Volume 7 Issue 4, April 2008

From its inception, the polymer industry has engaged theorists in materials design. Despite the maturation of the industry, the need for theoreticians to contribute to the development of new materials for established and emerging applications is as relevant as ever.

Starting out as a theoretical physicist, Ludwik Leibler was first introduced to the concept of a polymer by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. He has gone on to stamp his own inimitable style on the challenges that he has undertaken in soft matter, in particular building strong links with commercial companies. Nature Materials talked to him about the benefits of joining forces with industry — and his experiences with de Gennes.

The discovery of magnetically induced electric polarization in cupric oxide at 230 K has uncovered a new class of multiferroics with significantly higher ordering temperatures.

A method of writing and erasing conducting nanostructures at the interface between the wide-bandgap insulators LaAlO₃ and SrTiO₃ is presented. New developments for ultrahigh-density information storage look feasible.

The new generation of hydrogels moves away from the bulk materials of old, to those with multilayered, complex internal structures and controllable physical properties.

The development of superconducting metamaterials opens the way to a new level of control over electromagnetic fields.

Crystallography and microscopy are alternative pathways for investigating the structure of small objects. More elaborate techniques are needed at length scales where atomic clusters become nanocrystals.

Induced multiferroics, where ferroelectricity arises through the magnetic order, have attracted significant interest, despite maximum Curie temperatures of only 40 K. The discovery of multiferroic coupling up to 230 K in CuO therefore represents a major advance towards high-T_C multiferroics.

Metamaterials have attracted a great amount of interest, owing to a number of appealing applications such as cloaking. The use of superconducting components now enables the fabrication of metamaterials that could be used to cloak static magnetic fields rather than oscillating light waves.

A highly conductive channel, a few nanometres wide, can be reversibly created by an AFM tip operating at room temperature at the interface between two oxide insulators. This discovery could provide a powerful method for the design and realization of electronic circuits at the nanoscale.

Modulated proton transport has a significant role in biological processes such as ATP synthesis and in electrochemical energy conversion. Electrostatic gating of proton conduction that can be actively modulated is now shown in aligned mesoporous silica thin-films.

Coherent diffraction experiments and molecular dynamics enable the study of atomic contraction in gold nanocrystals. They reveal a surface-orientation dependence of the atomic bond contraction—remarkably different from the situation in bulk.

Two-phase materials hold great promise for multifunctional applications. To realize practical devices, it is first necessary to obtain a high degree of control of the phase composition. By taking into account the properties of each phase, it is now possible to control the strain at the interfaces between them in two-component materials, and obtain phase ordering at large scales.

The nature of the charge transport in organic semiconductors is subject to intense research. A study on the thermal and charge transport of single-crystal thin-film polymers now shows close similarities between the transport properties of organic and inorganic semiconductors.

Although an isolated individual molecule clearly has only one ionization potential, multiple values are found for molecules in ordered assemblies. By understanding this phenomenon, design rules for improving organic electronic interfaces can be derived.

To produce hydrogen by reforming hydrocarbons, efficient catalysts capable of removing carbon monoxide are needed. This can now be achieved via a preferential oxidation mechanism using nanoparticle catalysts consisting of a ruthenium core covered with platinum.

The polymer industry spends millions of pounds a year producing materials with ideal properties for specific applications; but without a solid understanding of polymer property–structure relationships, perfecting properties is a daunting task. We examine the role of academia–industry collaborations in the theoretical design and understanding of these materials, how such collaborations can improve and shorten development routes to products, and the benefits they can bring to the academic partner.