Articles in 2020

The applicability of organic materials in conventional Li-ion batteries is challenging owing to the lack of lithium-containing and air-stable cathodes. A class of conjugated sulfonamides to be used as lithium-ion positive electrodes is now shown to exhibit reversible charge storage.

Phosphonated polymers have been proposed as anhydrous proton conductors for fuel cells but anhydride formation of phosphonic acid functional groups lowers conductivity. A synergistically integrated phosphonated poly(pentafluorostyrene) is shown to maintain high protonic conductivity above 200 °C.

It is now shown that tumour-associated macrophages recruited early during tumour evolution stimulate stromal fibroblasts to express collagen crosslinking enzymes and that the stromal expression, particularly of lysyl hydroxylase 2, can predict survival in a patient cohort.

Self-assembling, histidine-rich peptides with similar catalytic functions as those of haem-dependent peroxidases are reported. These findings may have implications for the design of cofactor-free catalytic nanomaterials.

Extrusion-based bioprinting has been shown to rapidly and reproducibly generate kidney organoids from a cell-only paste, with the number and maturation of functional units within the kidney tissue capable of being further improved by bioprinting tissue sheets.

Two-dimensional MOFs can possess porosity and electrical conductivity but are difficult to grow as single crystals. Here, by balancing in-plane and out-of-plane interactions, single crystals of sizes up to 200 µm are grown, allowing in-plane transport measurements and atomic-resolution analysis.

Microporous annealed-particle degradable scaffolds have been developed and shown to induce type 2 innate and adaptive immune response that facilitated skin wound healing.

Comparison of hexagonal boron nitride samples grown with different techniques and with varying carbon-doping content provides evidence that the defects emitting single photons in the visible range are carbon related.

Metallic nanoparticles used to harvest energy from a light source typically result in reduced chemical reaction temperature. Endothermic reactions requiring higher activation energy can now be initiated at room temperature using localized surface plasmons in the deep-UV range.

A mild electrochemical exfoliation method has been developed to obtain large-size two-dimensional superconductor monolayers with high crystallinity and production yield, which enables the easy fabrication of twisted van der Waals heterostructures and printed films.

The low dielectric constants and high porosity of MOFs are of interest for applications in electronics and sensors, but patterning techniques for these materials are in their infancy. Here, direct X-ray and electron-beam lithography at sub-50-nm resolution are reported that leave porosity and crystallinity intact.

A systematic analysis of a series of donor–acceptor organic blends shows that in solar cells based on low-bandgap non-fullerene acceptors an ionization energy offset of about 0.5 eV is required to ensure efficient charge separation.

The mechanism of stress fibre assembly by the coalescence of actin filaments in the cell cortex has now been found to account for the transmission of mechanical forces throughout the entire cell along stress fibres.

Depending on its intensity, light irradiation is shown to induce not only segregation but also remixing of halide ions in mixed-halide perovskites, enabling in situ and localized control of chemical composition and optical bandgap in these materials.

Polar skyrmions are topologically protected structures that can exist in (PbTiO₃)_n/(SrTiO₃)_n superlattices. Here, it is shown that they have negative permittivity at the surface, and that they can undergo a reversible phase transition with large dielectric tunability under an electric field.

High-entropy ceramics are solid solutions offering compositional flexibility and wide variety of applicability. High-entropy concepts are shown to lead to substantial performance improvement in cation-disordered rocksalt-type cathodes for Li-ion batteries.

The Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) enables coupling of magnetic spins and is responsible for non-collinear phenomena such as skyrmions. Here, using first-principles simulations and group theory analysis, it is demonstrated that an electric DMI exists and is analogous to the magnetic DMI.

Transmission electron microscopy reveals the electroplastic effects in a Ti–Al alloy, which can be uncoupled from Joule heating effects. Electropulsing during deformation enhances wavy slip of dislocations, reconfiguring the dislocation pattern, and hence increases the ductility.

In contrast with conventional views, ultra-large-scale atomistic simulations show that the staged character of strain hardening of metals originates from crystal rotation, whereas the dislocation behaviours remain the same across all the stages.

Zeolite membranes can be used for gas molecular sieving, but synthesis requires complex hydrothermal treatment. Here, single layers of zeolite precursor RUB-15 are exfoliated followed by a condensation reaction, forming zeolite membranes with H₂/CO₂ selectivity of 20 to 100 in a facile process.