Volume 16 Issue 7, July 2017

Concerns about the planet's health call for a careful evaluation of the environmental impact of materials choices. Life-cycle assessment is a tool that can help identify sustainable materials pathways by considering the burdens of materials both during production and as a product.

Paulo J. M. Monteiro, Sabbie A. Miller and Arpad Horvath provide an overview of the challenges and accomplishments in reducing the environmental burden of concrete production.

Xiuyan Li and K. Lu discuss a strategy, alternative to alloying, to tailor the mechanical properties of metals. By engineering defects, metals with bespoke performance might be obtained while reducing the materials' compositional complexity.

Large tensile pressure applied to the putative topological Kondo insulator SmB₆ results in an expansion of the lattice in all directions, and a huge increase in the temperature range over which surface-dominated conduction can be observed.

A Pd₄ cluster, supported by a metal–organic framework and formed by post-synthesis methods, shows high catalytic activity and selectivity for carbene-mediated reactions. This crystallographically precise material may lead to a large class of catalysts.

Exploring the minute mechanical deformations induced by electrical bias at the interface with electrolytes allows the identification of local crystallinity and distinguishing adsorption and intercalation of ions in electroactive polymers.

A method to realize regular patterns with nanometre precision during the synthesis of PtSe₂ and CuSe monolayers has been developed.

Surface-dominated conduction is found to dominate up to 240 K in the strongly correlated mixed-valence Kondo insulator SmB₆ under the application of large strain.

An electric field is shown to induce an in-plane effective magnetic field enabling the deterministic magnetization switching of a magnetic multilayer on a piezoelectric substrate.

PtSe₂ and CuSe monolayers obtained by selenization of a metal substrate are shown to intrinsically form periodic patterns by varying the amount of Se atoms deposited. These patterns are used for the localized absorption of molecules and nanoclusters.

Charge-transfer dynamics in organic semiconductors are shown to be altered by multi-layered hyperbolic metamaterial substrates, an effect linked to the number of metal–dielectric pairs used.

A transition in mechanical response occurs in micrometre-sized samples, but fabricating high-quality specimens in this regime is challenging. A microcasting technique now enables aluminium wires with smooth surfaces, and diameters spanning 6–100 μm.

Electrochemical strain microscopy reveals the interconnection between ion uptake and nanoscale variations of morphology in organic semiconductor films. Such changes locally affect the operation regime of organic transistors exposed to electrolytes.

Quasi-two-dimensional CdSe nanoplatelets are shown to grow in concentrated solvent-free melts, without mixed surfactants. A model explaining such results proposes that nanoscale instability triggers anisotropic growth of isotropic materials.

Designing stable mechanical actuators and sensors for applications in extreme environments is difficult. A high-temperature and low-voltage electromechanical oxide actuator based on Pr_xCe_1−xO_2−δ and exhibiting dynamic chemical expansion is now reported.

By applying high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and precession electron diffraction, it is possible to image the handedness of chiral zeolite nanocrystals.

Mixed-valence clusters of Pd₄ organized within a metal–organic framework exhibit robust catalytic capacities during carbene-mediated chemical reactions.

AFM measurements of peptoids assembling into sheets and networks show that the crystallization mechanism is determined by the molecular structure, where the addition of a hydrophobic segment alters the crystal formation process into a two-step pathway.

Epidermal growth factor receptor and its isoform HER2 are recruited to nascent cellular adhesion sites and play an important role in the rigidity sensing of cells on stiff substrates, this activity being dependent on Src-mediated phosphorylation.