Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Electrochemical reactions drive morphing of materials

Silicon anodes in lithium batteries expand during discharge, causing failure. This expansion has been used constructively in a material whose architecture controllably and reversibly changes to alter its function.
  1. Seung-Yeol Jeon

    1. Seung-Yeol Jeon is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Sung Hoon Kang

    1. Sung Hoon Kang is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

If pressure is applied to a block of rubber, it flattens, but reverts to its original form once the pressure is removed — the shape transformation is said to be volatile. But if the same pressure is applied to Play-Doh, the new shape persists even without the pressure. Such a difference is due to inherent dissimilarities in each material’s properties, rather than in the nature of the shape produced, and it has not been possible to turn the volatility of a material’s shape changes on or off on demand. Writing in Nature, Xia et al.1 report a type of ‘architected’ material for which the shape-transformation volatility can be modulated by controlling an applied charge and the geometry of substructures in the material, using electrochemical reactions that occur in batteries.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 573, 198-199 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02663-9

References

  1. Xia, X. et al. Nature 573, 205–213 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Jung, G. S. & Buehler M. J. Nature 565, 303–304 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Mullin, T., Deschanel, S., Bertoldi, K. & Boyce, M. C. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 084301 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Kang, S. H. et al. Adv. Mater. 25, 3380–3385 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. McDowell, M. T., Lee, S. W., Nix, W. D. & Cui, Y. Adv. Mater. 25, 4966–4985 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Baggetto, L., Danilov, D. & Notten, P. H. L. Adv. Mater. 23, 1563–1566 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Kelly, B. E. et al. Science 363, 1075–1079 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Jiang, Y., Korpas, L. M., & Raney, J. R. Nature Commun. 10, 128 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Shan, S. et al. Adv. Mater. 27, 4296–4301 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links