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.
The transition to climate-friendly cities has led to a renaissance of wood as a renewable building material. To prevent severe raw material shortages in the future, the material-first utilization of wood in long-living, resource-efficient engineered wood products and constructions will be key.
Clamping devices have been implemented in organ-on-a-chip systems to facilitate on-chip culture of complex biological models, the performance of various readouts and the selection of proper materials. In this Review, we highlight the current status of clamping technology, its benefits and future devices that promise a major impact in the organ-on-a-chip field.
Nucleic acids for gene silencing, expression and editing can precisely target disease at the molecular level but require effective delivery systems. This Review discusses the material and biological principles used to design delivery systems to target specific organs in the body.
The solutions to many of today’s challenges will be found at the frontier of advanced materials research and will require collaboration across synthesis, characterization, fabrication and theory. While good ideas can be generated anywhere by anyone, scientific opportunities are often concentrated among select groups. National user facilities democratize access to world-class expertise and instrumentation, acting as innovation multipliers on the scientific enterprise.
Halide perovskite light-emitting diodes display excellent optoelectronic properties and are easy to fabricate. This Perspective article discusses the potential of perovskite emitters for the miniaturization of perovskite light-emitting diodes and provides a technical roadmap for the fabrication of microscale emitting devices.
Peptides are small yet versatile building blocks of biomaterials. This Comment highlights recent progress in the design of liquid-like microdroplets, or coacervates, based on peptides and produced through liquid–liquid phase separation. This emerging platform holds promise as efficacious delivery vehicles for multi-purpose biomedical applications.
Despite concrete being the most prominent building material of the twentieth century, the cultural heritage relevance of concrete buildings and the importance of their preservation is not widely recognized. The European Union project InnovaConcrete’s purpose is to develop nanotechnology-based treatments for concrete preservation and to increase citizen awareness around the importance of concrete-based heritage.
This work provides an overview of stability in perovskite–Si tandem solar cells, elucidates key tandem-specific degradation mechanisms, considers economic factors for perovskite–Si tandem solar cells and outlines future research directions to achieve the long-term stability necessary for the commercialization of this promising technology.
An article in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters reports the use of intercalation of Cu or Ag atoms in the 2D magnet CrI3 to obtain 2D multiferroic materials.
An article in Nature Communications sheds light on the influence of the number of layers in the sample on sliding ferroelectricity based on measurements on rhombohedral MoS2.
DNA origami nanostructures are useful constructs for biophysical and therapeutic studies. This Review discusses how these nanostructures are functionalized with bioactive conjugates, purified and characterized, and compares the advantages and limitations of these methods in the context of different applications.
Organic solar cells that are semitransparent in the visible and strongly absorbing in the near-infrared spectral regions present unique opportunities for applications in buildings and agriculture. This Review surveys recent progress in semitransparent organic photovoltaic devices and discusses strategies to optimize their efficiency, visible transparency, lifetime and scalability.
Investigating single-molecule reactions will deepen our understanding of chemical reactions and establish new frameworks in materials science. This Review summarizes the chemical reactions occurring in single-molecule junctions, discusses how they differ from reactions in the bulk, and explores the possibility of leveraging single-molecule catalysis for large-scale synthesis.
Efforts to increase diversity in quantum information science education often centre on individual minority students. The co-founder of the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center argues that more resources should go towards faculty enablement strategies targeting schools with a proven track record of graduating minorities in STEM.
Pressure-sensitive adhesives are familiar household items spanning applications in everyday repair, office supplies and topical wound care. Through innovations in material and polymer science, pressure-sensitive adhesives will advance from current commodity to new specialty materials with resulting new clinical uses and improved patient care.