Stacked lipid bilayers usually display smectic order. It is now found that multicomponent stacked bilayers can also exhibit columnar order, which arises from the coupling of interlayer smectic order and intralayer phase-separated domains, and propagates across hundreds of layers. It is postulated that such long-range alignment of lipid domains is assisted by the surface tension associated with the differences in hydrogen bonding of the water molecules between coexisting phases.

Article p1074; News & Views p1005

COVER IMAGE: ATUL N. PARIKH, JIGISHA B. PARIKH AND STEVEN OERDING © UC REGENTS

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

Solid-state sensors for the detection of heavy-metal cations require for the most part sophisticated chemistry and equipment. It is now shown that toxic cations in environmental samples can be detected with ultrahigh sensitivity and over a broad range of cation concentrations by measuring the tunnelling current across films of nanoparticles decorated with striped monolayers of organic ligands.

Article p978; News & Views p913

COVER IMAGE: THOMAS M. HERMANS, NORTHWESTERN UNIV.

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

The electronic interactions at the interface of oxide materials promise properties that can be very different from those of the parent compounds. The finding that many-body interactions in oxide superlattices can be used to engineer electronic properties offers a new strategy for designing oxide heterostructures.

Letter p855; News & Views p833

COVER IMAGE: JULIA A. MUNDY

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

A vector image of the word cloud can be downloaded from here

Nature Materials is ten years old. The word cloud on the cover shows the 222 words that appeared at least ten times in all the titles published in the journal (including news items). The size and colour intensity of each word are proportional to its frequency, counts for word derivations were aggregated into one form, and common English words, names of disciplines and the word 'materials' were not included.

Editorial p743

Focus: Ten broad years

The spatial organization of porous coordination-polymer crystals into higher-order structures is critical for their integration in heterogeneous catalysts, separation systems and electrochemical devices. A method for spatially controlling the nucleation site leading to the formation of mesoscopic architecture in porous coordination polymers, in both two and three dimensions, is now demonstrated.

Article p717

COVER IMAGE: SHUHEI FURUKAWA

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

Conventional sensors generate a signal that is directly proportional to the concentration of the target molecule. Now, by means of an enzyme that controls the growth of silver nanocrystals on plasmonic transducers, a nanosensor with sensitivity that is inversely proportional to concentration, and can detect ultralow concentrations of the cancer biomarker prostate-specific antigen in whole serum, is demonstrated.

Letter p604; News & Views p570

IMAGE CREDIT: MIGUEL SPUCH CALVAR

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

The substitution of oxygen by hydride anions in oxide materials to form oxyhydrides has been difficult to achieve because it requires highly reducing conditions without transferring an electron from the hydride. An oxyhydride of BaTiO3 that is electronically conducting, stable in air and water at ambient conditions, and exchangeable with hydrogen gas at 400 °C, has now been prepared.

IMAGE: SCIENCE GRAPHICS

Letter p507

The maximum imaging resolution in classical optics is limited to approximately the wavelength of light used, and subwavelength resolution can only be achieved by advanced imaging schemes. The appeal of the super-oscillatory lens optical microscope described here is that it enables subwavelength imaging with, in principle, unlimited resolution using a modified conventional microscope.

Letter p432

IMAGE: PHIL SAUNDERS, SPACE CHANNEL, UNIV. SOUTHAMPTON

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

siRNA delivery has so far been hampered by carriers that inefficiently encapsulate RNA, and by its degradation prior to cellular uptake. Now, self-assembled crystalline microsponges consisting solely of cleavable RNA strands — which are converted to siRNA only after cellular uptake — achieve, with three orders of magnitude lower concentration, the same degree of gene silencing as conventional siRNA nanocarriers.

Letter p316; News & Views p268

IMAGE: JONG BUM LEE

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

The growth of microcrystals can be controlled by various agents such as ions, small charged molecules and polyelectrolytes. However, their use is specific to the crystallizing material. It is now shown that oppositely charged nanoparticles can act as 'universal' surfactants for controlling the growth and stability of microcrystals of inorganic salts and of charged organic molecules.

Letter p227

IMAGE: DAVID A. WALKER AND BARTLOMIEJ KOWALCZYK

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

Highly monodisperse silver polyhedral nanocrystals passivated with polymers are shown to behave as quasi-hard particles that self-assemble by sedimentation into millimetre-sized, three-dimensional supercrystals, which correspond to the particles' three-dimensional densest packings. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the observed self-assembled structures, including an exotic structure for octahedra that is stabilized by depletion forces induced by an excess of polymer in solution.

Letter p131

IMAGE: JOEL HENZIE AND PEIDONG YANG

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND

Persistent phosphors are known from applications such as night-vision goggles where they produce a characteristic green afterglow. The discovery of persistent phosphors that instead operate at near-infrared wavelengths with much longer afterglows may now enable new applications in night-vision surveillance and in bio-imaging.

Article p58

IMAGE: ZHENGWEI PAN AND FENG LIU

COVER DESIGN: DAVID SHAND