal phase, at 1000° less than its bulk temperature, suggesting that size confinement may kinetically trap this phase.

    • Bethany M. Hudak
    • , Sean W. Depner
    •  & Beth S. Guiton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aerographite is a highly porous and lightweight carbon material obtained from hollow tubular tetrapod building units. Here, the authors present a comprehensive investigation of tetrapod deformation mechanisms which are at the core of aerographite nanomechanical properties.

    • Raimonds Meija
    • , Stefano Signetti
    •  & Nicola M. Pugno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal nanoclusters are explored for their precise structures and compelling properties. Here, the authors synthesize a gold cluster with unique structural features, including giant staple motifs, tetrahedral-coordinateμ4-S atoms, and a helical closest-packed crystallographic pattern that influences the cluster’s photoluminescence.

    • Zibao Gan
    • , Jishi Chen
    •  & Zhikun Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An in-depth understanding of oxygen vacancy-driven effects is necessary for the development of functional ionic devices. Using simultaneous high-resolution imaging and resistance probing, Yaoet al. demonstrate oxygen vacancy-driven structural and resistive transitions between three distinct phases in La2/3Sr1/3MnO3.

    • Lide Yao
    • , Sampo Inkinen
    •  & Sebastiaan van Dijken

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-ordered heterogeneous nanostructures are of broad interest for both fundamental studies and technological applications. Here authors show that segregation in a multicomponent system during growth can yield highly strained germanium nanowire arrays embedded within a ternary semiconductor matrix.

    • Daehwan Jung
    • , Joseph Faucher
    •  & Minjoo Larry Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How well the linear elastic fracture picture holds at small length scales and systems with reduced dimensionality remains an active area of inquiry. Here authors usein situ electron microscopy to study fracture in MoS2monolayers and report dislocation emission rates greater than expected accompanying crack propagation.

    • Thuc Hue Ly
    • , Jiong Zhao
    •  & Young Hee Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is suggested that the optical and mechanical properties of transparent ceramics become very favourable if they can be synthesized as nanocrystals. Here, the authors report direct conversion of bulk glass starting material to pore-free nano-polycrystalline silicate garnet at high pressure and temperature.

    • T. Irifune
    • , K. Kawakami
    •  & T. Shinmei

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