Volume 17 Issue 11, November 2018

Emily Mayhew, a historian within the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, talks to Nature Materials about the advances that have been made in medicine and, in particular, prosthetics since World War I.

Pioneering materials scientist and inspiring mentor.

Researchers have developed a graphene plasmonics detector that is suitable for fast-response and high-resolution detection of infrared photons at room temperature.

Advances in understanding the physics behind remote epitaxy, a technique of growing films that ‘copy’ the substrate crystal structure through 2D material interlayer, facilitates the production of ultrathin components for device heterointegration.

By considering the topology of chiral crystals, a new type of massless fermion, connected with giant arc-like surface states, are predicted. Such Kramers–Weyl fermions should manifest themselves in a wide variety of chiral materials.

An amphipathic peptide has been engineered and is capable of penetrating the blood–brain barrier as well as possessing a potent antiviral activity against Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses.

Colloidal microparticles, with polymer composites encapsulated within two separate 2D material sheets, are fabricated by autoperforation, which can carry chemical and electronic information with long-term instability in complex environments.

This Perspective explores the history and usage of the concept of oxidation state, its relation to atomic charge and bonding, and opportunities that arise from applying this analysis to systems with mixed valence or correlated electrons.

Dense suspensions of hard particles readily display discontinuous shear thickening under shear but not reversible shear jamming. Here it is shown that the formation of interparticle hydrogen bonds is crucial for the shear jamming of these suspensions.

The Zika virus infects the central nervous system and results in severe brain malformation. An amphiphatic peptide is now shown to penetrate the blood–brain barrier, reducing viral loads due to its activity against Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses.

Kramers–Weyl fermions are identified in chiral crystals, and their phenomenology is drawn out.

A system of patterned graphene nanoresonators/nanoribbons can be used as an efficient mid-infrared detector, based on plasmonic resonant absorption and subsequent carrier thermalization.

Topologically protected edge states can be observed when combining two Si-based phononic crystals of opposite phases, as well as on-chip elastic wave splitting via partition of edges states at the intersection of topological channels.

Remote atomic interaction of crystalline materials through 2D materials is presented to depend on the polarity of both the 2D interlayers and underlying substrates, providing insights for the epitaxial growth of various materials on 2D crystals.

A technique of autoperforation is presented to fabricate colloidal microparticles with functional polymer composite enveloped by two sheets of 2D materials. The particles can work as electronic devices with good stability in harsh environment.

Combined multimodal atomic force microscopy, ion microscopy, ion mass spectrometry and infrared spectrometry experiments explore the chemical properties of ferroelastic twin domains in hybrid lead halide perovskites.

The electromechanical properties of organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites are not well characterized. Here, a large electrostrictive strain of 1% is measured, suggesting both new electromechanical applications and implications for photovoltaics.

Semiconducting metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) can be of interest for optoelectronics, but charge transport property is rarely elucidated. Here, a π–d conjugated 2D MOF shows band-like charge transport, with room-temperature mobility of 220 cm² V^–1 s^–1.

Bimetallic nanoparticles with tailored structure constitute a desirable model system for catalysts. PtAu nanoparticles with Pt single-atom surface sites, prepared by a colloidal method, exhibit unprecedented electrocatalytic activity for formic acid oxidation.

Liquid repellent coatings are important for several applications. Now, a coating that repels ultralow surface tension liquids and simultaneously shows robustness and transparency is reported.