Volume 15 Issue 4, April 2016

Nucleic acid memory has a retention time far exceeding electronic memory. As an alternative storage media, DNA surpasses the information density and energy of operation offered by flash memory.

Angelos Michaelides, Professor in Theoretical Chemistry at University College London (UCL) and co-director of the Thomas Young Centre (TYC), explains to Nature Materials the challenges in materials modelling and the objectives of the TYC.

Fabrication of an ultra-strong glassy carbon nanolattice with a strut diameter of around 200 nm could stimulate the realization of advanced nanoscale architected materials.

Coherent scattering of helium wave packets captures molecular motion with nanometre and picosecond resolution.

Macroscopic deformation can induce chirality in initially achiral nanoparticle composites, and reversibly modulate their chiroptical properties.

Surfaces with slippery asymmetric bumps significantly increase water droplet condensation and shedding.

A plant-inspired approach can be used to print hydrogels that dynamically change shape on immersion in water in order to yield prescribed complex structures.

Materials simulations have become a dominant force in the world of science and technology. The intellectual challenges lying ahead to sustain such a paradigm shift are discussed.

Optical transparency, tunable conducting properties and easy processability make metal oxides key materials for advanced optoelectronic devices. This Review discusses recent advances in the synthesis of these materials and their use in applications.

Helium-3 spin-echo measurements and modelling of admolecule–substrate interactions through force field schemes are used to investigate the diffusion and rotation of pentacene admolecules on a pentacene monolayer at room temperature.

The efficient design of nanoporous materials crucially depends on understanding the mass transfer mechanism. Using micro-imaging techniques we now show that apparently identical crystals can exhibit different uptake rates.

Polyelectrolyte complexation triggered by solvent exchange enables robust underwater contact adhesion for plastics, glasses, metals and other surfaces.

Printed hydrogel composites with plant-inspired architectures dynamically change shape on immersion in water to yield prescribed complex morphologies.

A codon-scrambling algorithm that exploits the codon redundancy of amino acids enables the high-throughput gene synthesis of repetitive proteins.

Strong oxygen octahedral coupling is found to transfer the octahedral rotation between NdGaO₃ and La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃, allowing manipulation of the heterostructures’ magnetic and electronic anisotropic properties by engineering the oxygen network.

The thickness of Ca_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃ is found to modify the oxygen coordination environment of SrRuO₃ in the heterostructure GdScO₃/Ca_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃/SrRuO₃, also allowing the magnetic anisotropy to be tuned in the entire SrRuO₃ layer.

Mechanical metamaterials can exhibit exceptional strength due to their small sizes. Now, a nanoscale lattice of glassy carbon, fabricated by shrinking a microscale lattice, has demonstrated a compressive strength of up to 3 GPa.

The conductance of single-molecule junctions based on oligoacenes is shown to saturate when the molecule length increases. The saturation trend depends on the frontier orbitals of the metals used and on their hybridization with molecular π-orbitals.

The interaction between perovskite oxides and water can have a significant influence on practical performance. Here the authors study the dynamics of surface water adsorption and hydroxide formation during monolayer formation on a ruthenate.

Producing hydrogen via solar water splitting with metal-based molecular catalysts offers scalability. An active p-GaInP₂ photocathode stabilized by a TiO₂ layer functionalized by a cobaloxime molecular catalyst is now reported for water reduction.

Macroscopic stretching can convert achiral nanoparticle composites into chiral materials whose optical properties can be reversibly modulated.

The energy landscapes of supramolecular systems are linked to their functions, as demonstrated by the switching of the balance of competing interactions in self-assembling amphiphiles.

Tissue-engineered constructs with non-fibrous, proteoglycan-rich microdomains match the microstructural, micromechanical and mechanobiological properties of native fibrocartilaginous tissue.