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This Perspective provides an overview on the emergent field of colloidal robotics, discussing recent developments on colloidal and micrometre-sized particles that can perform functions such as sensing, communication, computation and motion.
Ethylene separation from ethane is the most energy-intensive separation in the chemical process industry, but so far membranes have not exceeded an ethylene/ethane selectivity of >20 in mixed gases. Here a carbon molecular sieve with an ethylene selectivity of ~100 and long-term stability under high-pressure gas is reported.
Pressure sensing is challenging in liquid environments, where typical solid-state sensors do not perform well. A sensor with solid–liquid–liquid–gas multiphasic interfaces — its design inspired by the lotus leaf, and in which a trapped air layer modulates capacitance changes with pressure — is shown to achieve near-ideal pressure sensing and is well suited to liquid environments.
It is difficult to program a single stimuli-responsive geometry to transform into diverse final configurations in a systematic manner. Here, linearly responsive transparent hydrogels are developed to create micro-metastructures with wide-spectrum thermal reconfigurability.
Employing a widefield cryogenic microscope to parallelize resonant spectroscopy, chip-scale automated optical characterization of solid-state quantum emitters is demonstrated.
Hydrogels are promising materials but are often limited by inadequate mechanical properties and time-consuming fabrication processes. Here the authors demonstrate a rapid biomimetic interfacial-bonding nanocomposite strategy for ultra-tough hydrogels with high tensile strength.
Nanoparticle retention inside tumours has been associated with lymphatic vessel collapse. It is now shown that nanoparticles exit from solid tumours through lymphatic vessels in or surrounding the tumour by a nanoparticle-size-dependent mechanism.
An ultrahigh fatigue-resistant AlSi10Mg alloy is achieved by additive manufacturing, with its three-dimensional dual-phase cellular nanostructure acting as a strong volumetric nanocage to inhibit fatigue damage accumulation.
Solid-state pressure sensors have performance limitations in liquid environments. Here, the authors design a pressure sensor using solid–liquid–liquid–gas multiphasic interfaces where a trapped air layer modulates capacitance changes with pressure to achieve near-friction-free contact line motions for near-ideal pressure sensing.
Using doped InAs multilayers under moderate external magnetic fields with gradient epsilon-near-zero frequencies, broadband non-reciprocal absorption that can be tailored within the mid-infrared spectral region has been demonstrated.
Proximity-induced chiral quantum emission is generated by applying nanoindentation on monolayer WSe2 on an antiferromagnetic van der Waals material (NiPS3) at zero external magnetic fields, reporting a degree of circular polarization of 0.89 and a single-photon purity of 95%.
By means of a precise folding–tearing process, screw dislocations with helical cores — appearing in pairs and taking on a DNA-like double-helix structure — are engineered to control the growth of twisted bilayer graphene.
Piezoresponse microscopy and spectroscopy reveal the inextricable role of surface electrochemistry in stabilizing and controlling ferroelectricity in doped hafnia.
Ferroelectricity in hafnia-based systems seems to be correlated with oxygen vacancy dynamics, but the coupling of this and ferroelectric response is rarely studied. Here it is shown that Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 can be antiferroionic, with antiferroelectric behaviour coupled to surface electrochemistry.
Controlling the periodicity of synthesized moiré materials is vital to harness their unique physics. Here the authors realize the van der Waals epitaxy of tunable moiré heterostructures and reveal the epitaxial science governing their formation.
In situ tests show that all-inorganic lead halide perovskite micropillars can morph into distinct shapes without affecting their optoelectronic properties and bandgap, which provides insights into the plastic deformation of semiconductors and also shows their potential for manufacturing relevant devices.
The authors demonstrate that the electrostatic potential originating on the surface of twisted bilayer and multilayer hexagonal boron nitride can be used to generate a moiré potential modulation on adjacent semiconductor layers, enabling the possibility of controlling the properties of this adjacent layer.