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An article in Physical Review Letters reports that twisted bilayers of WSe2 host interlayer excitons with a high degree of valley polarization and long lifetimes.
Batteries, as complex materials systems, pose unique challenges for the application of machine learning. Although a shift to data-driven, machine learning-based battery research has started, new initiatives in academia and industry are needed to fully exploit its potential.
Design of bone-tissue-engineering materials involves consideration of multiple, often conflicting, requirements. This Review discusses these considerations and highlights scalable technologies that can fabricate natural and synthetic biomaterials (polymers, bioceramics, metals and composites) into forms suitable for bone-tissue-engineering applications in human therapies and disease models.
Self-healable polymers are materials that recover after physical damage. In this Review, we discuss the physical and chemical approaches to make self-healing polymers, with a focus on similarities with biological systems.
In condensed matter systems, the atoms, electrons or spins can sometimes arrange themselves in ways that result in unexpected properties but that cannot be detected by conventional experimental probes. Several historical and contemporary examples of such hidden orders are known and more are awaiting discovery, perhaps in the form of more complex composite, entangled or dynamical hidden orders.
Reducible oxides are tunable, multifunctional materials used in many applications, particularly in catalysis; their attractive properties arise from their interacting charge carriers, complex electronic structure and propensity to form mobile defects. This Review surveys theoretical methods to model and understand reducible oxides, using TiO2 as a prototypical example.
Matrigel is widely used for cell culture. However, its ill-defined composition, batch-to-batch variability and animal-derived nature lead to experimental uncertainty and a lack of reproducibility. In this Review, we discuss the limitations of Matrigel and highlight synthetic alternatives for stem-cell culture, regenerative medicine and organoid assembly.
An article in Physical Review Letters reports the properties of iron — the main element in the Earth’s core — at extreme temperatures and pressures, providing clues to the core’s composition.
A global effort is ongoing in the scientific community and in the maker movement, which focuses on creating devices and tinkering with them, to reverse-engineer commercial medical equipment and get it to healthcare workers. For these ‘low-tech’ solutions to have a real impact, it is important for them to coalesce around approved designs.
The porous hierarchical structure and anisotropy of wood make it a strong candidate for the design of materials with various functions, including load bearing, multiscale mass transport, and optical and thermal management. In this Review, the composition, structure, characterization methods, modification strategies, properties and applications of natural and modified wood are discussed.
Electrochemical processes enable energy-efficient desalination of water and the separation and recovery of elements. In this Review, we discuss the mechanisms and materials of this emerging generation of water-remediation technology.
Unrecycled post-consumer plastic waste is an enormous, growing problem. Chemical recycling to monomer (CRM) delivers recycled material without degradation in properties. This Review assesses the viability of commercial polymer CRM, the flourishing of CRM with new polymers and opportunities for the field.
Owing to their layered structure, the properties of 2D perovskites can be controlled by tuning their thickness. This Review surveys how fine-tuning the thickness of 2D perovskites from the sub-micrometre to the molecularly thin regime helps to optimize their electrical and optical properties for use in different applications.
The first online-only meeting in photonics, held on January 13th 2020, was a resounding success, with 1100 researchers participating remotely to discuss the latest advances in photonics. Here, the organizers share their tips and advice on how to organize an online conference.
Engineering the phase of metal nanocrystals while simultaneously achieving shape-controlled synthesis can enable new and desirable properties. This Review highlights the synthetic strategies for generating Ru nanocrystals with different crystal phases and surface structures, and outlines their implementation in catalytic applications.
